Hello, I’m a junior developer at a small company. I’m in a tough situation and looking for opinions.

The company hired me for an ML/data-oriented position, basically a backend developer with ML/data focus. Currently, I’m tasked with a full computer vision project, which means that I have to do almost everything on my own: object detection, analysis, database storage, data extraction, etc., all in real-time. I received a subpar laptop, making testing and regular work difficult. Despite limited support from senior developers, the project works, but not flawlessly. How can they expect me to build this?

I’ve asked for help, but the response is delayed, and there’s no mentoring. Recently, I expressed my struggle, and they questioned why it’s not finished. I fear they might let me go. Some senior friends of mine advised me to leave. I’m unsure; any advice? Also, my salary is 50k which as I know, rather low.

  • cantux@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Is this core part of the company’s work or a long shot? they might just have put on a wild bet on the project and now looking to drop it.

    See how much money the project will make in different time frames and try to get people to be enthusiastic about it. get a green or red light from your skip levels, higher the better. if you are cut from the higher levels or simply just don’t know how to even begin the conversation, try to find why that is the case.

    All this is given that you busted your ass off and were smart going about your work.

    If you have dropped the ball, which happens, ask for 2 months to wrap things up.

    I ask for 2 months specifically when this happens and drop all my plans outside of work…

    2 months is sort of the sweet spot because 1) dropping the ball in the first place means I wasn’t in the rhythm and gonna have to build up to it. 2) I can’t drop everything else more than 2 months.

    In the first month I do a bit of dmg control, reassess success metrics, set out a month plan, see what’s missing and try to estimate risk of the project for the upcoming month. I try to set the simplest chain of goals that will lead to demo/presentation/release. Thing is, there shouldn’t be any project that can’t be wrapped in a month’s time. If you don’t see the project getting wrapped up in a reasonable time(working at nights and weekends) that usually means that some part of the project is escaping you(missing requirements, design, docs, lack of understanding of an science aspect or business). You need to come up with a concrete plan to attack it and ask for more time. It is unreasonable for a boss/manager to expect and employee to know everything or pick up everything with very little effort or time. Employee just needs to be vocal and smart about where they are at with the work and ask for help.

    You said you asked for help and none is provided. Have you tried arcane spells of forgotten? Oh they don’t exist you say? Well there might just be not much to do…