⛵My initial 2 weeks at Coveo

• 😁Happy
• 🙌Excited
• 😄Lucky
• 😬Nervous
• 😕Anxious
• 😟Overwhelmed
• 🤯Stressed
• 😫Pressured
• 😱Worried
• 😨Fear

All of which were emotions I felt during my first two weeks. It looks like the latter portion of my emotions were more on the fearful spectrum.

The perfect mix of stress inducing emotions overwhelmed my first 2 weeks of sleep, so I had to be very diligent in making sure I manage stress by exercising, practicing yoga and meditation. Although, it was only slightly effective as I am still developing an optimal work from home routine.

At first it was hard to believe that after 1 year of learning, I am finally employed as a software developer and that I am able to apply the skills I've learned in the last year to work professionally. I learned well enough to be part of a successful company surrounded by talented developers and really felt that my hard work paid off.

I had multiple interviews with different companies and Coveo was the perfect match in terms of what I was looking for in a company. The opportunity to grow alongside developers in a very fast-growing company and working with the tools I had been developing with.

I am extremely relieved to no longer be doing interviews, especially during a time like this.

I did not know what to expect. I have never onboarded before in any tech company let alone onboarding remotely, especially during a pandemic. While the emotions were rampant, the way Coveo handled everything was very well done👍

They assigned a buddy system that helped address any fears or concerns I had. HR was very responsive and had a great structure in providing the instructions for the 1st week of onboarding.

In addition, my manager, team lead and my teammates made sure I was taken care of by providing an open dialogue on Slack and video calls to ensure that I had the support I needed🙏

My First Week Experience

• Meetings with HR, Manager, Team Lead, and Teammates
• Lots of paperwork to read over:
  • Payroll (signing documents)
  • Mandatory security modules
  • Company policies
  • Reading the group procedures on how to contribute for first PR
  • Procedures for codes
• Setting up my machine for development and making my VSCode feel like home

The first week definitely had a lot of administrative stuff to do and machine setup. I had many meetings along with a lot of modules to read over. I've never used a macOS before and my experience had been very seamless with minimal issues.

I followed the necessary steps for my machine, in addition to playing with the gestures that macOS offered over windows. While I was no longer a stranger to Git and Github, I am a stranger to the collaborative process of a large project.

Documentation only tells so much about the process. I managed to survive the first week of work and I felt a little more stress during my second week, especially when I was exploring the source code and doing my first ticket.

My Second Week Experience

• Machine successfully ready for development
• Having my first few JIRA tickets assigned to me
• My first ever PR as a professional developer
• Understand the overall project and understand current bugs

So, I guess this is where most of my fears amplified. The codebase felt very overwhelming, there was so much to learn. Redux is new to me. TypeScript is new to me. Working with already established projects and writing tests are new to me.

I felt like all the tutorials and projects I've built did not prepare me enough for a large production codebase and writing tests.

This is where I started to feel my nervousness and anxiety slowly started to crawl deep into my brain. It took a bit of time processing everything, the overall code, the debugging process, the strange syntax that TypeScript had sprinkled all over the JavaScript code.

I expressed my concerns about feeling overwhelmed to my manager, team lead and assigned buddy. They told me it was a normal to feel this way, especially when you first start. I was told not to worry as I will be learning on the job and I'm in it for the long haul.

I was told not to concern myself with how many tickets I would need to solve every week, just as long as I was taking my time to really understand the code and that I was constantly learning.

Their words were reassuring, relieving my concerns, but it never really sunk into me and changed how I felt. It was only until I was able to self-reflect and view it with an introspective lens.

Mindset Change

Coined in marketing and sales, but I usually refer this term for myself for feeling self-doubt due to fear of the unknown and uncertainty that I would live up to their expectations.

I had faced these exact same emotions during the start of my journey in switching career paths last year from science to programming.

I know that the habits, skills, and mindset that I had developed over the last year will help me overcome this feeling. I had documented my hard work, dedication, and perseverance for an entire year to get to where I am today, and I realize that there’s no doubt in my mind that I couldn't do the same here.

By taking a step back, I was able to reduce the latter portion of my emotions by documenting them and self-reflecting. I already have had the opportunity last year to overcome many challenges and unexpected barriers during my journey. The most important attitude was that I believed in myself to achieve the goals I set.

The system that I developed around learning has been constantly evolving and improving. I am grateful to be able to apply these skills here at Coveo. I know that I will put 100% of my best effort into my work and taking this opportunity to learn and grow as a developer.

Since this post, I have been able to recollect and calm my nerves, and in addition to this, I realized that... its only been 2 weeks 😅 I'm exited to enter my third week at work tomorrow!