First Serious Job!

#1

Oh my god. I am like… Shaking right now. I am stunned, confused, stupified, excited beyond belief. I was offered basically my dream job this morning. I start with one month of training and onboarding and all that fun stuff on the 29th of October, and yea.

It is basically a full stack engineering job. It will be my job, as part of a team, to create the front and back end of data analytics platforms, data extraction and analysis tools, and do some data modelling and such. The stack is interesting. JavaScript, C#, Python, and some umm… IBM mainframe data formats, that will be oh so fun to learn about I’m sure lol.

But this is my first real job with a large organisation that pays well, offers full benefits, potentially flex hours and tuition funding, and is routinely ranked among the best employers in Canada.

I don’t know what to think. I’ve struggled through crappy jobs and layoffs for the last couple years, amd finally I’ve gotten a job that does not seem like it will be utterly soul sucking and abusive. Like even though I took my concerta today, I just don’t know what to do. I’ve been living below the poverty line for a decade now, and it appears that will soon be over. My cat is going to get pet insurance. I can think about buying a car, moving to a one bedroom apartment in non-subsidized housing.

:open_mouth:

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#2

woohoo! You go girl! Congrats!

(Start figuring out a budget now before the impulse to spend kicks in)

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#3

Bwahahahaha… It has already started! Lol… :flushed: I bought myself a electric toothbrush for 23 dollars. Which… Okay maybe that’s not a impulse buy, even though it was an impulse buy? I mean my dentist will be very pleased.

Lol, but seriously, thank you, and I most definitely will make a budget.

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#4

Yay you and congrats! Keep the toothbrush. As rewards go, it’s modest enough.

I had a job interview the other day and just for that, I rewarded myself with a trip to the record store. While I didn’t buy $23’s worth of records, I was totally ready to… So yeah. Toothbrush is fine.

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#5

THAT. IS. SO. AWESOME. KAT! I AM SO EXCITED FOR YOU! THAT IS SUCH INCREDIBL NEWS!
AHHHHH!!!

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#6

Congrats! I hope it’s everything you need and want!

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#7

It’s been a rough month. But… I get to keep the job for now! And I am so happy about it. I was having those like… Down and out type thoughts of… Oh any minute noe someones going to come in a tell me they will no longer require my services. But I worked hard to prove myself, and it was recognised.

They didn’t transfer me over to a permanent contract, but they did extend the contract another three months and will revisit the goal of making me a permanent employee near the end of it.

I wanted to cry and laugh and shout it out from the rooftops. But I have been slowly getting sick over the last little while so I settled for coming home and vegetating for awhile lol. They saw me, saw me struggle, saw me overcome, and decided to let me continue on my journey of growth. And for that I will be forever grateful.

Plus the money is nice. In 6 weeks I make as much as I used to live off of for 4 months.

Woooooo!

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Possible jobs that could appeal to someone who plays computer games?
#8

Hi Kat, good to hear you are hanging in there. I hope the next bit gets easier for you.

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#10

Congrats!!!

#11

I get to keep the job for now! And I am so happy about it. I was having those like… Down and out type thoughts of… Oh any minute noe someones going to come in a tell me they will no longer require my services. But I worked hard to prove myself, and it was recognised.

There’s a term for what you’re feeling, and I think it’s hugely beneficial to recognize and label (in your intenal dialogue and in conversations with trusted colleagues) —

It’s Impostor Syndrome, and we all experience it! The key is to keep plugging along and not burn yourself out overcompensating :wink: Of course you/we/weall do sometimes. It’s just something to keep a check on.

Impostor syndrome is a big deal for those of us who get into tech by unconventional means and/or who are not {cis, white, male}. It’s also big for ADHDers in any field.

Check out this thread BTW:

This is also a good read: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-58-of-tech-employees-suffer-from-imposter-syndrome/

Cheers

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#12

Congratulations!!! :smile:

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#13

So… since this thread was just brought up again and the three months’ extension to the contract should be running out around now, how’s it going?

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#14

Hope it’s still going well, and that they’ll extend you to a full contract…!:sweat_smile::heart::grin:

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#15

Hey everyone,

I am very tired tonight so this will be quick, though I will be back sooner than later this time lol.

Things are going okay, and I got my contract extended, though only for another three months. Unfortunately I have had a lot of medical… Troubles, lol. Mostly due to my doctor either ignoring me or undertreating certain things. But my meds got changed around and I am doing better now, which is how I got the extension. I can still potentially go full time permanent at the end of the next three month contract, so things are good there.

Work is evolving and we are starting to explore AI and ML applications in iur work, though it is a lot less impressive than it sounds, believe me lol. On Friday I realized I am surrounded by people with Masters degrees and/or decades of experience, but it is not becoming a bad thing in my head, it is a gokd thing, because though it is a bit intimidating, I realize it means something that I am sitting there in a meeting with a couple fortune 500 executives and very well educated and expereinced people, and it means that I really do have some skill in my chosen profession and some knowledge, even if sometimes I make mistakes that the more experienced wouldn’t. I think one thing that helps is that my teammate in the data side of the team is also very new to this and going through the same learning period, even though he has a Masters.

Of course being a massive international company at times it feels like… Whats the point in what we are doing? Is this really going to mean anything to anyone outside the immediate team in a year? If we just stopped, would it even have a tiny impact on the execution of modernisation efforts? But that is the nature of a massive company, and most of the time I am just happy to be learning and able to improve my skills and knowledge in a way I never could sitting at home depressed and bored.

Anyways I need to get some sleep for work tomorrow, I will see you all again soon. Sorry for the disappearance. At times I have been overwhelmed by life, in more ways than just work unfortunately.

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#16

Sounds exciting! Hope you’ll keep enjoying and learning on your new job! And don’t worry, you’re new, your job is to learn and help think differently. Hopefully new meds will help a lot too! And be weary of imposter syndrome too.:wink:

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#17

can you teach me some of that i only know html ms dos and a bit of java script

#18

I can’t teach lol, but I can direct you ti the way of learning that I think is best and most useful. If your learning a new language work through a tutorial, generally the one thats available on the languages website if it has one. Then just go out and build things, keeping relevant documentation open in a browser while you work for reference. It is honestly the only way to get really good at a language or technology. If you are a visual learner then watch a youtube tutorial on the language and still keep the documentation open. Try to make a list of applicatikns you want to build, or data science projects you want to do, it will make it much easier when you want to code but can’t think of anything to work on for practice.

There is no clear path in coding really, but stick with one languave at first as much as you can, and if it’s not JavaScript, learn a GUI or visualisation library for it.

And remember to stick with it. There’s nothing quick about becoming a professional coder in whatever capacity you want to work. Don’t forget to learn about the other things relevant to the problem you are trying to solve. Like math or algorithms and data structures. Oror networking technologies etc.

#19

ok thanks