[lll-o-lll]

When you start, you suck. There’s no magical “moment of insight” that suddenly takes you from basically worthless to “vital for the success of the company”. It’s just practice.

For me, I just worked ridiculous hours to compensate for the suckage, read books, listened to podcasts (when that became a thing), programmed at home, read through the code, looked at the code history (code archeology). Eventually you get good and you know you’re good because you can compare your output to those around you.

The secret to surviving the early stage is to recognise that a career is a marathon, not a sprint, and gain joy from the small incremental improvements you make. Everyone above should have worked with plenty of juniors and are just looking for people who are getting better.

[siilikuin]

This was my way as well. Start early, respect the steepness of the learning curve, and just keep going.