“ Should I be writing reminders to myself to always double check everything? Should I write down the steps to every process?”
This sounds like it’s your first job so people should be forgiving and helpful. If you are at big corp (since you mention PIP) then why isn’t there a better onboarding?
Anyway yes you should probably be writing more stuff down. A lot of what you’re learning isn’t taught in class which is the processes and dynamics of the actual team and company.
So a lot it would be new and an adjustment period, not only to the job but work life in general. Adjustment to my first job was hard. Being in the same work space for a full work day was difficult when friends were just studying. Interacting with people twice my age. Being the youngest person in the office.
With this new environment comes new difficulties so what comes as common knowledge or second nature to experienced employees can be confusing or hard to grasp for first timers. Having said that, not grasping this or acting forgetful or needing something to be explained multiple times can come across as incompetent or often rude. When that’s happened to me in the past it’s given me the impression of “this person clearly does not give a shit or is stupid because this is the 5th time I’m explaining it”.
So yes I recommend taking good notes.
Other strange flags is your Manager being away for so long. This whole post reads as things you should bring up with your manager. Not having a manager around since December may even be something you want to bring up to HR so you transfer teams.
I agree with most of this, but also wouldn't want OP to be afraid to ask questions. My most common source of frustration with junior devs is when they toil away at something that's over their head for way too long before just asking a question. Often when you're quite new you don't know how much you don't know and might think if you just keep at it you'll eventually make progress, whereas in reality you're not even heading in the right direction.
So yes, definitely write down every process and take notes on everything you learn. Also review and summarize your notes so they're actually useful. That way you hopefully won't often have to ask the same question twice. But any time you feel like you're spinning your wheels or are unsure what to do, I'd encourage going ahead and asking. Over time you can also probably identify who's best at answering what kinds of questions, ideally allowing you to ask the right people, while not pestering any one person too much. But keep in mind sometimes you can actually be saving the senior devs' time by asking a quick question early rather than having a bunch of wasted work or delays later on.
This sounds like it’s your first job so people should be forgiving and helpful. If you are at big corp (since you mention PIP) then why isn’t there a better onboarding?
Anyway yes you should probably be writing more stuff down. A lot of what you’re learning isn’t taught in class which is the processes and dynamics of the actual team and company.
So a lot it would be new and an adjustment period, not only to the job but work life in general. Adjustment to my first job was hard. Being in the same work space for a full work day was difficult when friends were just studying. Interacting with people twice my age. Being the youngest person in the office.
With this new environment comes new difficulties so what comes as common knowledge or second nature to experienced employees can be confusing or hard to grasp for first timers. Having said that, not grasping this or acting forgetful or needing something to be explained multiple times can come across as incompetent or often rude. When that’s happened to me in the past it’s given me the impression of “this person clearly does not give a shit or is stupid because this is the 5th time I’m explaining it”.
So yes I recommend taking good notes.
Other strange flags is your Manager being away for so long. This whole post reads as things you should bring up with your manager. Not having a manager around since December may even be something you want to bring up to HR so you transfer teams.