Hey, I was interviewed!
What was it like to ramp up at that first job? Did you find you had some blind spots that your job filled in? Were certain things more or less important than you anticipated?
It was tough. I didn't get a lot of support from the other engineers, so I had to learn a lot on my own. If I ever ran into issues, usually they would just take the ticket themselves instead of helping me learn. At one point, I had almost no work, so I started taking online classes and working through programming books. I had never realized how important it was to have a team that supports you, which is definitely something I've looked for in every job since. Even as I move along in my career, I still want to be able to talk to my coworkers about issues that I am having without feeling like I'm wasting their time. However, I still feel like it wasn't a waste. It still enabled me to list myself as a software developer, have some actual production code that I could show, and really get my foot in the door. It's great to have a great job, but sometimes, especially if it's your first in a field, any job will do if you have limited choices.