I was employed for the first time in my career in the second quarter of 2022. At that time, I was the only developer working in the company. The first company in one’s career is an important step, as it is where you gain a lot of experience from old developers, which is not what happened with me.
Dealing Directly with Business Owners
Being the only developer in the company means I don’t just implement tasks, I create them. There were no developers or product managers who understood business needs to divide that into smaller tasks and assign them to me. I was the one who talked with the owners to understand the goals of their business, suggested how the system can help achieve those goals, and implemented that system.
The ‘I Know How to Do It’ Trap
This environment was a perfect example of one that can produce a bad engineer who implements everything in the wrong way. Any problem I face, I have a way to solve it, but it does not take long to realize that this is the way engineers were solving it twenty years ago. I learned that I have to search and learn how those problems are solved, even if I have an idea for solving them that looks brilliant.
Nobody Understands What I Am Doing
Business owners are only interested in what the end result is. If I leave a significant issue in the code, such as a security vulnerability, there is nobody to discover it. I had to be the reviewer of my own code, and make sure that the code I deliver is the best I can do, even when the owners can’t see that. There were also situations when I face a complicated problem, but simply nobody cares. They only see that I have been late, and didn’t deliver the product in time. I learned that I have to be dedicated to what I am doing even if nobody understands it. Stopping and listening to them would just make the situation worse.
Over time, all of these experiences changed how I was approaching problems and learning as an engineer. I realized that I don’t know everything, or actually that I know very little. I have to always learn, even when I think I know the topic.
A quick search will not take much time, but may change the whole approach you take.
In other words, confidence without continuous learning is dangerous, and responsibility doesn’t disappear just because no one is watching.
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