I Got My First Dev Job. I Was Not Ready.
After months of grinding through self-teaching, late-night tutorials, rejected applications, and learning English alongside JavaScript, I finally landed my first dev job.
Big corporate IT company. Big expectations. Big lie on my resume.
And still, somehow - I got in.
Let me tell you what it was like to land your first dev job after years of learning in the dark, lying just to get in - and realizing the real test had only just begun.
The First Standup
I knew what a standup was, technically. Say what you did yesterday, what you’re doing today, and if you’re blocked. That’s what the blogs said.
But in real life? Everyone was speaking fluent “Team Status Jargon.”
They were referencing internal tools I’d never seen, blockers I didn’t understand, other teams I didn’t know existed. And then it was my turn. I had maybe two sentences. I mumbled them. Camera off, voice shaking.
“I finished the ticket. Working on the next one.”
No context. No confidence. Just praying no one would follow up with questions.
Every other standup felt like I was crashing a conversation I didn’t belong in. One time, I actually pretended not to be there. Camera off, mic muted. My manager mentioned my name to get support for something he was saying, and I just… stayed silent. He awkwardly joked, “Ah, he does that.”
It was cringy. But it worked. And I hated that it worked.
It took me a year to figure out how to give a real update - not just what I did, but what mattered.
The Brainstorming Meeting
They said we were “designing a system.” I expected diagrams, specs, maybe a whiteboard.
Instead, I sat there watching my teammates casually build architecture with a mix of hand gestures, inside jokes, and tool names I only vaguely recognized.
“We can pull from Kafka into Lambda, wrap it in this monitoring thing, maybe use X for orchestration?”
“Rich, thoughts?”
I had nothing. I recognized some names. Didn’t know how they fit together. Didn’t even know what the actual goal was.
So I nodded and said something like, “Yeah I could probably take the X part and look into hooking it up to Y.”
It wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t real. And I knew it.
Weirdly, just seeing someone nod at me in meetings - even if they didn’t really know what I was saying - gave me confidence. I clung to those nods like lifeboats.
What No One Told Me
No tutorial prepares you for this.
No one teaches you how to speak when you have no clue what’s going on.
No one explains how to gauge if you’re doing okay.
No one gives you a dictionary for acronyms flying over your head.
No one tells you that it’s totally normal to feel like an idiot.
And here’s the truth: It’s not about being smart. It’s about learning how to survive long enough to learn what matters.
How I Got Through It
I stopped trying to impress anyone. I started taking notes on everything. I copied how others spoke. I wrote my own scripts. I tracked every acronym, tool, and decision until it made sense.
When I didn’t know, I admitted it. When I got quiet, I followed up later in DMs. I learned to prep for every meeting like it was a mini performance.
I once kept a Google Doc called "Meetings I Survived." It wasn’t a joke. It was therapy.
Slowly, I stopped drowning. Then I started treading water. Then I started contributing.
If You're There Too
If you’re reading this and nodding: same. You’re not broken. You’re not behind.
You’re just new. And this industry is terrible at welcoming new people.
Here’s what helped me in those first days:
Prep one sentence for every meeting
Ask dumb questions early - they get harder later
Find the teammate who’s kind and latch on
Write your own glossary of tools and terms
Keep your updates short but real
Don’t fake confidence - earn it through consistency
Don’t expect clarity. You won’t get it.
Expect to sweat, mumble in meetings, and learn the hard way - with people watching.
And keep showing up anyway.
I’m still doing it. Faking less. Screwing up better.
Next post: what happens when the meetings don’t stop, but the expectations keep rising.