First job in Tech

“Initially it was hard because of the shock of feeling so uncomfortable. Now I understand you’re going to be useless for the first couple of months. Every place has its own way of doing things for its own historical reasons. I went in there shocked that I didn’t know what people were saying for weeks.  There is a disconnect between a college environment with a syllabus in terms of how much and how fast do they expect you to do work.”

— MM, Software Engineer for 7 years at large companies and startups

“In college, I loved the collaboration part of coding. Once I got into the real world it was so much less collaborative. They don’t set people’s expectations correctly with how tedious the job can be, how lonely the job can be.  A lot of independent contributor jobs are very much like “here’s a thing code it.”  There’s a culture of getting meetings off your plate with the underlying assumption that being alone is what you want to do.”

- AL, Software Engineer for 5 years before leaving the industry

“I expected that the first few months would be onboarding and then after that you would completely know what you were doing. Even as an intern, I put a lot of that pressure on myself. From speaking to friends at other companies a lot of people feel newer for longer than you think. Even when you’re not new you can still not know things.”

-MV, Software Engineer for 2 years

“In college you can get help more easily. You can get help at work, but I didn’t yet feel comfortable saying I was having a hard time. Or asking ‘is this okay?’”

— MM, Software Engineer for 7 years at large companies and startups

“It was mentally draining to code for 8 hours a day at first, but it was also exhilarating to be coding full time and getting all this feedback on my code. Coding full-time and working with a manager who would think about my code from all different angles how I could do better was great.”

-LB, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for 4 years

Lack of Support

“I hated this company’s onboarding process because I’ve never liked the feeling of being thrown into a codebase and needing to find your own work. A lot of the initial tasks I was assigned were not great. They were things people didn’t want to do that they thought were easy.  There’s no joy in cleaning up a file you didn’t write.  I felt so lost, I had to have people explain the code to me but they didn't want to.  It made me feel stupid, nobody was guiding me. I felt like I could do nothing all day and nobody would notice.”

- AL, Software Engineer for 5 years before leaving the industry

“My first or second day on the job, they sent me setup instructions. One of the first steps was to install PHP. I asked the tech lead how to do it and he sent me back a LMGTFY link. I asked someone else.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

“When I first joined a lot of what I had to learn was very adhoc. I spent a lot of time talking to people on the team to learn about architecture, I had to try hard to learn things that were seemingly basic. But now we’ve added a lot of talks and concrete structure. I learned things later than I wish I had.”

-MV, Software Engineer for 2 years

“One time I broke the deployment. It was a set of scripts and took 30 minutes. It was a merge conflict.  I remember the shame. No one said anything to me but I felt so horrible. Then someone made a joke about it. It felt so ashamed. No one else made mistakes that were obvious there.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

Feeling Useless

“When I first opened the repos at [Company] I could not even begin to understand what was going on. I felt like a new hire out of college again. I felt incredibly slow and useless for a while, but I had the knowledge that I’ve been here before. I’d felt incredibly useless for weeks and months, and then I got better. That knowledge helped.”

- TJ, Software Engineer for 3 years at a large company and startup

Asking Questions

“When I first became a product manager, the engineers hardly understood what I was asking. It took a lot of back and forth questions, but I did end up better. I had to remember that I had value and my perspective had a value. If the person you’re with makes you anything less than good don’t assume you’re at fault.  Sometimes if they are explaining something and it didn’t make sense, it may just not make sense.”

-EQ, tech-adjacent roles at startups for 4 years

“When they brought up jargon I didn’t understand, it was hard to know if that was something I didn’t know because I was inexperienced verses something that wasn’t relevant to my role.  I learned to just google things as I go.  When working remotely I’ve had the opportunity to do that more. I’ve gotten braver asking, by seeing people in the industry who have done that. That was empowering.”

