Tips when starting to work in a software company as a developer

The following are tips to spread your wings in your first work in an tech company as a software engineer.

1. GIT source control- learn to work with the CLI. Every company has their own set of tools so instead of learning yet again a new GUI, the CLI is unanimous and powerful.
2. GitHub- learn to work with a known git repository such as GitHub and make a full common dev flow including branch-PR-review-merge. In addition to knowledge, your style is also important so use git like an open-source pro with following git commit style.
3. Time is money- your time as a software developer is very expensive so every work you do should have a clear purpose and a problem that need to be solved so get used to thinking and acting that way.
4. VPC- servers should not be freely accessed for obvious security reasons so most tech companies put their servers behind a VPN (Virtual Private Network). Worth a few minutes of read time.
5. Cloud- AWS/GCP/Azure- cloud providers has so many services that tech companies use so go through them, understand their purpose and go attend a meetup or a convention about it.
6. CI/CD- get to know some continuous integration, build and deployment tools such as CircleCI, Jenkins & Travis.
7. Code style- learn the recommended style for your programming language and use it (for example pep8 for python). You’ll get rejects and be ashamed if you’ll have bad style in your new work.
8. Linux- learn Linux basic commands, basic shell scripting and using vim editor because most servers today are Unix based and with the DevOps methodology most companies adopted, you are likely to handle also some operations and deployments tasks.
9. Scripting- you’ll need to do some quick tools so play around with scripts in Python for example, learn to use a shebang and executable scripting grants.
10. Embrace tools to empower you- most people use oh-my-zsh add-on for the zsh shell in your new workplace? It’s probable for a good reason, don’t fear from new tools, quickly adopt and use them to make you work faster. It’s accepted to have first weeks of learning, use it.
11. Request access before you start- when you get to know your future work place, you can start learn things prior to the first day, giving you a head start and the time to acquire the skills needed for your new job.
12. Lastly, spend some time to learn cool tools and technologies to get to use to the shock of the full stack of technologies in your new workplace. Be at the top of your game.

Goodluck,

Regev Golan