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Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by klodolph on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @10:49AM (#23614615)
Started a new software engineering job just before stay-at-home orders. Joined the team in March. Nobody is training me. My teammates don’t like meetings so I never see them in video calls. I haven’t been getting any work done. Manager is asking me why I haven’t been getting any work done. I don’t even know where to begin.

The documentation is garbage but that’s not so unusual. What’s unusual is that I have to ask questions in writing or schedule video calls with teammates if I want to learn anything that’s not in the documentation.

I know what onboarding is supposed to look like and this isn’t it. I’ve expressed these problems to my manager but I feel like I’m not being heard. Stress levels are through the roof.

Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by eyerony on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @11:26AM (#23615161)
Hey, it's me a couple months ago! With a side dose of "we may or may not fire you, we dunno yet" for several weeks (they did, abruptly, the day after once again saying they maybe wouldn't, and I guess I'll never know exactly why). Confusing as hell and unlike anything I'd experienced in my not-short career. I guess some managers/teams are straight-up incompetent at onboarding and blind to how hostile-to-new-hires their codebase(s) and docs are. Oh and useless, god-awful justify-your-existence-to-your-manager (then tune out because nothing anyone else says matters) standups every day adding to the stress. And no planning process to speak of. It's the second time in my life I've felt actually-mentally-ill and the other involved a sick newborn, so. That's impressive for them to have achieved, I guess.

Save money if you can and look for cheap/free credit lines, is my advice. If you can get a few months' worth of bills in the bank or available on super-cheap credit then the worst-case (shit, best-case, for me—I felt so much better after) scenario won't really be that bad. Hit up your network if you can and see if anyone needs some contract work, if things don't work out. It's pretty easy to scare up a few hours here and there, maybe enough to at least cover bills.

Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by klodolph on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @02:29PM (#23618147)
I have savings but I’d rather see the problems with my current job fixed rather than bailing out. I don’t think they’re intractable, just that the experience is a bit painful.
Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by x87678r on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @12:48PM (#23616508)
I've seen this a lot. People who've been on the team a while are happy at getting work done without interruptions. Many of the interruptions are actually important things like helping to onboard new team members.

I'm really bad at asking for help but if I had my time again I'd make sure your talks with managers are regular. If you are supposed to be working on a project make sure you ask which tests cover that area. You should ask to see the desktop of someone in your team how they work, how they navigate around the system and how they would add the functionality you're trying to do.

Re:Ask HN: How are you holding up? by pnine on Tuesday June 23, 2020 @11:23AM (#23615121)
If docs don’t exist for one reason or another, what are a few ways team members could assist you in better understanding the code base?