-KC, Salesforce Administrator

Senior Engineers

“There were a lot of people willing to help me, technically and not technically. I felt very comfortable asking people questions and they could go above and beyond. I really enjoyed going over to someone’s desk and having back and forth conversations.   A senior engineer sitting next to me was super positive as well as having a manager constantly on the lookout for opportunities for me. It’s important to know what people’s strengths are and ask them questions about that topic.”

-MV, Software Engineer for 2 years

“I shared a cubicle with a senior guy who was helpful and let me talk out my ideas.  The engineer was very receptive to my questions and sympathized with challenges that would happen in the course of development.  It was a huge company and in the beginning it was hard to email people I didn’t know. He would help me.”

— MM, Software Engineer for 7 years at large companies and startups

“I am still pretty intimidated by developers, it's hard to know when they are irritated with you or just not super social. As I’ve worked with them more it’s gotten better and I assume the best. Coming from the customer-facing side there’s an expectation of warmth that doesn’t seem to be the expectations of all teams. It can be hard to see yourself as a techie before you’re fully immersed in the world of developers.”

-KC, Salesforce Administrator

Managers

“At one of my first meetings I was shadowing my boss. I was there expecting to be the helper. When I took a break, my boss said, “I see you nodding, you should speak up. You’re welcome to speak up” She saw me as an expert alongside them.”

-KC, Salesforce Administrator

“My first couple of months I was dealing with a lot of imposter syndrome. I would cry in the bathroom convinced I would get fired. Thankfully I had a nurturing manager who recognized that I was suffering from imposter syndrome and that I had a lot of potential and was doing a good job and that I was a very valuable asset to the team.  He really looked out for me.”

-LB, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for 4 years

“My manager helped carve out projects that were small to begin with and got bigger and more complex over time. She wanted me to have early wins. My first few stories were well defined and it got more ambiguous from there.”

- TJ, Software Engineer for 3 years at a large company and startup

Team Culture

“At my first job, I was constantly freaking out. I had panic attacks on the regular. I was crying for the first 6-12 months. Everything was always broken. I never felt like I could ask for help and lots of people were not interested in helping anyway. There was a lack of psychological safety, a competitive atmosphere, and gatekeeping. People who had been there a long time were positioning themselves for leadership positions and protective of their knowledge.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

“I remember it being overwhelmingly white and male. That’s already hard to exist in.  I felt a lot of peer pressure to fit in.  To do the cultural things.  Golfing was really big at the company.  I would join the happy hours.  When you don’t belong it’s hard because important decisions are being made over golf and other things.”

-CM, Bootcamp Grad, UX Designer

“At one company, they had a huge culture of pairing which I loved. No one would bat at eye that we were pair programming every single day. That was an amazing way to ramp up. All the new engineers also spent a couple of weeks learning OCaML. Having that dedicated learning time was nice.”

-MM, Software Engineers for 7 years at large companies and startups

“I was the first woman / nonbinary person hired. It was tough at first to learn all these things that I didn’t know about. There was a confidence or motivation issue. Not having the confidence required.”

-EQ, tech-adjacent roles at startups for 4 years

“I felt like to survive I had to be friends with everyone including a colleague who couldn’t disguise their contempt for having a female coworker who was not afraid to express her opinions. I had a complicated friendship which felt necessary.”

-LB, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for 4 years

Advice to anyone onboarding

“Have humility and compassion for yourself. The magnitude that you think you need to learn, you’re not going to learn that in a year or two. You don’t just turn on programmer mode. It takes practice.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

“Ask as many questions as you can.  A lot of people ask questions but then don’t probe further. The most productive conversations are when the mentee is as curious as possible. Ask why for everything. It’s a win / win situation. Learn as much as you can about what different people are doing.   Have initiative and find projects that you’re interested in working on.”

-MV, Software Engineer for 2 years

“When you’re starting out don’t beat yourself up for not knowing stuff. You will always not know things. As you go through your career you will know more what to look for. And you’ll have a growing knowledge base but everything we do moves extremely fast. You always know things.”

