Why I Got Fired JR Dev | Prime Reacts

[@mrjoewebb]

Wow, thank you for taking the time to watch and react to my video! Hopefully my story resonated well with your audience! I appreciate all the kind words and feedback. This video is a few years old, but I wanted to mention that yes I did get a new microphone! Unfortunately I rarely make videos. I just want to echo out to anyone struggling the way that I was, it's amazing what can happen with time. It's important to know that things will get better if you stick it out and continue to learn and move forward. I didn't know ANYTHING about development when I began, but I found a true passion for it over the years and it's completely changed the course of my life. I still believe if I can make it work, anyone can make it work. Thanks again for the reaction and all the positive feedback. 🤙🏼

[@Phasma6969]

We love to hear it

[@dhillaz]

It sounds like you had some really rough luck, it would have been enough to push many beginners out of the field! Props for sticking it out, being self aware and sharing the story so honestly.

[@demolazer]

Those hardships hopefully made you stronger.

[@tamtrinh3154]

I'm bored rn and I can mentor you for fun xD

[@tamtrinh3154]

@@TanushSethi you just did

[@user-ov5nd1fb7s]

This reminds me of 10 years ago, at my first dev job, we were a 2 man team doing a web backed. There was no version control and we pushed files on the server via ftp. One day, the electricity stopped half way through the upload and a bunch of our files were left out half written. The other guy, who was the senior dev, used a hex editor to try to salvage some of the code from memory. Now, when I think about it, it's hilarious.

[@mka8342]

Wouldn't you still have the files you tried to upload on your local machine at least and could overwrite the broken files on the server?

[@user-ov5nd1fb7s]

@@mka8342 that is a good question. I don't know how to explain it but it did happen. It was literally 10 years ago and I don't remember the details.

[@serafdev]

​@@mka8342 they probably implemented smv instead of scp

[@snakefinn]

​@@mka8342 Nah it was all stored on RAM (jk)

[@bkucenski]

The first time you lose data is the first time you obsess about version control. I have my own GitLab server running on my network and won't lift a finger to code until there's a repo for the project.

[@brandonw1604]

Well the title of Jr dev implies you have seniors to work with. Sounds more like they needed someone to do more but wanted to pay less salary so called it Jr.

[@DMSBrian24]

this happens *all the fucking time* too, "we're hiring a junior, requirements: 5 years of experience and ability to architecture and lead development of a whole project from scratch" - because of the recent crisis, people are applying "down", which makes it really hard to get an actually good, decently paid junior job

[@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5]

In my country it is the opposite. I didn't have any experience or a degree, yet on paper I got hired as a "senior" developer. I am all responsible for my (frontend) part of the project and I do it alone, but other than that it is the dream job for me. Salary is good(at least for starting level), work hours are small and I can do pretty much whatever I want there. It is good enough for a first job.

[@macchiato_1881]

​@@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5 where you working at?

[@Haise-san]

​@@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5Yeah, I started as a software architect tech lead with 1 month of experience

[@trondenver5017]

Whatever skills this guy lacks, he is setting himself up for long term success. Few people are able to be this honest with themselves.

[@mrjoewebb]

Fortunately, everything worked out for me in the end. It was a long and difficult journey. But I was able to find a true passion for web development along the way which changed everything.

[@Fohnzii]

@@mrjoewebb badass, man

[@deleted01]

His true talent is in interviewing and networking. How did he land a senior dev job straight out of a bootcamp? He'll go far.

[@rusk3986]

As a sort of junior dude, I don’t think we can downplay how useful chatGPT is. It might not be a replacement for a helpful, knowledgeable coworker, but man is it sick for the dumb little questions I have. It’s word isn’t gospel but neither is some dude’s, it has hugely mitigated any negatives of remote work referred to here. I can still read more senior people’s code on the repo to see the gold standard, I can still drop in a working meeting if I need some 1 on 1 time, but chatgpt (specifically 4.0, not really 3.5) is such a sick tool for learning and coding at the limits of my ability.

[@gpalazz5746]

Just came out of college a month ago with a computer science degree and went straight into a corporate job as a junior developer feeling like I learned nothing in the past 4 years. I cannot tell you how important the mentorship advice is as I am currently fortunate enough to have found a mentor that is an incredibly talented genius in the tech industry. With his help ive not only reinforced concepts that I loosely learned in school but ive also learned more from him in the past month than I have throughout my entire college education. Simply having someone to bounce ideas off of and to ask questions for clarification, or even just simple conversation is huge!

[@valitsemllaluokanavahyvaks3556]

Im kind of in the same boat. Almost finished with 4 years of ict engineering degree and barely learned anything. Ive been a bit lazy but still most of the courses have only scratched the surface of the different programming languages and technologies etc. Hoping to get some kind of job in the ict field and to focus more on coding on my own time if the job doesnt have any coding.

[@0oShwavyo0]

When he said the part about not having anyone to discuss code with, I felt that one. It can feel very isolating. Shout out to my wife for not leaving me for how much I ask her to talk through problems and listen to my rants 😅 She’s not a coder, just a real one 😁

[@hotrodhunk7389]

Sometimes that's all you need. Besides if you can describe the problem in simple terms a lot of times that will help to find the solution.

[@leviathan7477]

W wife

[@FourOneNineOneFourOne]

Rubber duck wife programming 🤣

[@papalevies]

If you are in a junior position and you make an irreversible mistake, it's not your fault, it's the system's

[@renat0sp]

Well, if the system thought a junior could do a senior's job, maybe the system isn't that great

[@thekwoka4707]

@rgagregre the system let try.

[@Patmorgan235Us]

​@rgagregre it's the hiring managers fault for putting an obviously unqualified individual in that position

[@Patmorgan235Us]

@rgagregre I'd be more mad at the hospital who hired them

[@Patmorgan235Us]

@rgagregre that's what credentialing, references, and proof of prior work are for.

