About a week ago, a group of freshers joined my team as
software developers. I was asked to conduct their training on technologies like Java,
tomcat, maven and a few concepts like
continuous integration and continuous development etc. Through out my life I
have been very enthusiastic and proactive about helping my juniors or
colleagues but this was for the first time when a group of naïve technologists,
sitting in a semi circle with pens in their hands, ready to jot down every word
I said were looking forward to not just casual help but but also to form a foundation to prove
their worth in the team. This reminded me of my Onboarding days also know as
“Honeymoon” period when I started working, super excited to make a
difference and to prove my worth in the team just like these freshers. My mentor helped me checkout latest
code from the repository and introduced me to a tech term - “SVN”. I searched online what SVN meant and found a
plethora of other technologies which were almost same as this SVN. Then I starting
exploring the folder structure and with every java file I read, with every
design pattern I recognised (Factory pattern or Builder Pattern) I felt as if I
was unraveling a mystery. Now coming back to the Onboarding session I was
conducting in a meeting room I decided to put Java, CI/CD pipeline concept on hold and
shared some lessons with them which I learnt in my “Honeymoon period” .
Should I follow my pride and sit back or should I get up and ask for help.
This was the dilemma I faced during the Onboarding
days. I thought that asking
for help in very first few days of my job will portray me as a lackadaisical
fem-engineer. I thought I might end up give the impression that I am not
inquisitive at all and believe in running for help for every minor question.
So, I made an “intelligent” decision and I chose the extreme that is to
prove my worth with smart work/extra work and not ask a single question to any
of my senior.
This was not as intelligent as it appealed to me when I was a fresher. Not
asking questions or trying to figure out everything by yourself just portrays
an fresher as a solo-worker and not a team player. It might even convey an
unintended message that the fresher is uninterested in the on-going. Do some
pride engineering to come up with a balanced approach which will help you bring out your best qualities.
What to ask and what not to ask
This point may act as an input to do that optimised pride engineering I just talked about. Bothering your seniors with every single question or every
minor tech question may make you sound like an amateur who doesn’t respect the
fact that you might be a newbie but others do have deadlines and product to
deliver. So, how should you maintain that delicate balance ? The simple approach is to
categories your question into technical and business related questions. For ex:
Say you are asked to run/write new unit test cases (which is the standard Onboarding process followed by a lot of companies) and you get an error say “No
tests found with test runner JUnit 4”. So there is no point running to your
seniors for this. Search StackOverflow or other technical blogs for such minor
issues you will surely find a solution. Do some hit and trial. But if you are issues related to
business or domain logic, take a note of 3-5 doubts and then take it to
your seniors. It will bring out a shade of your professional qualities.
Disclaimer: If you are unable to resolve a tech problems
after trying 5-6 different approaches, better tell about it to your senior. But be prepared to list of various methodologies/resources you followed to resolve it.
Do Not underestimate the impression given during “Onboarding”
Human beings are often dictated by preconceived notions or ingrained
ideas in their minds. The
intentions or the ideas conveyed about your personality are not easy to
override in your subsequent months. Often freshers find it hard to understand “corporate”
culture mainly because not everyone is alike. Not all colleagues are as easy
going as your college friends neither all colleagues are malefactors. So join
the team with an open mind don’t expect people to be saints or wrongdoers just on
basis of what you hear around. Try to bring out best colours of your qualities.
Just “Keep calm and Do your best”.
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