-MM, Software Engineers for 7 years at large companies and startups

“Being a new person is a super power. You see their blindspots even if they don’t see it. Your intuition is usually right. Try to take notes about the things you think are wrong or amiss or weird. Keep an eye on them. You might be identifying actual problems in the org. You can surface that.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

Manager Support

“My manager tried to build out T-shaped engineers: an engineer that has breadth in a bunch of different things but depth in a small number of areas. We alternated between going wide and going deep. We tried to get me exposure to different things and then take on a project that would allow me to go deeper. She was being very intentional with projects I was picking up. She would get me projects with visibility, across the stack and things without a time pressure early on.”

- TJ, Software Engineer for 3 years at a large company and startup

“My manager was really good at taking on stress so that his engineers didn’t have stress. I really appreciated that. He believed in me, he gave me responsibilities and he wanted to see me grow. Almost a year in, he called me into a conference room and he said my skip manager and him had just been talking about needing a new security certifier and thought it would be a good opportunity for me. I was so honored that he thought I could do it. It was a really good experience because I learned a lot about computer security.”

— LC, Software Engineer for 2 years at a large company before leaving tech

“My manager would give me specifics of what I needed to do to improve, but the answer was often that I just needed time. It doesn’t all come to me immediately. I needed to marinate in the environment.”

- AF, Software Engineer for 3 years

“My manager and I had 1:1s every week for half an hour. In these meetings, we would discuss the wins and losses from the week. This worked well for me because I could point out things that went well and celebrate my accomplishments and have a safe space to recognize when things didn’t go great and work with her to brainstorm ways to make that not happen again. She also recognized when I needed to be told I‘m doing a good job and needed external validation.”

- TJ, Software Engineer for 3 years at a large company and startup

“From my current manager I feel a lot of pressure to get to the senior engineer level. Maybe it’s the female bias or something, but I feel pretty convinced that I’m not ready now. He keeps telling me I can get there and that I’m growing. I have this irrational fear that I will never be ready. At every stage of my career I have felt like I couldn’t imagine myself at the next level and therefore I would never get there, but then I did. My manager shares the key areas I need to continue working on to improve. We take it one step at a time.”

- AF, Software Engineer for 3 years

“We have goal setting as part of performance. I was struggling to have goals that are realistic and individual.  I did one of those StrengthsFinder tests and it was pretty interesting. It captured things that were accurate about myself.  We worked to identify the things that I’m good at and that I need. The center of that venn diagram is where I want to be. Need to maneuver the role. Conversely it had blind spots, questions I was not asking. Some of those are helpful to think about what I might need to work on. It helped me set some goals for myself as a tech lead on my team. One of my goals is to get everyone on board with writing things down.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

Glue Work

“My manager was pretty good at distributing the glue work across the team and he was especially good at making sure that me and the other SDE 1 teammates had a lot of opportunities for promotable work.   3 months in my manger suggested that we should start working on my promo doc. He was really focused on promoting SDE 1s. My manager would give any glue work to the oncall or secondary oncall so it was evenly distributed across the team.”

— LC, Software Engineer for 2 years at a large company before leaving tech

“The work that I was doing was impactful, I knew I was helping the team.  I remember there was a conversation at some point in retro that our team wasn’t doing as much coding and we could just accept that our team would have a bit more PM work than the average tech team, but my manager pushed back on that and explicitly said that was not what we should embody, we should be more technical. Being told the work that I was doing wasn’t the work that I was supposed to be doing was hard. I wanted to grow as a software engineer which made me realize I needed to do more technical work.”