[@AnthonyHagi17]

Pretty much the reason why I moved on from my first job. First team I wasn't mentored at all and was consistently told that the things I recommended were "not needed" or "were wrong" (e.g. using a database ORM and implementing proper authentication). Second team didn't even know how to build web apps, let alone know how to make/use types in typescript (they used any EVERYWHERE). Personal projects were my saving grace.

[@jonny555333]

Comments like these are encouraging. Going to apply to jobs soon and I have this mental block where I think I'm not good enough and feel like an impostor. But there are plenty of people with dev jobs that have no clue what they are doing. So maybe I have a shot.

[@Phasma6969]

They didn't want to rock the boat.

[@AnthonyHagi17]

@@jonny555333 with the amount of people that I’ve seen know nothing, you’ll do really well. Always focus on learning things really well so that you stand out. The right people will hire you and they will teach you

[@JustByteMe]

Exact same experience, projects were build with an in-house PHP framework with no documentation, no version control even after I set up a git server using Gogs, it still wasn't used. Personal projects went a long way.

[@monolith-zl4qt]

ORMs are absolutely useless though. I wonder why juniors think they can recommend core changes when they just got out of the womb

[@TacticalGoldfishy]

The guy has courage. My career started with analogically similar "lost in the woods" scenarios, but I'd be too afraid to reveal them to the world like he did. I'm terrified right now. I'm somehow a sr. developer at my company, leading several projects, and some of my juniors have un-ironically told me they're glad to have me as their mentor. I hear this and think to myself "my guy, i'm not very confident that i'm not walking all of us off a cliff right now".

[@Haise-san]

I guess that humbleness that make you a great lead? At least you grow together with your team, compared to that unbearable condescending know it all that some seniors are

[@TacticalGoldfishy]

​@@Haise-san maybe in some ways, but very much a detriment in others. ngl, the confidence of a condescending know-it-all has its upsides, and I hadn't even considered them until I became a lead. A certain level of "make a decision and don't look back" is a very valuable trait that someone of my disposition doesn't have. Man, the constant second-guessing and hindsight is killer on the psyche.

[@Haise-san]

@@TacticalGoldfishy Yeah, I know how that feels, but you still could be a great lead objectively even though you don't feel like it

[@mayor3367]

I remember asking a basic question on a job only two days into it for clarification on what kind of data to expect on a table and what pagination should do via data tables (the project used html, css and jQuery. It was incredibly convoluted and repetitive). I was greeted with a condescending voice note that questioned my knowledge and ridiculed the fact that I didn't know what pagination was (which I did, but my toxic boss misunderstood and expected me to know everything about his evidently dying business).

[@bkucenski]

It's really important to hang out on development forums so you can experience that before you get into a job. Learn by answering other people's questions or at least trying to solve their issues.

[@drygordspellweaver8761]

If stack overflow is anything like your work environment... just become a welder 😂

[@thekwoka4707]

jQuery is the red flag.

[@yourmomsboyfriend3337]

@@thekwoka4707LMAO true. What is even the point of JQuery? I had a class that used it and they never explained why you should use it over JS, so I just did all my projects without it

[@anlumo1]

A fully remote junior just doesn't work in my experience. I've worked with one who constantly went into the wrong direction for a full week until I caught him and brought him back. He was supposed to ask if something is unclear, but the thing with juniors is that they don't even know what they don't know. In the end, he worked on a ticket for three months that was supposed to take a day.

[@JorgetePanete]

Whether it works or not isn't the question, it's way more convenient

[@NostraDavid2]

As someone who now has 2 years under their belt - my senior constantly told me to ask if I didn't know, but 1. Google exists (ChatGPT didn't, yet) and 2. I should first try it myself so I can build experience, as I have none. After a bit we decided that I would ask if something took me more than an hour (giving me time to build context, etc) and that worked well.

[@NostraDavid2]

I constantly didn't know things, but I never ended up taking three months for something that was supposed to take a day, that way.

[@rileyfletch]

@@JorgetePanete If it doesn't work it's not very convenient, now is it?

[@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5]

If it didn't work for that one person, it doesn't mean it doesn't work at all. I am myself a fully remote developer from the first day I got hired. I was closer to middle level by my skills even upon entering though. Also it usually depends on the type of the project and company, so it is not as black and white. I did create a full project from zero for example, and it all went well. No one probably was considering me a junior after the first week-month of my work.

[@lucasprins8895]

Primeagen's teachings, Guiding coders through the storm, Code clarity reigns.

[@M0du5Pwn3n5]

I work for a remote company, and I recognize that people feel this way, but it is so deeply strange to me when people say "the barrier to ask a question remotely vs in person is way different". I feel like the barrier is significant LOWER. All of us grew up with IRC or BBS or IM or forums. My perception, working remotely, is that my barrier to ask a question is way LOWER, not higher. In-person, I might see them working at their desk and hesitate to interrupt them. Online? It's just a slack message. They can answer it whenever. If they don't have time, they can ignore it and/or tell me they don't have time. It is bizarre to me that we have a generation of people who hate calling and prefer texting because it's more casual and less intrusive, yet I keep hearing people say that there's more of a barrier to send a slack message than there would be to ask a question in-person. I do think, however, that it makes mentorship WAY more of a two-way street than it normally is in-person. A lot of people expect someone to actively mentor them - they should just show up, and mentorship should magically happen to them. Remotely, you've gotta ask for it. I'm not sitting near you seeing you struggling. I can only know if you tell me. I've gotten fantastic mentorship remotely, but it was because I used the tools I was given - I reached out whenever I had a question or needed input or anything else, which was often! But if you're just sitting there asking "when will someone mentor me?", that really doesn't work remotely. Passivity in general is absolutely deadly for remote work.

