What to Expect in Your First 3 Months as a Junior Developer

So, you’ve just landed your very first software developer job.

First of all, congratulations 🥳. Truly. This is no small feat.

I still remember my own first role in tech. It feels like ages ago now, but what I do remember vividly are the nerves. I didn’t know what I was walking into. For context, I switched into tech from a completely different industry, Pharmacy. I had no prior work experience to compare it to, no idea what “normal” looked like in this new world of software development.

If that’s you, well… you’ve got me. Let’s talk about what those first three months actually look like.

The First Day: Information Overload 😱

If you’re anything like I was, you’ll walk in with this picture in your head: day one, you grab a Jira ticket, make your first pull request, and feel like a real developer.

Yeah, no. That doesn’t happen...

Instead, your first day will feel like someone turned on a firehose of information and pointed it directly at you.

You’ll be introduced to a dozen people and be expected to remember their names, their roles, and maybe even whether they have kids. You’ll sit in your first meeting, nodding along while the team casually throws around acronyms that sound like a foreign language. You’ll write some of them down, but before you know it, your notebook is overflowing with letters that make no sense when you look back.

And just when you think ✨"finally, it’s time to code?" ✨ Nope. Not yet. You’ve got training modules to get through, onboarding docs to read, and an entire development environment to set up. Spoiler: this setup process can take days. Sometimes weeks.

The First Few Weeks: Finding Your Feet 🦶

Slowly though, things start to click 🌟. You begin to learn the rhythms of your team. Standups, sprint planning, retros, words that once felt alien start to feel familiar. You figure out who you can go to for help and who prefers to work quietly.

By now, your dev environment is running. You’ve cloned the repo. You’ve peeked inside the codebase. And then it hits you: this thing is massive 🫣.

Much bigger than anything you built in your bootcamp or degree projects. At first glance, it feels like reading gobbledygook. You thought you were solid in Java, but the industry version of Java with its frameworks, libraries, and layers makes your self-taught projects look like toy examples.

It’s humbling. And overwhelming.

The First Ticket: A Lesson in Patience ⏳

Eventually, you get brave enough to pick up your very first Jira ticket. It’s small, just a single story point. Easy, right?

Except it isn’t.

It takes you way longer than you expect. You finally push your code, only to get a wave of PR comments from your teammates. Some are nitpicks, others require rewriting entire sections. You feel like you just went backwards.

But here’s the thing: this is where the real learning happens. Each PR comment is a window into how things are done in the real world.

The End of Month Three: A Shift in Perspective 🔍

By your second sprint, things feel just a little less scary. You’re still slow, you’re still asking questions, but you’re starting to recognise patterns. You’re growing in confidence, even if only slightly.

Then before you know it, three months have passed.

Looking back, you’ll realise it wasn’t smooth sailing. Far from it. You probably felt lost more times than you can count. But you also learned. You built relationships. You got your hands on real code. You took the first steps toward becoming the developer you want to be.

And here’s a tip someone once gave me that I still hold onto: you’ll probably feel lost for your first two years in tech. Yes, two years. And that’s okay.

So give yourself grace. Lower the impossible expectations you’re carrying. And remember, the most valuable skill you can have as a junior developer isn’t knowing everything, it’s knowing how to ask the right questions.

That’s what your first three months will look like: messy, humbling, and strangely exciting.

But if you’re reading this, you’re already doing the most important thing, you’re preparing.

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Until next time,

Ruth