First Day as a Software Developer: The Surprising Truth

I perfectly remember my first day as a software developer. The start of the student holidays. The melting heat and the realities of COVID-19 in 2021. You could feel the excitement in the air around me. I went to the office and what greeted me was quite unusual. Entering the open space, I expected to see many people working in the office, but what I found were just two members of my team. I was convinced that I would be working on-site, but it turned out that due to the circumstances, I would be working remotely. It seemed a bit abstract considering I was an intern and didn't really know what I would be doing. I was very motivated and eager to learn something new. I started grabbing possible tasks to work on. I tried to propose something by myself, not just wait for a task to be assigned to me. I basically had to learn web application development, Spring Boot and Angular from scratch. I would call myself self-taught, so I didn't have much of a problem with that.

In fact, the position I started my internship in wasn't strictly related to web development. It had something in common with some kind of automation. On one hand, I ended up there 'by accident', but on the other, I felt that I was the right person in the right place. After a short time, it became clear what I would ultimately be doing.

As my contribution to the project increased, I felt more confident and knew that the field I was working in at that time which was developing a web application, or rather a complex IT system mostly based on backend part - was an interesting job that could potentially become a great passion. It turned out that I would be working permanently in this team. I feel that by taking the initiative and proposing tasks myself, my commitment was truly recognized and appreciated.

I believe that this kind of approach can be much more valuable than waiting for assignments, especially when it's not clear from the start what you'll be working on. It could be also called 'being proactive'.

These are my considerations. What are your thoughts about your beginning as a Software Developer?