University → Your first Programming job — The transition and what to expect
Uni helps you to succeed in your first programming job? Not quite… read on for more.
You’ve decided to study BSc/MSc in Computer Science, Software Engineering or some other related variation of a technical field. You expect that by paying so much money towards gaining a degree in your chosen field that you will be able to firstly find a job in Software Engineering, secondly be able to be knowledgeable from the start and thirdly as a result of being employed, this will help to start the journey of repaying that student debt.
From the perspective of a successful Software Engineer that is currently working for a growing startup, has achieved a 1st in their degree and has worked for 2 of the most well known companies… Unfortunately it is not as simple or as easy as this…
At university, for my second year studies, I was the Lead Programmer in a Software Engineering group module as I done well in the first year so that’s how they decided what role each student undertook as part of this group module. The experience gained from completing that group module was very valuable, specifically working as a team, dealing with difficulties and time constraints, changing requirements and keeping team communication present. From a technical perspective, the aim of this module was to build some software (a Java desktop app… so a fairly common uni project) based on some requirements, producing technical documentation to explain this project and then to demonstrate the application to our colleagues. There were highs and lows of this project but as mentioned, this experience was helpful and a great insight into the real world of Software Engineering and the world of work.
I first realised the difficulty and gap between what you learn at university and what skillset is required to succeed as a professional Software Engineer when I was working as a Software Engineering Intern at The Walt Disney Company. Learning about some advanced programming concepts using Java at university to learning large and complex codebases and simultaneously implementing on the job Clean Code, Automated Build Processes, Git/team collaboration, Agile Methodologies, TDD (Test Driven Development),Domain/Project knowledge and much more, this was an entirely different world to university. From building small apps from scratch at university to understanding and implementing code features and bug fixes on apps that have been around for years, have had a dozen or more developers work on it with different coding styles to integrating those apps with automated build processes, adhering to a TDD approach, I strongly feel that university doesn’t set you up to succeed when stepping into your first Software Engineering role… at least not in my experience.
Some takeaways or me getting to the point:
Clean Code
Software Patterns
Git
Build Processes
Agile
Being a team player… sounds cheesy but it’s true
Hopefully this has been helpful… or at least if someone told me this at the time, it would have been great so I hope I have helped you if you are unsure what to expect when looking for your first internship or job.
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