[@shambien]

Well described. I think it largely depends on how introvert Vs extrovert one is.

[@yourmomsboyfriend3337]

Very well spoken

[@geostokes8573]

This actually.

[@codesx2]

I totally agree with all of this. I just think some folks really take DM's a lot more seriously than you do. I also grew up in the IRC+ generation and am happy to ignore a DM until I have time for it, and drop DM's on folks who I don't expect an answer from right away. But I've seen others who respond at any hour, or get snippy that I messaged at all. Not everyone's the same, but I'm thinking of my teenage family members who would never miss a DM, or if they leave you on 'read', it's intentional and telling you something. I don't think that's healthy, or the majority, but I had been wondering why it's a thing at all.

[@mohamed79303]

also love the advice! "if you love your job but you're still atrophying" is literally my situation right now. side projects it is, then!

[@essaadi_elmehdi6784]

Hey bro, same happening to me, how you dialed with it?, is building side projects fixed it?

[@lleytonmorris6305]

There was a point made in this video that remote jobs make it harder to communicate. This CAN be true and I think in a lot of jobs that this is, but In my last job I was lucky enough to be in a situation where most of the people working in my team actively sat in a voice call saying nothing. This meant that when we had a question, it was as simple as asking said question or moving to a "breakout room" (discord voice channel) and I found this amazing. The ability to screenshare at a moments notice in a voice chat without even having to spin around in my chair or message someone was great... Yes, I probably asked too many questions of my seniors, but it was so quick for them to assist and I felt I really learnt a lot. So I'd say that it comes down to HOW you work from home that makes a big difference. Ps. I would always pick an in person job but just to state a point

[@anj000]

I've had similar story. I was doing a degree in automation and control and we had to find apprenticeship for couple weeks as a assignment. So I've found industrial automation company and I started working there after I graduated. But I migrated from industrial automation and control and I started doing web stuff for this company. There was no one I could really talk to. I was one man team building stuff. I've spent there 2.5 years full time and I switched to a company specialized in web development. But I still do not have a mentor... It sucks, but I'm learning fully on my own and I have freedom in that.

[@BusinessWolf1]

As a self taught guy I always viewed these good parts of the industry like mentoring for example as bonuses. I always assume that I'm going to be on my own, and if I'm not that's a nice bonus. I try to think about things from the company's perspective and in a realistic way. Like, why would a company give a fuck about my struggles? I'm there to do the thing with the stuff and they're there to pay me enough to do it for them. But I also wanna work on my side projects and build my own company after work.

[@skaroeth]

My first job was a small start up where my boss became my mentor and the amount I learned from him plus the confidence I gained being reassured of your skills by someone experienced 10x my abilities as a developer.

[@Qrzychu92]

I had a very similar experience. We hired a tech lead, and even though he wouldn't say much, pretty much every other sentence he said, in your mind you can see the achievement icon and "new skill unlocked". I learned so much in a year, it's crazy

[@tanchwa3740]

Don't worry too much about the remote work revolution. There are definitely companies out there (although I might be overconfidently stating this with my sample size of 1) who give new hires a lot of support through teams. Most days I can ask one of my seniors for help and they'll be the ones to offer to jump on a quick call.

[@Amy_A.]

The biggest benefit of side projects has to be growth. I've spent the last few weeks learning low-level USB communications and WebHID to hack my programmable keyboard, and it's improved my knowledge of data structures, async communications queues, state management, binary/blob analysis, hex editors, and low level USB tracing/debugging. The amount I've had to learn and apply for this one project has been absolutely mind numbing, but I'm definitely a better developer for having done so.

[@SamSepiol127]

“We didn’t use git, we did use ergonomic chairs” 😂😂😂❤

[@aro_matt]

Hearing about the second job circumstances - it was not a senior dev, it was a dev that was senior to him and maybe even a "senior" with his known old ways that "always worked" so must be "good"

[@prionkor]

5:15 - I started at 2008, now 15 years in, i never had a mentor face to face, never worked under a senior dev. It has been tough, but over the years resources in the internet has changed a lot we now have lots of places to learn compared to what we had at 2008. My team is still remote but my junior devs are learning speed is way faster, what I had learnt in a year they now learn in couple of months. I try to help as much as possible and help them grow.

[@kakwa]

ahhh, root accessing machines... Well, if you have physical access, you can generally do it. I've done it more than I would like to admit (along with "guessing" the password was... "password") when taking over after the previous sysadmin left.

[@tiagosutter8821]

I just quit my first job, after 3 years (it was remote). Unfortunately i didn't have a mentor, and i just not have been there for so long. But, i was lucky no mentor some jr developers, and it was a great experience, some of theme kept contact, and now we are growing as engineers together, it feels really good. If you have the opportunity to just naturally teach or mentor some one take it, it is really nice

[@nathanm2891]

This video really resonated with me. I have been learning to code on my own for a couple years, but as a full time Navy Officer, I don’t have anyone to work with. I only got started because my command wanted me to build a web database to support remote work during lock downs. I got some books and Udemy videos and just started building. I found a love for it, but it is hard to find a mentor with my job. My biggest goal is to get a job on a team when I retire from the Navy. I want to see experts and learn from their experience.

[@mohamed79303]

this is coming out of nowhere but i think there should be something like advent of code but instead of puzzles it would be building a low-level program every day, and like AoC it would start simple and get a bit more complicated over time. this is based on my opinion that low-level programming makes a person understands the fundamentals better, making them a better programmer. i would like to participate in something like this as a player, i need it myself, but i don't have the experience to actually come up with the best ideas for the daily problems. so just putting this out there for anyone who has the time and skills to build such a thing. i think it's a great idea and would be really nice to play during some month of the year while waiting for AoC.

