u/robint88

I am in dire need of some advice. Quick background on me - I've worked for myself for effectively 16 years, I'm late 30s and after years of hobby coding on and off for 8 years I decided to look for a developer job. I recently have completed a year course in AI/ML engineering (junior) but a couple of months ago I was offered a role as a general software engineer at a small environmental planning consultancy with no code assessments or anything like that. I've a few more seasoned developer friends that I've spoken to and they have all said that really at a junior stage you should be getting feedback on the code you're writing, working on small issues that don't have (huge) consequences on the overall structure of the system, and basically learning how the system works.

I've written things in points below as it sort of sets out my thoughts a bit easier:

- Zero onboarding: I was dropped into the company without a proper introduction to the technology, architecture, processes or codebase.

- No structured junior support: I haven't had regular 1 on 1s. I don't have stand-ups or mentoring.

- There isn't really anyone working alongside me day-to-day.

- No code review: I'm completing work and being told whether it's right or wrong afterwards, rather than having someone review my approach and teach me from it.

- Unclear requirements: I'm often given work through an ad-hoc Slack message rather than a properly defined ticket. I've found that things are frequently wrong because the problem and instructions weren't explained.

- Very little work most times: I've had multiple days with essentially nothing to do (I've had 6 consecutive days doing nothing at all). Other times I've received only very small tasks, such as adding a button.

- A sudden jump in responsibility: After five weeks I was given a national-dataset/data-engineering project which had system wide architecture implications. I was given the task to work through a large unfamiliar technical area but not told what the outcome should be.

- The level of independence doesn't seem matched to my experience: I'm still a very early-career developer and haven't been given the foundations/context to do that comfortably. The role appears to require me to make decisions and navigate an unfamiliar system independently that I don't understand.

- Heavy reliance on AI without enough underlying understanding: I'm allowed/encouraged to use Claude extensively. My actual workflow has become something like: requirement → Claude → code → test → submit. I understand the industry is moving that way but I genuinely don't even know what I'm doing to a) use Claude correctly b) the task/solution in general. I'm concerned I'm producing working code without developing a proper mental model of the technology.

- I don't feel I understand the tech stack: After 2 months I still don't feel I understand how the company's technology fits together. That's particularly concerning to me because I'm trying to establish my fundamental engineering skills.

- I'm not getting the feedback loop needed to develop: I'm not just lacking knowledge - I'm lacking the mechanism by which a junior normally acquires it ie. attempt something, reviewed, explain it, correct it etc

- The technical leadership structure is extremely thin: The team is essentially me and one other developer/technical person.

- Both the CTO and tech lead are both away at the same time, leaving me alone despite having only been there around 6 weeks. I don't feel equipped to be left alone. My concern isn't simply that they're went away. It's that I'm being left without the people who understand the company's technology while I still feel I don't understand it myself.

- My responsibilities don't seem aligned with my career stage: Some work is completely appropriate for a junior. Other work, particularly the ambiguous dataset project and degree of ownership, feels closer to what I'd expect from someone with considerably more experience.

- The role isn't giving me the experience I thought I was getting. This is probably the biggest issue for me.

I'm worried that in 6–12 months my CV could say "6–12 months software development experience", but internally I'd feel that I hadn't actually gained 6–12 months' worth of development experience because I was mostly using AI to get tasks completed without properly understanding the tech/system.

I'm also regularly feeling out of my depth and stressed. I know that being out of your depth is normal as a junior, so I'm not expecting to understand everything. The problem is that I don't feel like I'm being given the feedback/support needed to gradually get less out of my depth.

I don't necessarily think the company is badly run. I think they may simply need someone who can operate with a lot of independence in a very small team and probably by someone trying to move from junior to mid, whereas I need an environment where I can learn, receive feedback and gradually build that independence.

So I'm trying to work out whether this is simply what being a junior developer is actually like, or whether I've ended up in a role that probably isn't particularly suitable for someone at my level.