- AK, Left Tech after 2 years, but then returned

“For Career Changers, they may have already established that skill in their life but they don’t realize the reward until a couple of years into it.  I dealt with people telling me to stop doing PM work. My manager told me to do more technical things and that no one would take me seriously if I was the one taking notes. To some extent I do agree.  Being glue is 100% accurate.  It happens so much.  I was reading my old performance reviews and people said I needed to stop doing organizational work. Then I was heads down on that and this last year I‘ve come full circle. All of the things I thought I was good at before they’re becoming really useful. Unfortunately documentation is not seen as valuable.  I had a friend who had a sticky note on her computer that said “don’t volunteer”. It’s important to be a little bit selfish. Women are not socialized to be self-interested in the way they approach the work.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

“I personally haven’t been affected by glue work, but I’ve seen other people (exclusively women) go down that path. One person has a lot of people thanking her for taking on things but not in a way that’s helping her get promoted. Personally, I haven’t struggled with glue work, because I’m not really drawn to these under-appreciated activities. I’m not very interested in team building or other things like that as an individual contributor.”

- AF, Software Engineer for 3 years

Technical Growth

“There were a lot of meeting with my teammate where they drew things on the board and explained how everything integrated. I needed those meetings multiple times and to hear it from multiple people before it really made sense.  Repetition is key. I had little features to work on and then I was oncall. Even being oncall was helpful. It was hard, but I had to dive in and figure things out and my team was very supportive and understood I wouldn’t be the perfect oncall immediately. You need opportunities to dive in and test things out.”

— LC, Software Engineer for 2 years at a large company before leaving tech

“I was given some smaller projects that were ill-defined. I understand to get better you need something very ill-defined, but at the time I wasn’t really ready and I needed to be told that I could make the decisions and choose the direction for the project. Instead I ended up scattered and confused. I wasn’t quite ready for that lack of structure.”

- AF, Software Engineer for 3 years

“When interviewing for a new role, I explicitly asked the hiring manager of my current team what kind of projects we’d be working on and what stage of the projects I’d be working on.  When I looked for software engineering teams at startups I knew there was so much more to build. I had previously worked at a large company on the implementation phase for a project that was already designed. I wanted to spend more time thinking about design decisions. Ask about the projects and the maturity of the projects and what’s on the roadmap.”

- AK, Left Tech after 2 years, but then returned

“One big thing that got me to the next level was churn in the team. We had 3 very experienced developers on the team who all left around the same time. This forced me to step up and fill that knowledge. Before I was silent in meetings but now I had to step up. Those folks had been so important to my growth. I would come up and watch them do X and ask questions along the way. They would message me unprompted and tell me how I could do it more efficiently, or sit down with me for over an hour and talk through problems.”

- AF, Software Engineer for 3 years

“I need to interact with a system in order to understand it. I have trouble reading documentation and internalizing it. There was a research paper that was written about the system we were inheriting. My team read it together and took turns explaining the paper to each other. We pair programmed tickets together: little features that were being added on to the system.”

— LC, Software Engineer for 2 years at a large company before leaving tech

Feeling Comfortable and Confident

“I have felt comfortable when others advocated for me. Seeing our CEO who had come to some of our meetings celebrate a project and acknowledge its success in a larger group of people was really powerful. On one team, I had the moment where I gained so much more confidence I was able to answer someone else’s question in slack. He was onboarding from a different part of the system. I jumped on the question so fast. A bunch of people reacted to my answer with a heart and recognized that this was my first time answering someone else’s question. Being able to feel helpful felt great.”

- TJ, Software Engineer for 3 years at a large company and startup

“I haven’t felt comfortable or confident at work. When I got to the job, it felt like a man’s company. I still feel singled out. Sometimes it’s a generation gap, sometimes it’s gender. It’s really hard being one of the few women in the office. At this company all but 2 of their apprentices have been women and there have been 0 women brought on as senior engineers. The bootcamp prepared me technically but it did not prepare me emotionally for the sexism that would exist in the industry.

When I brought up a bug, I had the cofounder question my coding abilities. ‘Are you sure, you saw that? Did you console log that?" It’s been really hard. I had built up confidence, but then had it hacked away.”