[@Kyle-rf5mb]

Start my first jnr role next week! It's a huge firm though and we get 4months additional training also. We just had to know the basics so hopefully the support is in place to help us takes some pressure off. Also isn't remote for the training which i am glad because i have ADHD and i get distracted doing it over zoom like on my bootcamp.

[@yourmomsboyfriend3337]

How is it?

[@Jeru3]

12:00 no version control at all? None of them are senior developers. Even calling them developers at all in 2023 is embarrassing, the is no CS course that would let you get away without It.

[@DavidHanks90]

I think learning a framework is a good way to get your feet wet, but then you need to branch out from there. Learn the principles and fundamentals of computer science and coding, learn other frameworks, build your own custom tooling, etc. Like you said, orienting yourself to a framework really limits what you can do. When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.

[@tobiasjennerjahn8659]

That was pretty rough and I do feel for the guy, but I came away from this thinking that coding bootcamps really are to blame for most of his shitty experience. They sell this expectation that a couple weeks of react training gives you everything that's needed to get a $$$ job. But they neglect to tell you that most companies aren't tech companies. Lots and lots of programming jobs are like the one from his first story. Software is a tool for them, not a product. This reality where the majority of economic value from software comes from react apps is just sooooo far from the truth. Most stuff is just internal tooling, logistics, payroll, order management, etc. And that's obvious if you think about it for a second, but coding bootcamps sell this carefully crafted image of the tech world, where they just conveniently sweep under the rug that something actually has to create real value if you want it to pay 150k$ for a developer. And that value does not come from yet another animation library just because it has sparkles right out of the box.

[@mrjoewebb]

Well said 👏. I definitely agree the bootcamp over hyped my expectations for reality. What I though was going to take 12 weeks ended up taking closer to 4 years. Over that time I learned that the framework or language doesn’t matter nearly as much as I thought it did. It’s exactly what you said, building and maintaining the project is what matters. I’d say learning how to Google my problems to find answers was the best skill to come out of the bootcamp. I’m glad I stuck with it this whole time. Because the bootcamp only put me on a path I don’t think I would have ever found on my own. But it didn’t get me anywhere near the final destination like it said it would. I know plenty of people that view their bootcamp experience as a scam because they thought it would be easy. It wasn’t easy. But it was worth it.

[@Basta11]

Yes. Rather than bootcamps, I’d like to see a coding school follow more the MBA approach. It’ll take 2 years (8 quarters) Quarter 1 - Programming Fundamentals, Basic HTML and CSS, Basic Linux commands Quarter 2 - Programming fundamentals 2, JavaScript, Git Quarter 3 - Data Science and Algorithms, SQL Quarter 4 - System Design, React, SCSS, REST API backend, Quarter 5 - Coding Interview Prep, Redux, QA testing, Database Design Quarter 6 - Docker, basic DevOps, Agile methodologies Quarter 7 - Project Management, electives (gaming, AI, data science, data engineering, etc etc) Quarter 8 - Cap stone. electives Something like this.

[@Basta11]

Personally, I think these stories are actually important in the evolution of a Software Engineer. Sometimes we learn best when things go wrong. When we have a good team then we appreciate it more.

[@Chatsu8o]

FTP, that's high level foo! Back in the day I watched a guy develop updates to a site, on the live web server, in a sub-directory over smb. At one point he'd made a "backup" copy, tried something, decided to "roll back", then wanted to nuke the "backup" (yes these are all things version control would've been perfect for), but went one ../ too far, and deleted the entire website, including the dev dir and the "backup". Poof, off the internet. Snag: This site had just had many huge billboards placed on all highways in the city. It was gone in an instant, there was no git, there was no ftp, no local copies. Reality sets in: it's gone. After some head-scratching one person suggests the only way out of this is to retrieve the off-site tape backups from a number of weeks ago. Believe it or not, he didn't get fired, but he did get to re-develop the last weeks' worth working 24/7 until it was fixed.

[@shambien]

In 2020 I joined a team as their lead (the previous guy had quit and only 2 juniors were left, the site had just launched and it was falling apart) and I also found out/learned that they were also changing stuff in production thru FTP directly from the editor, had no idea about separating development, testing, deployment phases, there was no source control, no backup, nothing... wild wild West.... Among the first things I did was to setup git repositories (and some form of backups) and I started creating a process for code quality, tracking stuff, I attempted to change the culture... But they were too comfortable in their ignorance. Those juniors both left me shortly after: one of them almost cried because I had been so tyrannical to take away their FTP and git was so hard to learn 😂 whatever 😅 I need smarter folks than that to be on my team anyways.

[@rickdg]

Apprenticeship continues to be underestimated in many domains.

[@krank23]

I'm a programming teacher and I gotta say, having spent most of my career pretty much on my own (few schools have multiple programming teachers) and now suddenly finding myself in a room with three others, sometimes four - it's absolutely a game changer to have other people to talk code with

[@marcotroster8247]

I had the luxury of a 3 year apprenticeship with a good mentor. Only now after several years I notice that it was really valuable. I mean most developers aren't any good before they have 5 years of coding experience, let's be honest. So it's no shame to be overwhelmed by such a first job.

[@BSenta]

He could have been more proactive. 1) try brute forcing the credential for 7 days. 2) go to the server and pull out the drive and create a new server and copy the files from the unencrypted user folder... 3) go to the server and just brick the hard drives and blame it on a hardware failure. /s

[@DubiousNachos]

I don't mean this disparagingly, but he was a bootcamp grad. I doubt he knew how to do any of that, much less have an idea for what to Google for hardware

[@matthewmoulton1]

@@DubiousNachos The "/s" at the end indicates the post was sarcastic. You agree with each other.

[@wizardinthecave]

Worked for a tech consultantcy as my first graduate position, got made lead developer on an embedded system prototype for a startup with a 5 week deadline only 4 months into the job, no mentoring, got the project done but then the system got destroyed by being submerged -it was deployed underneath a manhole cover in the north of England several days before a week of torrential rain. The company got sued and I got fired, some savage lessons from that experience.

