Your Expectations Can Make or Break Your Career as a Developer

June 8, 2024

Before I dipped my toes into development, I found myself managing a website built on React. Never having worked with this framework before, I didn't understand how to tinker in the code, even for little tweaks—something I felt someone in my role should be able to handle.

I quickly learned that implementing something in React is a far different process than implementing the same feature in a static HTML website. I was in over my head, and I wasn’t the only one who was frustrated. My team relied on me, and I couldn’t manage the simple changes they were asking for.

What “should” have been easy was blocking me at every turn. I became stressed, upset, and fragile as the asks and expectations piled up like recipes in Overcooked. It felt like I was being buried alive.

Now I'm a few months into my new career as a frontend developer, and even though React is starting to come naturally to me, I'm still getting frustrated at some point in every project.

I’m slow, and I hit issues that, just like in my web management days, I feel should be easy. For any other developer, solving this issue would be easy, right? Then why is it so hard for me!? (…asks the junior dev.)

Right now, my projects that are pretty straightforward. A little CSS here, a little state management there. But once I dig into it, the scope expands from what I initially thought it was. It expands and expands and expands because I didn’t do my research before diving in. It expands because I build it, and then learn what I did wrong. It expands because I go back to fix it, and then realize it was supposed to work differently the whole time.

On it goes, and as I get more frustrated, that little phrase niggles at my emotions—”this should be easy.” I start feeling like a failure.

But I’ve come to realize that the frustration isn't stemming from the fact that I'm new or that I'm not good enough or any failure on my part, really.

It’s because I think I know what to expect when I don’t.

It shouldn’t be easy

I really do love this job, and I'm excited to build a career in this field, as I hope you are too. But if we want to succeed, we’re going to have to properly set our expectations. Saying "it should be easy", is not helpful. Why should it be easy? Who ever said it would be?

Not living up to expectations will break your spirit. And by not living up to your own expectations, you’re really doing it to yourself.

So, let’s reset that expectation to something that will empower us to carry on and figure it out.

Developers are puzzle-solvers. While the process becomes familiar, and the skills build over time, solving unknown problems is core to the job. It won’t always be straightforward. Projects aren’t always perfectly scoped. But we can (and do) figure things out. We can (and do) learn from each new experience so that we can (and do) tackle those problem a little better next time.

Tickets will probably take longer than we think they should or wish they would, and will likely inspire some nasty sailor speak along the way.

But that’s the job.

What I don’t remind myself enough is, from scoping projects to **begging Copilot for answers, I’m doing everything for the first time. Right now, nothing is easy. But *I’m learning.* I’m doing what it takes figure it out, and I’m getting better with each hurdle.

Right now, that’s really all I should expect of myself. That’s what success looks like for a junior dev.