What no one tells you about your first job as a software engineer

The first day of work. A phrase that causes anxiety attacks in almost every senior student. College is already difficult, but how much more challenging can a real day of work be? And honestly, I will miss my 3-month vacation.

I have never considered myself a top student. Admittedly, I’m all about the hands-on approach when getting things done. To me, it was never about knowing every little thing off the top of my head, but more knowing how to take all that theoretical knowledge and apply it practically and efficiently. Above all, I knew one thing: soft skills are mandatory in today’s labor market. You need to have a team spirit, and essentially be willing to upgrade yourself by always learning faster and learning more. And this was the mindset behind my application for a summer internship at Runtime Revolution.

We all have a dream job and career ambitions, but almost no one knows what to expect from their first job. What does the employer want from you? What are the employer expectations for you? Do you have to prepare yourself to be part of a big project on the first day and code extensively? Or are you just going to be pair-programming with someone already fully integrated? How will you land at this new place?

These are some of the questions that crossed my mind before my first day of work at Runtime Revolution. I already knew which programming languages were used, and I had no previous experience with any of them, so I wondered how I could successfully start working without knowing those technologies. I try to believe in myself and my skills, and, most importantly, Runtime Revolution also believes in me. They invested in me (still do), and in my skill set. In my opinion, that is something crucial not only for my success, but also for the success of others, and, consequently for the company’s.

I always want to improve myself and learn new technologies. Upon entering Runtime Revolution, they gave me that opportunity and I found people with the same mindset as me, passionate about coding and always eager to learn new technologies! Personally, one of the major reasons for someone to love their job is having a good workplace environment along with the people who make all of it possible. The help and motivation that I found when I first arrived were very important to keep that mentality.

One of the technologies I had to learn was Ruby. Despite not having any previous opportunities to learn Ruby while studying in college, I always recognise it as a key technology since it’s highly requested for several projects, mostly outside of Portugal. Ruby is an object-oriented language and when it comes to comparing it to other languages that I had learned in college, such as Java, Ruby wins my preference mostly because of how easy it is to perform an action with only a few lines of code.

The way I learn Ruby has been very entertaining but the most important thing is its efficiency. The learning material provided is spot on with a warm and special mention to Michael Hartl’s book, Ruby on Rails Tutorial. It’s a very comprehensive guide that targets all the important topics needed for someone that it’s initiating Ruby On Rails.

The support given by the entire team at Runtime Revolution has been incredible and the willingness to help me learn new technologies was outstanding. I was given time to learn and everyone was there to help me every step of the way. Regardless of the technology used, I quickly realised that I couldn’t have expected a better welcome.

I hope that every one of you who is about to leave college, currently looking for their first real job, gets to be as lucky as I was — so that your first job experience won’t be a turmoil of anxiety but rather an incredible experience.

Runtime Revolution is great company with a spectacular workplace environment that always encourage you to do more!