[@gamezoid1234]

I don't understand how you got canned for this.

[@wizardinthecave]

​​​@@gamezoid1234 A marketing guy who viewed himself as the best thing since sliced bread massively undersold the work and promised we could do it for far less than it could reasonably be done, hense the timeframe. When it went to shit because nobody had really agreed on any specification/ boundaries for the system and he hadn't communicated what he'd done upwards to management he pushed the blame down on me and the only other engineer. The other engineer who was working to hack together the hardware had been in the company forever so I got thrown under the bus instead. In retrospect I wish I had stood my ground harder but I was young and naive believing that my co workers were supposed to be your teammates. Moral of the story is trust your instincts and only work for companies where the people above you are held to account for their actions, view yourself as a mercenary rather than a servant.

[@gavinh7845]

Before 12:20, he was saying they didn’t use any source control, and called it a red flag. Instead, I guess they just manually ftp files to a server to do updates.

[@GoWithAndy-cp8tz]

Hi ! Your laughter was so sincere - Git is so useful tool. Cheers! But IMHO if server credentials are bad there is single user mode/ maintenance mode to change it since the server can be rebooted due to service isn't working for a long time and nothing can go worse. This is the first task for passing RHCSA to change root credentials in case we don't know the root password.

[@jeremydwayne]

A past job of mine didn't use any version control and only used FTP and essentially coded directly on the "dev" servers (a different folder on the prod server).. it was a nightmare before I joined.. I set them up with git version control, testing, a deployment process, and an actual infra on AWS.. then I left for a job that paid over double. Many small startups founded by self-taught developers are like this. It's really bad.

[@shambien]

I have a very similar experience, the only differences are that I moved them to GCP not AWS and I have not quit yet 😅

[@joelpww]

The main thing I got from this which I agree with is starting out, you should always have a mentor. That second situation though, that was such a clusterfuck. I can't even imagine knowing that I am only proficient in something like a js frontend library/ half framework and going for a senior dev job

[@arijanj]

This reminds me of when a few years ago when I was in high school and we had to intern somewhere so I got invited to ‘work’ at a startup and I was supposed to work on a React frontend when I didn’t even know what a npm was. I ended up doing absolutely nothing the entire time and just chilling.

[@DidYouExpectSomethingHere]

If he got fired because his boss left him without access and then dipped, that's probably grounds for a wrongful termination lawsuit

[@pavlinggeorgiev]

You cant file for wrongful termination if your entire CV is a fantasy.

[@AcidiFy574]

​@@pavlinggeorgiev Then why they hired him

[@radfordmcawesome7947]

​@@pavlinggeorgiev harsh lol

[@twothreeoneoneseventwoonefour5]

I am in a similar situation now, but better. I work as a single frontend developer in a team of 4 people. But, compared to the video in the video, I am allowed to do pretty much anything I want. I was hired as a React developer, so as long as I use React and do my job, I can use whatever I want. So I started to learn and experiment with things there(not in a dangerous way). I am working there for 3 months already and have learned a lot (by myself). I was around middle level by theoretical knowledge even upon entering the job(crazy right), and now I am getting closer to having the practical experience for the same level. I don't know about other people, but learning to structure and try to build EVERYTHING yourself is a very good learning method for me. I think it is the shortest path to becoming a good developer. When you are in a team, you can leave the hardest tasks and difficult decisions to other more experienced people(which you usually do), but when you are alone, you are forced(in a good way) to do the hardest stuff all by yourself. Because of that, I naturally understood better project structure, coding patterns and the way to solve non trivial problems. I did have to migrate project from Vite to NextJS, from Redux&Toolkit to RxJS(long story), from a badly written (for our purposes) React library to a native js framework agnostic library which I integrated into React myself(React-leaflet -> leaflet, if you are interested) and everything was a good learning experience for me. In short, I think I got the perfect *starting* job. I plan to move that job after some time when I stop learning new things, and I guess it would be very convenient for me for all this time.

[@shahabgohar3350]

11:52 i joined a local software house, and they were using the same FTP bullshit. After one day, i left the internship

[@AmexL]

“Whatever that Hackerman TV show was…” lol

[@sebwylleman]

Super insightful to know what about these red flags. Would love to hear more about your tips as to what to prioritise when getting that first job. Is there a way to properly vet the interviewer / team during the selection process? That would be massively helpful 🙏

[@wforbes87]

Yup, I'm pretty sure a lot of us have been there. I swear my first dev job at a local web company was like if someone dropped acid and tried to write a sitcom loosely inspired by 'The Office' and 'Silicon Valley'. Everything was a bad practice, the owner was a sociopathic know-it-all that turned the whole office against me as soon as I started bringing up new ideas, and I wasn't allowed to work on side projects or work longer than 8 hours.... all for $15 per hour. It was good fuel to code like a maniac at home and get a better job for literally 3 times the pay. :)

[@greglane501]

As soon as I learned Git I continued to use it...before I even got a college course that required it. I can't imagine not using it.

[@jeffreynickels6511]

Getting fired for not being able to do your job for reasons outside of your control that's grounds for wrongful termination.

[@womp6338]

Having a mentor is great but if you’re trying to break into the industry, you have to take what you get. I’m a senior dev now and never had a mentor but it was definitely a lot harder and the first time working in a team I basically said as little as possible because I knew how little I knew and had to pick things up as I went along

[@felixhaag1335]

Glad I am not the only one feeling that way😂

[@Wanderer2035]

@@felixhaag1335your a junior dev?