What I'd really appreciate advice on is whether this is normal for a junior role to not have any support/feedback/1 on 1s/reviews? Are there any red flags that I'm not seeing at this stage that maybe people with more experience can see? Realistically, what you'd be likely to do if this were your first job in the industry?

EDIT: Forgot to mention that usually when I use Ai for home I will generally use it to maybe help create a workflow for a personal project or to explain some code I've seen that I can't wrap my head around. So I do understand how it is useful as a tool to learn. But in this role I find that I am mostly using it to make the code fit in with the general structure of the codebase and finding how to make it all link together.

For the past 8 years or so I've coded on the side as a hobby whenever I wasn't working (I'm in my late 30s now). But because I'd only pick it up so infrequently, I'd basically start from scratch every time I came back to it. Over the past year though I've been studying on an AI/ML engineering course and aiming for junior positions.

I recently applied for a junior ML role at a company, didn't get it, but they offered me a software developer position instead. During the interview I asked what they were working on, their tech stack etc. since I hadn't done much full stack work in a while and wanted to know what to brush up on. I took the role anyway, figuring I'd get the experience and knowing I'd basically be going full stack again.

Once I started, the CTO and another tech employee basically told me: "we don't really need anyone to be the best, we run everything through Claude and just need someone who can read what comes out and make sure it's right." So for the first few weeks, all I've been doing is taking issues and getting Claude to fix them.

This week I've done 2.5 days of work and haven't spoken to anyone on the team in a couple of days (it's a 100% remote job). I was told to just work through the issues on GitHub tagged "good first issue" which I did, but nothing new has been assigned since earlier in the week.

Then in the tech meeting the other day, we were asked if we wanted to pivot from being a platform to basically being a data provider instead. So now it feels like whatever full stack stuff I should be learning might be going away anyway.

I've been here a few weeks now and feel like I've learned basically nothing, since all I'm doing is dragging issues to and from Claude. And now that I don't have any work assigned, I genuinely don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. I've been working through a few tutorials on their tech stack just to feel like I'm being productive. Realistically, full stack isn't even what I want long term. I'm doing this for the income and experience while I keep applying for other roles. But the issue is I don't want to just be using Claude to spit out fixes without understanding them. I want to actually learn something while I'm here and not just become someone who shuffles tickets through an AI and rubber-stamps the output.

I guess I'd just appreciate any advice?

My band released our new EP last week and had a sold-out launch show which was great. The album has had 250+ streams in this first week.

However, we have almost no social media presence (just over 300 followers), no professional photos or videos and we'd also like to get our music heard by more people (playlists, press, etc.).

If you had a budget of £500 where would you focus on putting money in to in order to gain more exposure?

We've a few ideas like:

• Live session/video
• Social media content (not really what's best here - we're in our mid 30's so stuff like "Guess our drummer" etc doesn't really work with us)
• PR
• Playlist promotion (legitimate services only - if such a thing exists?)
• Something else entirely?

We'd really appreciate hearing what has actually worked for other independent bands. Our main aim is to just get some support slots, small festivals and just play some more gigs in general. But I think things like our IG numbers or Spotify streams aren't going to win anyone over. We realise £500 isn't a huge amount of money but hopefully with such a small number of followers currently we can get some return from it.

My band (Horrid Fog) just released our new EP yesterday and I just wanted to share a track here. We are very much influenced by a lot of prog, psych and dark folk - the sound is pretty much somewhere between King Gizzard, Lankum, Fairport Convention, Strawbs etc. So I figured people may be in to it!

We play a lot with time signatures (13/8, 9/8, 5/4 ... ), experiment with different instrumentation - anything from the fiddle to heavy synths (this track has both!), as well as trad vocal melodies.

Hope you guys enjoy it. Open to feedback too!

I've been offered a junior software developer role and I'm excited, but also feeling quite out of my depth.

