Ask HN: Finally got a new job, how do I avoid making the same mistake as before?

[lostwhitewalker]

After being laid off in November, I finally got a new position. However, I will be the sole developer on the team. I've been in this scenario before, after graduating I joined a company with six developers. Pretty quickly, the other developers departed, and I was the only one left. During this time, I did not make any attempt to stay current with industry best practices and missed out on valuable knowledge and experience. When I joined the last company, I found it challenging to keep up with Jira tasks, retrospect meetings, and the speed at which the other developers were completing tasks (I think my inability to keep pace contributed to my layoff). Therefore, I am determined to avoid repeating this mistake except I don't know how, or how to improve my speed?

The new position is at a university. I am curious if it will be challenges to transition from academia to business?