Recently, transitioned from data analytics role to SWE since the company had an internal program to send me to bootcamp for free while I got paid but took a 25% pay-cut since the SWE role was entry level. Finally, finished the training a little over a month ago and joined the team that I was assigned to find out they had no project waiting for us. They have us new joiners doing more training and building random stuff on training environment (not real practical stuff since some new joiners didn’t have Java experience). I did choose this route because I do prefer development (more specifically backend) but they said I would be in this training environment for 5-6 months. I spoke to the manager to see if I can get some stories assigned and I was told to focus on training… Looking for recommendations on if I should leave ASAP to another company where I can get real experience and also increase my pay or stick it out and hope that I get some real projects to learn from. What are some companies (NOT banking) you recommend I apply to and what level should I be targeting and what should my target TC be? Location: Dallas Military YOE 4 Previous role YOE 3.5 Previous role TC 120k SWE YOE 0.5 SWE TC 85k + bonus?
Are you managers doing actual projects or do they also have nothing to do ?
The manager and non new joiners have work but they have just enough work for them. Plus, the manager told the agility leads that we won’t be participating on any of the projects and features so they won’t assign us anything…
So ungrateful. Leeching off of company’s benevolence. At least contribute enough impact to pay back their investment.
Nope. Fuck em. They’d lay them off with 3 weeks severance in an instant.
^ with this kind of attitude, they should!
I am also in analytics and totally understand your situation. This is very typical at JPMC that some teams have nothing to work on. Given your first junior role, yet you don’t have any project or good mentor lined up to help you grow professionally, I’d suggest you fulfill the minimum and look for other opportunities.
Yeah I mean when I was in data analytics I was never not busy but SWE is definitely different… Fortunately, I don’t have a minimum time to fulfill
Spend the time learning about how the codebase works, do side projects to build a portfolio during this time, see how projects are built, etc there's a ton of opportunities to learn so you can when you do decide to jump ship will have something to talk about when you are interviewed
Yeah I mean that’s what I am doing at the moment but I’ll never know what it’s like or how to deploy a real corporate level project or feature to server which would then be hard to articulate to hiring managers down the road… when I’ve been at the team for 6 months to a year. I feel like I can always learn and develop on my own time regardless of where I am but my question is does this seem like it’s stunting my ability to learn from job experience and if so shouldn’t I try to leave and go somewhere where they’ll let me gain experience through actual work.
Of course always leave a job if you feel stunted, but I believe everyone else is also saying that the job market is rough for those without coding work experience. So you could always try to job hunt while still holding a job but they will usually ask you about what you have done at your previous positions and how it could relate to the one you're interviewing for. Sometimes folks don't get interviews easily because their experience level isn't enough.
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id recommend staying for a bit, at least to one year mark. job market is hyper competitive, especially < 1 yoe swe
Thanks for that input. But should I still look and apply since if I have 1+ year of experience but if I don’t get to work on anything than wouldn’t that be worse since I have nothing to talk about during interviews?
i would probably try and take more initiative / find interesting projects. even though they don’t have anything directly assigned to you. might take some time and fishing attempts. that way you get best of both (yoe and interesting learnings / projects)