Your reaction to isolation is completely normal and valid. Many developers, including experienced ones, struggle with too much isolation
Look for opportunities to connect with the broader tech community through meetups or online forums ( which you're doing here) but find more ways to connect
Consider finding a mentor outside your company
Thank you for this. I guess to add something, I moved to a different city to take this job. I don't have friends or family where I live. I do have one friend at work. He works on the front-end team and we meet outside of work sometimes for lunch. So I'm sure the isolation wouldn't be as bad if I had more of a social group outside of work. But I appreciate you mentioning that it's not that uncommon for devs to feel alone and isolated.
I ran out of space at the end, but the last paragraph was: "Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm really just looking for guidance. I hope some of the more experienced programmers might be able to shed some light on this situation in ways that aren't clear to me right now."
EDIT
There was one other paragraph I deleted due to space limitations. On the topic of struggling with being completely alone at my job for the large majority of my workweek:
"I'm considering taking my back-end skills and re-training to learn cloud. I think this could (possibly) put me in a position where I can build on my coding skills while also working with other people throughout the day, i.e. clients, other IT people, developers, and so on."
I don’t have a whole lot of advice, other than to say that I’ve been in a similar situation (in terms of lack of quality software mentorship) and I ended up leaving the company, with that being a big reason. I later learned the phrase “expert beginner”, which is a phrase I’d now use to describe my career progression in my four years at that first job in my career.
Happy to chat further if you’d like some advice or just want to hear how I recognized the situation and got out. It probably took 2 years longer than it needed to, for me to fix the situation
Your reaction to isolation is completely normal and valid. Many developers, including experienced ones, struggle with too much isolation
Look for opportunities to connect with the broader tech community through meetups or online forums ( which you're doing here) but find more ways to connect Consider finding a mentor outside your company
Thank you for this. I guess to add something, I moved to a different city to take this job. I don't have friends or family where I live. I do have one friend at work. He works on the front-end team and we meet outside of work sometimes for lunch. So I'm sure the isolation wouldn't be as bad if I had more of a social group outside of work. But I appreciate you mentioning that it's not that uncommon for devs to feel alone and isolated.
I ran out of space at the end, but the last paragraph was: "Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm really just looking for guidance. I hope some of the more experienced programmers might be able to shed some light on this situation in ways that aren't clear to me right now."
EDIT
There was one other paragraph I deleted due to space limitations. On the topic of struggling with being completely alone at my job for the large majority of my workweek:
"I'm considering taking my back-end skills and re-training to learn cloud. I think this could (possibly) put me in a position where I can build on my coding skills while also working with other people throughout the day, i.e. clients, other IT people, developers, and so on."
I don’t have a whole lot of advice, other than to say that I’ve been in a similar situation (in terms of lack of quality software mentorship) and I ended up leaving the company, with that being a big reason. I later learned the phrase “expert beginner”, which is a phrase I’d now use to describe my career progression in my four years at that first job in my career.
https://daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-th...
Happy to chat further if you’d like some advice or just want to hear how I recognized the situation and got out. It probably took 2 years longer than it needed to, for me to fix the situation
change the workplace.
Honestly. Do not waste any further time with them and just leave and either do the following:
- Find another role at a different company (that pays more).
- Build your own startup or consult with others.
The biggest risk is by doing nothing and being too comfortable.
Frankly speaking, your boss does not care and wants you at your desk working for them as long as you don't do anything other than listening to them.