Secured a Junior Engineer Job! What tech do you recommend me to learn?

Career Advice
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First post here, I’m hoping to get some advice in relation to a new job which I secured before the lock-down phase here in my country. I’ll be starting by the end of this month or early next month all going well. I’ve spent the lock-down learning as much JavaScript as possible. I have a software engineering degree prior to self-learning but struggle massively with self doubt and my ability to remember things.

Job Requirements:
• Any Javascript experience , but will look at any programming language
• AWS experience a plus
• Previous experience working on greenfield projects, not really interested in someone
working on legacy projects fixing bugs etc.
• Someone enthusiastic about coding
• Willing to learn and coached by Senior Engineers
• Ideally someone young

I secured the job, so I definitely meet the requirements. As mentioned I’ve spent about 54 consecutive days learning JavaScript and Node.js. I committed to the 100 Days of Code challenge to keep myself motivated. I plan to do some AWS learning this month. I’ve attached some information about the company below, if there is anything you can suggest would be good for me to read into, please let me know :slight_smile: Thanks!

“Founded in the UK in 2009, Global Reach Technology is an award-winning captive portal, cloud-RADIUS / AAA wireless platform. Built on proprietary technology Global Reach is used by leading wireless service providers and their customers to create, monetize and manage multiple, complex wireless services for any type of deployment - consumer to large enterprise - in any industry. Working with Cisco, Aruba, Google, BT and Virgin Media, our platform supports billions of authentications and concurrent users, using hundreds of devices and networks. Only Global Reach supports the largest number of wireless operating systems and devices, and provides secure connection and roaming using the industry’s top standards. We were first to deliver an advanced robust public Wi-Fi for the London Underground; first to deliver large-scale municipal PasspointTM Hotspot 2.0 deployment connecting San Francisco and San Jose Public Wi-Fi, and the first and only online signup server for all major operating systems & PasspointTM Hotspot 2.0 devices. We have been awarded by technology publications and wireless industry organizations for our work, and have grown into an international cloud software business with offices in four countries, including a professional services division supporting Global Reach deployments.”

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First things first: CONGRATULATIONS!

Are you in contact with anyone you’ll be working with yet? Team members? A manager? The engineers who interviewed you? Whatever point of contact you have (even if it’s just the HR rep who did your paperwork), I suggest reaching out and asking if you can be put in touch with your team, ideally the lead developer and/or the person who will be your mentor. That’s who you want to ask. It’s a very safe bet that once you start at the company, there will be an onboarding period that will include a suggestion of resources to get up to speed on the tools/libraries/frameworks that they use. Failing that, it looks like JavaScript and AWS are the skills to get as strong in as you can.

I do suggest searching for some good non-Amazon resources for AWS, because their documentation is some sort of sociological experiment to see what it takes to make developers cry.

Unrelated, but “Ideally someone young” is super illegal in the US.

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Many thanks for your congrats. I reached out to one employee back in March who a friend of mine knows, he followed up with 1 reply but didn’t hear from him again. After reading your post, I reached out to another employee, again whom a friend of mine knows, so here’s hoping he will get back to me soon. I’ve only ever dealt with one person inside the company, he mentioned a lot about the company but not much in relation to what I’d need to know or could learn, plus I only have contact to him through a recruiter who I was involved with. I’m sure once I start I will be brought up to speed, I just want to be as ready as possible when starting and not seem like a complete “junior” as I’ve been coding for nearly 7 years, but feels like only a few months in my head.

Appreciate the heads up in relation to the AWS documentation, I will get on that v. soon.

:man_facepalming: First time I saw “ideally someone young”, I thought young in knowledge/experience, rather than age. It is a weird thing to say :sweat_smile:

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Congratulations…cheers

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The First 90 Days is one of the best books I’ve read for being a software engineer, that isn’t directly about software engineering.

It’s targeted at leadership, but it’s very helpful for anyone starting a new job.