- PR, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for 2 years at a startup

“If you’re changing your job every 12-18 months, maybe it’s for pay to get out of bad environments, I do think it takes you longer to reach that level of confidence and credibility. I felt like I needed to be in a job for 2 years before I would consider moving. Something happens 18-24 months. I felt more comfortable. Especially when you’re first starting, the job hopping affects you.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

Challenges at Work

“I’d written some code and it was breaking some things. There was a meeting called between my mentor and senior engineers. One of the engineers refused to look at me in the eye even though it was my code and was only talking to my manager. When my mentor tried to encourage this person to work with me, he took my computer and said he would fix it.”

- PR, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for 2 years at a startup

“My feedback would be about being a team player. I constantly felt like I wasn’t doing a good job and received feedback that I wasn’t “technical enough”.  I knew I was doing a good job but I always felt like I wasn’t good at it.”

- AL, Software Engineer for 5 years before leaving the industry

“I just encountered by my first bout of sexism while working on a cross-org project. One of the senior engineers from another org does not give me the time of day. I told my manager and he told me this was unacceptable. He said he would look out for it in meetings and call it out. It’s good to know that people have my back.”

- AB, Software Engineer for 1 year

“I had gotten to a point where I was fed up with the way the confounder was treating me. I intended to call my manager and not cry. When I saw him, I ended up breaking down. He did not actually help me that much. He told me to take the day off. I was panicked and thought I would get fired and thought it would ruin my career. I called a friend from college to describe what had happened and what was wrong. They confirmed my story and said they’ve seen this happen before. They told me that I wasn’t wrong and that it was very courageous. My HR person was very closed off. I had a coworker who I had been friends with come to the meeting because I felt so unsafe. My HR person didn’t push back. I would encourage others reporting issues to bring an ally into the room with you.

I was afraid I was going to get fired, but my friend told me that people would quit if that happened. In the end I talked to the HR manager and they wanted me to confront people which I didn’t want, so instead they gave the feedback anonymously. I still questioned myself for staying as long as I did.”

- PR, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for 2 years at a startup

Leaving First Job

“After my first job, I needed to take time off. During my time off, I did some teaching and it was nice as a mental break for three months. I got to think about what I wanted in a work environment.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

“Initially I wasn’t thinking about leaving tech completely. When I did a couple of interviews and things didn't work out, I heard no, and  I realized I needed to spend some time practicing interviewing. And then I realized maybe I should just take time off.”

- AK, Left Tech after 2 years, but then returned

“I was job seeking in a whole different way. I had a negative experience starting out. I did come away with really valuable experiences and products.  I decided to define non-negotiables. I’m still in the process of knowing what I want to specialize in. I knew what I didn’t want. So I would look out for those flags. I learned the importance of having diverse teams for myself.  Part of my interview process was asking questions around that and to understand the maturity of the company themselves. When you’re super new and at a new startup you can have a lack of direction in some ways especially around D&I”

-CM, Bootcamp Grad, UX Designer

Advice to folks 1-2 years into their career

“Think about what you really want to do. In your first 2 years you’re figuring things out. Use this time to identify what gets you out of bed in the morning. If that’s nothing, try a different team or try something else.”

— LC, Software Engineer for 2 years at a large company before leaving tech

“One year in, check in with yourself. Are you learning the things that you want? Are you doing the kind of work that you want to be doing? If you’re not building the skills you want, make a change. The earlier you can start pushing for yourself the better. Don’t wait because you think you're not ready.”

- TJ, Software Engineer for 3 years at a large company and startup

“Try to build relationships with people around you. Don’t be afraid to ask to shadow or pair program, you’ll learn so much from watching someone do the task than having them just explain it”

- AF, Software Engineer for 3 years

“Write everything down. It helps me so much.  Especially as programmers we pride ourselves in how much we can keep in our brain.   By sharing that with other people and helping and unblocking them, you can make a bigger difference.”

— SC, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for the last 4 years

“Find a small team or a small company if you are a social person. The times that I was happy was the most energy and excitement. Hanging out together all the time. If you’re social that was so valuable to me. I would also maybe say, think about what your life goals are. So often you’re asked to do things that don’t feel important to you in the long-term. At best you’re moving pixels around.”