[@jaroslavhuss7813]

Yeah... I am a digital marketing manager with overlap to "full-stack" development. Most of my time I am dealing with React/React Native, Node (Nest/Express), and Mongo/Postgresql. Still, after 4 years of doing this I know I am super sh1tty at developing since I never had a team mate, mentor or senior person above me... On the other hand - with chatGPT this is getting better :)

[@HowlingBird]

I remember when a colleague had done some work with some Intersystem's Cache and I overwrote his file with an older (much older) version, since there was no version control... the rest is history

[@almari3954]

I would like to ask you guys how should I handle the following situation: - for internal projects we have things set up in fairly orderly fashion - sometimes I'm being asked to jump in to client's project, essentially becoming a contractor - often the client does all the horrible things mentioned in this video - no Git, or any version control - testing even one-liner changes requires doing full deployments which take hours - giant, legacy codebases, often in C/C++ with ad-hoc buildsystems How should I handle such situations? Suck it up, or refuse to work until they let me to address those underlying issues?

[@blasandresayalagarcia3472]

I have a bachelors and finding coding jobs is a nightmare. Even seniors are applying to entry level and junior jobs. I dont think its bad that he took what he could get but hey if you looked at documentation and tutorials and sat thru the new stuff and still didnt pan out then its just what it is I guess.

[@natedavidoff668]

I love your react videos, just discovered them. So funny. 😂

[@JulianSloman]

I relate to his second job's journey, that was kind of my first job! - I had applied for a company looking for a Sr Full Stack (with a very honest cover letter, pitching myself as an initiative taking intern) - they took me on but they never hired the Sr they needed (I thought they'd do both) - so I worked with one other dev who was already swamped... Luckily I didn't lie about taking initiative and I did learn a lot at that job, but some of the stuff was crazy cowboy development, FTP with no git backup for some projects... eeks.

[@vaelinalsorna1649]

I agree it can be tough for SOME who are starting out their programming career full remote but this has not been the case with me at all. I believe it is more a comapny culture issue and if they have the proper infrastructure in place to onboard someone remotely. In my 2 internships and current role, I never felt for one moment that I couldn't ask somebody a question on a blocker. There was always either my mentor who I can slack directly or just the team's slack channel if my mentor is not available. There's also pair programming with someone on a task where you can learn a shit ton from a more experienced person how they do things. In fact, I find myself more distracted in office and learning less there as we always get side tracked just talking about random stuff. 😂 Tl;dr learning remote is not a challenge depending on the person and the company culture.

[@ericsison3911]

I remember not using git version control, and accidentally deleting my entire code base. I was juggling between terminals, one on my local machine, and the other was a ssh connection to my server. I was trying to scp my project from my local machine to my server. And I thought, maybe clean my server first by removing outdated codebases. So, I typed rm -rf , not realizing I was on my local machine's terminal, which contains the updated code.

[@wdavid3116]

At 2:57 Prime talks about how if someone says a job requires X and Y they are probably lying. I think a lot of people fail to recognize how little thought non tech people put into tech. I'm guessing his cousin was just totally clueless as to how complicated software development can be as are most people including most non-technical IT managers.

[@studdiougrym5633]

5:31 why tho? you can share your screen, you can send code snippets, you can make a branch an push your code to it. like if you work remote and in a team, i don't really see a barrier in asking questions.

[@maardal]

I expected the most played section to be like a summary of the video from mr Joe Webb. Instead I got Prime flexing. I approve.

[@corejake]

Holy flying f! And people feel bad for getting fired from these jobs! It's straight up torture, physical and mental.

[@Hersatz]

Mentors are so important! It should be mandatory at every company to have people that are good programmers and also good at mentoring. School teaches so many thing so badly that, as a junior, getting in the field at first is a nightmare consisting of unlearning and re-learning how to program properly in a professional environment. It is unnecessarily stressful, and a good mentor can help clear that stress out by teaching the good practices and guiding his or her colleague in the right direction.

[@keithprice1950]

I did an internship with a Vietnamese company, as a native English speaker who speaks zero Vietnamese it was a disaster. I used to teach English and one of my students was the CEO of this company. We got chatting about coding and he just said "You can work for me!" There was still an interview process in which they asked me about React, JavaScript etc, the usual stuff. Everything was in English at the start, all the onboarding was in English so I thought this is gonna be my foot in the door. First day on the job, all in Vietnamese, enormous codebase and some weird in house framework that just confused me. After every morning meeting, which was all in Vietnamese, I was sent a PDF with about a paragraph in English saying "Today do this..." After going through this for several weeks, working through the night to try and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing I spoke to my team leader and also the CEO. They just said "Don't worry, try your best!" Then we started having weekend training sessions. Saturday morning 3 hours long, all in Vietnamese. I sat there on a Zoom call for three hours for several weekends in a row, not understanding a word of what was being said and then being sent a PDF with "Just do this..." In the end I quit. I thought this would be a great training/learning experience that would be my first step into the industry but it was like something from a comedy. I still haven't figured out what their goal was with me. They knew I was a native English speaker, they interviewed and onboarded me in English and then boom...Vietnamese motherf***er!

[@thekwoka4707]

Why did they even have you at the meetings?

[@keithprice1950]

@@thekwoka4707 I asked that question both to them and myself. It honestly felt embarrasing to be there on the zoom call with my "colleagues" and not understand a word that was being said.

[@nicoo1033]

Tbh thats a Bit on you

[@dylancrespo6230]

im new to code and ive def expearenced the issues of learning from a remote job. all i gotta say is VS code Live share is a BLESSING

[@brankodragovic6407]

Man, you are great. Respect.

[@75hilmar]

15:00 this story sounds like a setup from his boss tbh, they were seeking for a reason that wouldn't get them into legal trouble or something.

