Hey guys! I’ll give you a backstory before I get into the meat of this post. My first new grad role was an entry level software engineering position at Lockheed Martin space. For a lot of reasons, I wanted out..location, not wanting to stay in defense, etc. After about 1 yr 1 month of experience I was able to get a job offer at a startup in a much more interesting space. I was so excited...no longer an entry level role, higher TC, very interesting team. I was also so happy because I began my job search in the thick of covid. The process was difficult because for so many reasons: covid, interviewing while still working, the general prep/difficulty that comes with tech interviewing, not a lot of full time experience, etc. I even began to lower my expectations of the type of company I wanted, so I was very proud when I got this offer. Without revealing too much about the startup, my position is permanently remote, I’m in the US, and it’s a “mature” startup meaning it has the environment of a startup but is stable. Anyway, now to the meat. I’ve been at this new company for almost 2 months now. The core team I’m on is myself and 3 other much more senior level guys plus our manager who is also a guy. I’m the only girl, not new for me. The first project I was put on was an Ubuntu upgrade which was interesting. I made some fixes to unit tests too. Now, that project is over and they’re just having me work on infosec vulnerabilities which is basically just fixing version numbers. I did get 1 bug fix which involved a change in the codebase but it was <10 lines of code I contributed. In a recent 1:1 with my manager he said the next project I’d be on is also infrastructure related. Don’t get me wrong, I find infra interesting and it’s an important skill for developers to know. I’m just concerned because I’ve barely contributed to the code base, mostly to the infrastructure related parts. I’m scared that my coding skills will get rusty and then I’ll be limited in my career options. From talking to my manager, it seems like infra/infosec are the high priority things. So I don’t think anyone is trying to throw me under the bus. I’ve even voiced these concerns to him and he just says he’ll keep it in mind. But still, I’m concerned for my career. I’m considering working on LeetCode problems and/or side projects in my downtime at work (there’s a lot of downtime when you’re just changing version numbers). But in the back of my head I’m like...is this normal? I don’t want to get laid off/eventually be looking for a new job and all I can say I’ve done is change version numbers and fix some unit tests/low priority bugs. #engineering #software #swe #girlsintech
Usually it takes a bit of time to earn trust in new team. I hope you will get more interesting tasks based on your skills and capabilities. If you continue to get similar tasks in 6 months from now then it’s time to worry and escalate to the manager. Meanwhile you seems to have perfect time for side projects or improvements your manager didn’t ask for.
Yeah I understand that..I wouldn’t even mind if I was given more unit tests or small bugs. I’m not expecting to do anything groundbreaking. Just something related to the actual codebase so I could use that to build on my coding skills. The interview process was pretty involved too..it was 4 whole stages so it’s not like they just hired anyone. Although my impostor syndrome tries to convince me of that. Right now I literally have nothing to do because I have 2 things up for review and no other tasks assigned to me. I asked around about what I can do and no one has responded to me for 1/2 hour. Ugh maybe I should’ve stayed at Lockheed
I’m starting to think that I was a diversity hire and nothing more...
No you are not. It happens. You will get better work
I try to tell myself that. I just can’t help but be scared that they’re going to shove me into a corner doing only infra work/boring things and that I won’t have much of a career to grow my software development skills
In a year I’ll probably start actively looking if the situation continues to suck. I just hate this because I worked so hard to get out of Lockheed and go here. I thought this would be a huge improvement and now it feels like 1 step forward 2 steps back. I want to be in a place where I can grow. I’m okay with doing smaller/less important tasks. That’s how you learn. I’m just upset that I’ve barely gotten anything that has to do with software development and it’s pretty much all infra related. I’m not so sure that changing version numbers will make me a better software engineer. I know I can do leetcode and side projects but I was really hoping to be able to grow these skills at the company I join as well :( I also feel so burnt out after the workday that it’s hard to do anything productive afterwards. I’m still mentally exhausted from my job search that got me this job...
Congrats in making it out of defense lol
😂 thanks!! Even if this job is a bust, I at least know how software workflow is outside of defense. WAY different! How are things at Raytheon?
Yeah good skills to know! Hopefully you end up doing more coding might be cause you are still new? Boring and slow 😭trying to leetcode and get out. Although my TS should be coming in soon I might try msft or amzn gov side
Try to ask your peers what they're working on; scout around and get the lay of the land
Yeah I’ve been trying to do that. I ask people about what they’re doing a lot. Then it’s like hey what you have to do is change a version number 😂 you don’t even need a CS degree for this