I've only really been seriously focused on programming since around August last year. Before that it was something I'd picked up on and off over the years. Most of my recent work has been AI/ML focused rather than traditional software engineering.

I've built a few projects that I think are decent such as:

- Property contract summarisation SaaS application with authentication, payments and Stripe Integration

- medical report summarisation project using a fine-tuned T5 model trained on medical data

- a few EDA projects and code along projects like a CV/Resume analyser.

I think these seem like decent projects, but I still feel like I don't really know anything. A lot of what I've built has involved reading and following tutorials, googling solutions, and stitching together different ideas to create something that works. I feel ok looking at the code and explaining what each bit more or less does but if you asked me to reconstruct a project again from scratch off the top of my head I'd be lost.

The role I've been offered sounds like it will involve working with data from different sources, transforming/cleaning it, and building applications around it. They also create their own ML models with the data to predict risks etc. It also focuses a lot on geolocation.

The company is more or less a bootstrapped startup.

So I guess I have a few questions really :

- How much learning is expected to happen on the job in a smaller startup like this?

- If you had one month before starting your first developer role, what would you focus on learning? Nothing that I was told "a lot of the work is pulling data, changing it to the same format and making it look pretty on a web app"

-What skills or concepts would give the biggest return on investment in that month?

I think a lot of my anxiety comes from feeling like I've managed to build things that work, but I'm not sure whether that's because I've genuinely learned software development or because I've become OK at forcing together bits of code found on GitHub/tutorials etc. Also, I think there's anticipation not really knowing what tech I will be using and how to go in to the role with a bit of skill in the stack they use.

I’m currently doing an AI conversion course that comes with a job guarantee, so realistically I expect I’ll be given a proper work laptop once I land a role. Right now though, my personal laptop is on its last legs — it’s slow, running out of storage, and the screen is cracked — so I need something new to use at home.

This wouldn’t be my main long-term career machine. It’s more for building portfolio projects, properly learning ML/AI, running some smaller local models, and general coding with Python, VS Code, Jupyter, etc. I want something that will last a few years and not feel limiting while I’m learning, but also isn’t overkill given I’ll likely have a separate work laptop in the near future.

Where I’m getting stuck is all the conflicting advice online. On one hand, I keep seeing that NVIDIA GPUs (CUDA) are basically the standard for AI, which makes me think I should go for something like a gaming laptop such as the HP Omen Transcend 14. On the other hand, a lot of people say MacBooks are perfectly fine for AI work, especially at the learning stage and when you’re relying more on cloud tools. So I’m unsure whether I actually need that level of GPU power right now.

I’m also not clear on specs. Some people say 16GB RAM is enough, others say you really need 32GB, and then with Macs there’s the 24GB option in the middle which seems like a compromise. Storage-wise, I’m assuming 1TB is probably the safe minimum, but again I’m not totally sure. I’m trying to figure out whether it’s smarter to prioritise a nicer daily-use machine like a MacBook or Dell XPS, or go for something more powerful like a gaming laptop even if it’s less pleasant to use day to day.

For context, I’m currently using a Huawei MateBook 14 from 2020, which has honestly been great up until now, so I’m not tied to any particular OS.

In terms of what I’ve actually done so far, I’ve trained a T5 model on a few thousand samples for a text summarisation API, worked through standard regression and classification problems, and done some basic image recognition projects. Everything has been fairly small-scale so far, but I want a machine that won’t hold me back as I build more projects.

I’d be looking to spend up to around £1200, but I’m totally fine going cheaper if that’s enough for what I need.

One other thing is cloud vs local. I see a lot of people saying to just use cloud computing for training models, but everything I’ve done so far has been local. So it makes me question what I truly need.

Would really appreciate hearing from people who are already working in AI/ML or who’ve gone through a similar stage. I’m probably overthinking it, but I’d rather get it right than regret it in a year or two.