[@sh4d20w]

that was a good fun 😂😂😂 but appreciate his honesty yeah definitely don’t do that 😃💪🏼

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

yaya! i thought it was a good video

[@mrjoewebb]

@@ThePrimeTimeagen I promise the "flex" at the end was unintentional. But saying I just wanted to show off my cat sounds even more like a lie 🤣

[@joeruder]

LOL...! Loved the mouse flex at the end.

[@jeannoelhonisch7037]

You won't believe, me but i had nearly the same experience with a Trainee position. They tested us before and knew how little me my collegue knew about coding. The only thing i knew, was some really basic html and css. They gave us 1 Month to learn HTML, CSS, JS and PHP and then gave us a literal papertest to proof the knowledge (which i somehow actually passed nearly perfectly). They also didn't have GIT. They gave my collegue the task to transfer data from one server to the other. It was a life client Project and that client had actually very important emails and data on that server, because it was a University that got mails daily. He then quit the contract to prepare the transfer, and the webhoster just send a mail with the information "were deleting the information on that server". They did but not in the expected 2 week timeframe they're supposed to do and we than lost the mails. Then he got blamed, for making a mistake, as a freshly 1 month working trainee, that should transfer data on a live project, without any guidance and backups... I got fired 1 day before the ending of my 4 month trial period and then they refused to give me a explanation why.

[@JLarky]

9:32 foreshadowing: disaster waiting to happen

[@flyte9844]

Thanks for the constant upload !! 🙏🙏

[@wuziq]

15:33 yep, though maybe the boss was looking for an excuse to fire him

[@Pepsiaddicto]

My first professional dev job was converting SYNERGY apps to Ruby on Rails in 2009.

[@Fanaro]

12:00 How is the other guy a senior? The Jr might be more qualified than the senior?

[@fredricluke7020]

"Whenever you integrating with a piece of software... It's always a terrible terrible terrible experience." - I agree. 9000%

[@benbowers3613]

What I would add to "don't be a one framework Andy" is to mainly apply that to the backend. There a ALOT of different ways to handle a backend and you should expose yourself to them. But a user interface is a user interface. I honestly think it would be a total waste of time for a beginner to learn React AND Angular AND Vue AND Svelte AND WASM/Rust options, etc, etc. As far as the frontend goes, beginners should nail vanilla JavaScript, nail ONE frontend framework, and then start designing, building, and shipping applications that solve real-world problems as soon as possible.

[@fosteredlol]

Random programming Discords and ChatGPT are my new coworkers

[@chabashira966]

Bootcamp != Junior Dev If you took a bootcamp, you are internship level at best. Even college graduates are intern level. You are not Junior Dev at all. You can take the leap, sure. But be prepared to struggle a lot even in a junior position. Honestly, I don't think this guy learned anything at those jobs besides how much he doesn't know.

[@iraniansuperhacker4382]

my first webdev job I got fired because I refused to write a small module to store people financial data and other personal data. Straight up social security numbers, addresses, full names, basically they wanted the full history and every bit of data about the customers in some shitty crud app. I told them exactly what laws this was breaking and how this is extremely dangerous for not only the company but the 10s of thousands of customers. I ended up pretty much homeless because of that and was never able to really get back into shit because it shattered by belief in how our societies version of capitalism actually works.

[@youreyesarebleeding1368]

"Sup guys just finished AP Computer Science A, just applied for full stack staff engineer at Meta. I think i'm totally qualified for the job"

[@u9vata]

Training juniors in remote work is not impossible at all. Its just "new" to the companies so they are not prepared. I remember there was this girl who was high-school age and wanted to learn coding and because I had a girlfriend at the time and this coding girl looked nice - trust me there was no other real choice than remote haha. Trust me! How I did it? I set up linux envionment and made her an account she can SSH in, then do pair programming with tmux. Surprisingly efficient. In the meantime we were in voice chat. So much she enjoyed this kind of thing that she literally told me "oh this is like a multiplayer video game just we do coding". For remote companies hiring junior people I say this is the hands-on best way to do stuff. First really do some pair programming this way - then (because this cannot go usually for weeks and months) - what you do? Still do it this way, just you do not pay attention unless he/she talks in the chat. I mean she would go and SSH into your tmux so you can literally jump in ANY given time. (S)he should be also in voice chat until you are sure alone work is good enough. Not constantly talking, just to be able to feel someone more senior is literally always there to ask something about. Trust me, it works. I would argue it actually works better when well done, than what many companies do in the office when training (when I was my most junior I was in office and my mentor I never saw - never in the whole time I spent there lol - literally never not joking). It might be worthy to pick someone noob from your channel in twitch and do this tmux-ing session to show the world how well this can work. It literally just works. EDIT: I also now a "grown to quite big codebase" software that similar "never was at uni" people wrote slowly and because my dad is sysadmin at the place and once walked to that office I saw that they not use GIT (nor svn, nor shitty cvs, not mercurial, nor insert anything) to version and literally its even rare to use backup folders... Its so easy to do these accidents and I told them "looks these things are not hard, also can help you find when certain regressions happen by bisecting (they were hunting that at the time of my visit) and they CHOOSE to not listen.... crazy but these are real places haha...

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

you are still missing so much in this. like i get what you are saying, but its so much more than this. there is a huge amount of things that can only be suss'd out when you are present. it doesn't matter if you don't believe it, its humanity and in person human interaction is what we are designed for. i understand we can make things "work," but it doesn't mean its great. it doesn't mean it wont have its consequences.