- AL, Software Engineer for 5 years before leaving the industry

“If you’re feeling frustrated or in a negative environment, talk to other women and share how you are feeling. Having confirmation can really help. I second guess myself.  Don’t feel afraid to leave. I felt there was this huge taboo to leave, but I really think I would have been in a better space with my mental health to be at an entry level at a company with a better culture. “

- PR, Bootcamp Grad, Software Engineer for 2 years at a startup

“If I could go back I would tell myself to be picky. It would be a hard thing for me to hear then. I would push myself to be more introspective about what I wanted because there was a lot that I didn’t know. Your career is a two way street. We spend a lot of time at work, it’s important to job search in a way that's complimentary. I was so gung ho about loving this career that I didn’t want to see the negative sides so I ran right into them. Know your value. Do not take the first thing that lands unless it compliments that vision. I would tell myself to define my work boundaries, startups will push it. You can be overworked.”

-CM, Bootcamp Grad, UX Designer

Managers

“If I had had 1 manager who really had my back and was my manager from the get go, maybe I would have stayed. I had 8 managers in 2 years including my 3 intern managers. I had 3 Daves to 1 woman manager. Companies don't let you choose who your manager is. Managers will switch projects or teams without thinking about it. Oh here’s your new manager. Having a good manager is everything.

Most people don't individualize their management style based on the engineers they have.  A lot of people fall through the cracks.  I know so many people who have either left or unhappy.“

- AL, Software Engineer for 5 years before leaving the industry

Lack of Upward Mobility

“The deciding factor for me in terms of leaving was I wanted to be a manager. I thought that for awhile.  It was a constant uphill climb to become a manager. I never met the criteria and the date kept being pushed back. It was frustrating to see other managers be poor managers and then be told that I couldn’t do it. I gave myself these deadlines and kept pushing it back and then realized that if I became a manager it was a commitment to another year or more at a job where I didn’t feel happy.”

- AL, Software Engineer for 5 years before leaving the industry

Interest in Field

“Once I was fully onboarded and ramped up to the team nine months in, I realized I wasn't as interested in software engineering as a discipline as I had originally thought. I loved coding, but there were certain problems that I knew were important (ex: database efficiency) that I had no desire to solve. I could see other engineers on my team were really excited about those problems, so it’s not that this was a boring problem, but I was personally not interested in those types of problems. Maybe that indicated I should shift into another space.”

— LC, Software Engineer for 2 years at a large company before leaving tech

“I didn’t really get into tech because I absolutely loved technology. I took a CompSci class because it was kind of fun and the job market was great, I just kind of ended up here. I didn’t really give myself time to think about what I actually enjoy during college, I spent most of  college years focused on how to get a paying job. The title of software engineer is so broad, there are even hybrid roles like field engineers that are a hybrid of sales and software engineer. For a lot of people who aren’t super super tech or want to be interacting with more people that’s a great role for those kinds of people.”

- AK, Left Tech after 2 years, but then returned

Unhappiness

“Near the end I was unhappy for a lot of reasons, I wanted to try other things. I felt because I was unhappy now, maybe I would be unhappy forever. Because it was my only experience in tech, it was all I could think about. In mind I was thinking what could be different at any other tech company?”

- AK, Left Tech after 2 years, but then returned

“The day I quit it was this giant breath of fresh air.  Even now when I dip a toe back into that world, I feel anxiety.   When I think back to the times where I was happy, I think either I was at the wrong companies or the wrong teams or maybe tech is just like that.  Going back would have to be someone I trust wholeheartedly that is doing their own thing.”

- AL, Software Engineer for 5 years before leaving the industry

Technical Work

“I was really stressed out and I felt like I was stressed out for not very good reasons.  I was a little bit discouraged and wondered when I would have a chance to do more technical work.  The work I was doing was not what I was interested in and I didn’t feel like that would change.”

- AK, Left Tech after 2 years, but then returned