Gregor Ojstersek shares three mistakes from early in his career: solving problems alone instead of collaborating, letting perfectionism slow him down, and jumping to conclusions without enough context. His advice to junior engineers: embrace mistakes, stay eager to learn, and find ways to add value to your team.
It's not easy for people who are just starting their careers as software engineers at this time. The current market is very competitive and the expectations are rising, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to get better and improve. In today's video, I'll be sharing my top 3 mistakes I made as a junior engineer so that you can avoid them. So I've made many mistakes as a junior engineer, and only after I grew as an engineer and also as a person, I realized that these are the things that it would be better if I did them differently. Let's start with my first mistake. I was being stubborn and tried to learn and figure out everything on my own. I was too proud a lot of times to ask for help or to learn together with someone. I believe I was afraid of coming out like I'm not smart enough or I'm not good enough to be an engineer. What I found out later is that it's important to not compete with others but instead collaborate. There is no better way to grow than growing together with people who are on a similar path than you are. The path is much more fulfilling, faster, and overall better. It's a cheat code for growing faster. I didn't use it enough when I started, but I sure do use it now, and it helps me a lot to continue to grow and progress. Let's go to the second mistake. I was trying to perfect my solutions. Perfectionism has been a big productivity killer for me. We as engineers are making so many micro decisions on a daily basis. Decisions like, how are we going to name the variable or a function? Should we split the file class differently or not? What approach to use to to solve a particular problem and also how to properly test certain solutions. I have been trying to micro-optimize every single detail. Instead of progressing and delivering value to the business, I was endlessly analyzing and trying to reach perfection. So whenever I find myself trying to perfect, I say in my head that 95% is good enough in most cases and that 100% just doesn't exist. Now let's go to the last one. I tried to act smart when I clearly didn't have enough experience. I learned something new and I thought that I was the top of the world right now. But then I quickly found out that I was missing so much context. I've made the mistake of jumping to conclusions too early a lot of times. Over time, I learned that it's a lot better to get the full context first and only after make conclusions. This is especially important to understand when you are just starting your new role. I burned some bridges with certain people because I did that. One of the most important things you need to do when you start a new role is to fit in, fit in with your team and get along with everyone and get the full context of the current situation. Software engineering is one of the most collaborative fields out there. So now that we covered the mistakes that I have made, let me also share my top 3 advice that I would give to junior engineers right now. My first advice is to not be afraid of making mistakes. We are putting too much of our minds into what if that happens or what will they think. The truth is that people are busy and have a lot of things on their minds. They don't think about it too much if we make a mistake. So just make a mistake and make sure that you learn from it. This will speed up the growth substantially. My second advice is to be motivated and driven to learn. This is really important, and this is what I look for the most when I'm interviewing engineers for a junior position. Hiring people who are driven and motivated for learning doesn't only ensure that they will do better in the role, but it also helps the whole team. Such energy is very contagious. This doesn't only help you, but it also helps everyone else. The whole team becomes a lot better because of it. Take initiative and be a sponge to learning. Plus points are if you are also sharing your knowledge with others in terms of creating documentation or hosting some sort of knowledge sharing sessions. This provides immense value to the organization. And my last advice is to look for ways to contribute value proactively. Don't just wait for tasks to be given to you, but try to find ways that will help the team, the organization, or the users. There are a lot of different ways to do that, and some of them are: you see a problem in the codebase, take ownership and fix it. You see something in the app that would help the customers, well, make sure to suggest that to your product manager. You may see something that could improve the process, make sure to let your manager know. So The important thing is that you are the one looking for ways to improve things. That's also the trait that I value a lot. I'm curious to hear about your advice for junior engineers. Make sure to share them in the comments. To learn more, you can subscribe to my newsletter. It's called Engineering Leadership, where I share similar tips and advice on how to be a great engineering leader. There are more than 100,000 people already reading it, and I publish 2 new articles every week. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.
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