Some things that have helped me in the past when ramping on teams:
* take notes and reference them, particularly when asking questions to teammates. This way I won’t ask the same questions repeatedly. Usually people won’t get irritated by questions unless you give the impression not to be learning.
* ask questions frequently!! Everyone is shy about asking questions but the more people ask the better for everyone. Sometimes simple questions surface important issues. (Also, this https://danluu.com/look-stupid/)
* sometimes a team isn’t a good learning environment. That’s okay. Learn what you can and switch to a better environment when you can.
* sometimes senior folks don’t know how to assign tasks appropriately for someone to ramp up.
* ask for feedback directly!! This can be intimidating but it’s the only way to really know how the team perceives you. And if they see you looking to improve hopefully they’ll help with that.
* try to find an explicit mentor who can meet with you on some regular cadence and help you distinguish what is an issue just because your Junior vs what’s a team issue vs whatever else
* take notes and reference them, particularly when asking questions to teammates. This way I won’t ask the same questions repeatedly. Usually people won’t get irritated by questions unless you give the impression not to be learning.
* ask questions frequently!! Everyone is shy about asking questions but the more people ask the better for everyone. Sometimes simple questions surface important issues. (Also, this https://danluu.com/look-stupid/)
* sometimes a team isn’t a good learning environment. That’s okay. Learn what you can and switch to a better environment when you can.
* sometimes senior folks don’t know how to assign tasks appropriately for someone to ramp up.
* ask for feedback directly!! This can be intimidating but it’s the only way to really know how the team perceives you. And if they see you looking to improve hopefully they’ll help with that.
* try to find an explicit mentor who can meet with you on some regular cadence and help you distinguish what is an issue just because your Junior vs what’s a team issue vs whatever else