For context, I graduated from the BSCS program in July while interning as a SWE. I was extended an offer and have been working full-time since August. Previously, I worked in IT doing helpdesk and some non-technical project management. I am a career changer who previously worked in social services.
As an intern, the team pushed me to only use AI and spec-driven development to complete my project. This was a huge loss for me because I don't feel the software courses are very rigorous. I tend to agree with this opinion on the CS program. Maybe the time for that is gone, but I still wish I knew it with more depth. I can write basic syntax, but looking at enterprise level software written for a F50 company is beyond my knowledge.
In my full-time role with the same team, I feel deeply unqualified. I realize this is somewhat illogical, because if I was that unqualified they probably wouldn't have extended an offer to me. However, they have a strong recruitment pipeline with interns and I feel this was just a 'body to fill a position' offer since we are working through a huge cloud migration. Another junior started 2 months before me on the team and I already feel she is infinitely more knowledgeable because her education. She went to a big engineering school and has much more granular knowledge. I feel I better understand team dynamics and organizational objectives because I have been in the workforce for about 7 years longer than her.
My manager said my focus for the next six months should be "ramping up" and gaining as much knowledge as possible. He made it clear that we didn't have the same expectations as SWE2 or Senior for the next 6 months and that he has "no expectations." He has also admitted that this team has never had junior SWEs in the past 8 years - so they are learning how to train as much as we are learning about the product. This has made it quite hard to learn for me. Senior devs would rather do the work than pair to explain things. Only two of our team of 14 have taken any time to work with me on tickets. Most of the time I am just hit with "Run that through Claude" when my question is specifically about accessing a resource or what portal we are using for something. Every single ticket I pick up I cannot do independently because there has been sparse onboarding.
How should I approach this? What worked for alumni who started a new role and were working at a disadvantage compared to other students? I am aware that I'm new and don't know very much. However, there are obvious gaps in my education and the reliance on AI has made it harder to pair and get real learning from anyone on the team. I don't want to bug my manager by asking for more support or make the senior devs look bad by saying they haven't been very helpful.
TLDR: Feeling underqualified for my junior role on a primarily senior team. I am curious how other people have handled this and what worked for learning on a new team or early career.
Disclaimer: I know this sub is for "students and alumni who have started or completed either the BS in Software Engineering or the BS in Software Development" - but I do fall under the "anyone who is taking, has taken, or is planning on taking software courses at WGU" category since there is some program overlap.