[@u9vata]

@@ThePrimeTimeagen I think you can be right that in-person is always better for this kind of training especially. But still is a huge issue, that instead of at least trying something I write, I see companies doing things in remote the way they used to in non-remote and there is pretty much no one (or no one with any real visibility) who ever tries to investigate this. Also I am likely heavily biased because I live in a village and remote saves like 3-4 hours of daily travel (I am not really doing "standard remote though, but have my Ltd and contract people, but travel-wise you get my idea). Also I kind of get the other side of the argument here too - when I was not having an Ltd just worked in an office, there were various people I trained with various personalities among juniors. Some of them were asking questions when they got stuck, there was some who were not really (so I had to "realize" they are stuck) and there was even a guy who literally only worked if I stood behind his screen and see the screen. Literally he never worked anything otherwise - that crazy as I say this it was real... So for example when a somewhat bigger project (that sadly were cancelled in covid though) came around and I had to think about hiring someone, I too first were looking someone in the local area for the non-technical, human part of this variance. But I also remember the case with the mentioned girl being trained and that experience opened my thinking for the more remote junior possibility too - which was again key, because its not only I not live in capital city or city at all, but my Ltd neither has any office in such locations, so the local pool is smaller and even if "not the same" it might worth it. I just really feel people not even trying to right way when they try this. Totally not. For example having "talks more often in zoom" is really not the way to go with a remote junior. Daily stand-up? Actually maybe good in this specific case when not in office. Productivity tracking apps and such shit? I feel its completely missing the point: people usually want to work, they either are not able or not motivated or both when they do not - and that tracking I find not useful just with the exception of paying attention what the output looks like. So I really am not sure if training a junior in a remote setup is inferior - but lets say you are right any by definition it is. Still even then I think the bigger issue is the organizations totally being unprepared to handle the situation. I can accept that lets say this is always technically (maybe not business-wise) inferior to in-person training, but this should not mean that those who do remote should do it the complete banana-cakes bullshit way that from the first sight I can tell its not gonna work and there are better alternatives. Honoured to be answered to btw 🙂

[@br3nto]

11:28 no git. Do they teach git at a react code camp?

[@pianochess1882]

14:00 what about a JDSL project?

[@blarghblargh]

He didn't really say how long he worked at that place or how long his coding bootcamp was. If he was 3 years in w/ the bootcamp + jobs, then IMO he's still quite ahead of the curve, even if he feels like he's way behind in specific skills. There's a ton of not-just-programming skills you have to learn, and making mistakes can teach you a lot more a lot more memorably, as long as you see the results of those mistakes. There's plenty of people who have a 4 year degree who probably don't have nearly the hard-knocks experience he has, nor the stuff to put on the resume. Hell, there's plenty of people with 4 year degrees who couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag. That said, if he was learning from day one with a truly useful and attentive mentor the whole time, he'd probably be farther ahead. But we can't all mixmax our life, and we shouldn't try to. If he's 6+ years in tho, I'd say he probably could have done much better.

[@Shri]

0:55 I switched video to 2x just when you switched his video to 1.25x!

[@lightninginmyhands4878]

3:54 to be better, dont orient urself as a ui library expert. Build tools.

[@ThePrimeTimeagen]

agreed

[@Abomin81onVlog]

This video autoplayed and dammit, this is basically the situation I'm in now. I appreciate this being a mirror for me right now.

[@kamilkardel2792]

How do files get deleted? You've definitely heard of Pixar nearly losing Toy Story 2.

[@dejfcold]

Well, tbh, my first job was "hey, I need a new eshop, the one I have is kinda old". The only thing I knew was html and css. I didn't know databases, I didn't know backend stuff, I didn't really know how to make things look nice. I could barely remake an existing website to it's static version. Well, I managed to build the whole thing from scratch in 2 months and the guy was happy. No idea how I did that. Obviously it was using the lamp stack, ftp and no version control. He was an old hobbyist RC modeller and I was less then 15. I've no idea how would it end up If was that age now and got similar job. I don't think I'd have made it. The expectations are so different today. The new guys have it tough.

[@olafbaeyens8955]

Don't rely on pair programming. Pair programming may actually give you wrong techniques. You are in an echo chamber. The ability to self learn independent of a team is more important over the decade long term as a developer.

[@dongueW]

Agree

[@anj000]

It really reassuring to hear. I was always learning on my own, without a colleagues, without a mentor, just me. Usually there wasn't even someone to review my code so if something broke it was 100% my fault.

[@olafbaeyens8955]

@@anj000 When something breaks then it is your own fault to fix it, or handle angry customers 🙂 That is how I learned to create quality code even if there is pressure not to because in the end, weeks, months years from now it will come back and haunt you. Also if no one is saving you or helping you, you force your brain to go and search for it yourself. And if you can't find it then you create a solution yourself that becomes the norm for the rest. I think with the mass layoffs of developers, companies will get rid of team work, pair program,... and get the older generation back that is used for years to work on their own and be equally productive as a complete SCRUM team. If you want to have a decades long term career as developer, make sure that you can work completely standalone, every part of the project including testing, writing user manuals, service, analysis....

[@epiicSpooky]

I'll agree you don't learn much from working with people at a similar level. (Not nothing - everyone knows something you don't) I learn the most both on side projects and when I'm around people with more experience. If you've always been the most senior in the room (defacto if you're the only one), you have a lot of room to grow.

[@RandomStuff-zt6qf]

11:15 "cowboy coding"... people who just use FTP and push files right to a production server with no version control... you'd be amazed how often this happens.

[@SpaceShot]

The crazy thing was that his manager screwed up and he got fired. And this poor guy thought that was his fault. No doubt this guy needed a better first job to grow. But so many places don't realize they need to invest in devs.

[@grim1427]

Synergy is AWESOME! I use it to model all my oil and gas pipelines.

[@JT-xu1qd]

Whahahaa, 8 months later and I'm still laughing at chat's pain.

[@Mirza_Rad]

I can't help but hear Bill Burr's voice when PrimeTime speaks

[@hamedahmadi1382]

his case is close to me but i got fired from my second job because i commited a code that broke the responsiveness of a page in with two elements which was interesting because i had tested on having three items and also i have said i have a year of experience while i had six months in a job in which i did have any mentor so it was a complete wrong choice of work and actions of me