Facing First-Day Anxieties

“Starting to get a bit anxious now... One minute till my first meeting starts. What do I say? Do I need to say anything? What happens if I mess up? On my first day!? This is stressful. I’ve got to do this every day.”

These thoughts raced through my mind on the first day with my first ever client, after completing the SDET Academy. Anxiety was at an all-time high, and not knowing entirely what was going to happen on the other side of that “Join Meeting” button definitely didn’t help.

Being new to the role of a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET), I didn’t want to embarrass myself by speaking out of turn, not quite gauging social cues or knowing the proper online working etiquette. Navigating first-day anxieties in the tech world, particularly in a remote working environment, can feel daunting, but it’s also an essential part of the SDET onboarding process.

My nFocus team and colleagues assured me that I had all of the training, skills and expertise to hit the ground running but it's only natural to have first day nerves.

I’m Aydan, a graduate SDET at nFocus based near Southampton, and I’ve recently been placed with my first client. I found the academy helped me to get ready with the technical and soft skills that are required to work within a software development team. Although there are some things that can’t be taught through theory and practical exercises and are better picked up through raw experiences, taking these things head-on.

In the few months that I’ve been placed with my client, I feel like I’ve picked up on a few different points when it comes to being integrated into a new team as a freshly trained SDET, and in this blog I’m going to touch on a few of them.

Communication Skills for SDETS: The Importance of Communication

Communication is a massive topic when it comes to working in an online agile software development environment. A lot can go wrong, but there’s a lot that can be done to make sure things go right.

From my experience, it can be quite hard to get across to new team members how exactly to go about communicating, especially when everyone is working online. It’s difficult to pick up on acceptable conventions for speaking to people in group meetings or trying to coordinate one-on-one calls with your new colleagues.

Blending into the Team: Navigating Your Onboarding Experience

I was very fortunate with my first client. As they had experience with taking on a few graduate SDETs over the past couple of years, they understood how to integrate me into their team smoothly. The team had blended things into their daily routines that gave me an idea of how to gauge how colloquial to chat with team members, whether that was casually or regarding the project we were working on. These routines established a positive tone for the work environment, fostering productivity and team cohesion. They also made a newcomer like me, as an incoming SDET, feel genuinely welcomed and valued.

Examples like shadowing, team building, and simply being open can help an SDET newcomer like me feel welcome and help to nurture a warm communicative environment. When communication is free flowing and there’s no apprehension, it can be seen how this influences the fluidity and speed in software testing and development processes.

Breaking the Ice

One habit the client focused on that I found particularly helpful in multiple aspects was their hobby presentations. A rota selects one person each week to present a PowerPoint on a passion of theirs. It would typically be that they give the presentation, then there would be a conversation around the topic for about ten minutes afterwards.

It was really interesting to learn about what some of my colleagues that worked in different parts of the business would get up to in their free time. Even though working remotely reaps a multitude of benefits, there are some minor drawbacks, with one of them being that you often can’t find space to have these informal chats with workmates where you unearth these pastime Easter eggs.

This is one example of an exercise that helps to build team cohesion and make newcomers feel more welcome through negating this drawback. When I first joined one of these presentation mornings, I remember sitting back and reading how people interact, seeing how I can mirror this to try and more easily talk to colleagues.

Overcoming the Fear of Asking Questions

A big stress point for me when starting out with my client was trying to not come across as a nuisance by asking too many questions. It took a lot of effort to figure out when to ask questions and what to ask because I didn’t want to be seen to ask too often and become a nuisance, as if to say I was inept.

Looking back on this, it’s a silly point for me to get stuck on because being inquisitive and asking good questions is part and parcel of the job when testing software. Although I think it’s hard to be able to set the tone for when it comes to asking for things, I felt my client helped with this by setting an example, querying things wherever possible, and also initially giving me as much as possible so I didn't end up having to ask many questions to start with.

Onboarding Experience in Building Communication Skills 

I feel like good onboarding was crucial to me being able to fit into the team smoothly and continue the flow of development. I was given various documents and links to read up on if I was stuck on using a certain part of their application, quickly granted access to code repositories to start understanding developers’ conversations in meetings, and I was also shown a wiki that went through how to use their application in the front and back end.

All of these helped because it meant I didn’t have to ask as many questions relating to actually setting up and getting the ball rolling when manually testing the client’s application. It also meant that most of the questions I asked after this onboarding period could be mostly focused on the development topics at hand.

Power of the Pen

One ritual I found very useful when I became more confident in contributing more to stand-ups and other daily meetings was writing certain points down at the end of the previous day. I realised I would often forget things until after the main morning meetings, like where I came across a blocker that someone might be able to help with or any updates to current issues that I was working on that could help another developer.

Using the tried and true pen and paper helped avoid this, and bullet-pointing these things was also something that was highlighted through various practical sessions when learning through topics in the SDET academy. Writing points down that might have any semblance of importance throughout the day proved to be valuable, even if that particular thing ended up being insignificant and didn’t warrant being brought up in a meeting.

Handling Feedback and Building Confidence

There will be numerous opportunities for your client to provide feedback, and I think with agile SDLC methodologies, feedback and constructive criticism come baked into the practice. I feel like the SDET academy taught us a lot about taking feedback onboard and turning it into a good learning opportunity, and to reflect that into future work that we produce, whether it’s for  a current project or just in general.

No genuine feedback or improvement points are a personal attack on a team member, just a place to grow, prevent future mistakes, and build on collaborating better as a team. This particular area is something I felt like my client excelled in a lot; they would hold sprint retrospectives that had a wholesome team approach. The meeting would cover what went well, what didn’t go well, and what can be done better, and in that the team as a whole or individuals could highlight or be highlighted for these certain categories. It felt really constructive because team members could either chip on potential solutions or prop up other team members, or teams as a whole, that had done well in a particular area that sprint.

Final Thoughts

Good communication has helped to make my SDET journey a lot more navigable as I’ve progressed with my client. It’s made onboarding and catching up with a project a lot easier and smoother, which has led to me being able to contribute more than I thought I could initially.

Throughout the time with my client, I’ve seen my communication skills evolve. I would like to think that I can be seen as a more open and approachable member of the team, especially as my knowledge base continues to grow. From asking more questions, to contacting team members I wouldn’t usually communicate with much for help, it’s all contributed to how I work today.

I would say the most significant factor in advancing my learning and building my confidence, has been overcoming the fear of making mistakes or asking what might seem like a silly question. If it wasn’t for asking questions with answers that could have been obvious to others or making a mistake when writing up an issue, I don’t think I’d be making the progress I’m making today. A key to feeling confident in your work is knowing that you are doing the right thing, and the only way to find that is to speak up, or make the mistakes and correct them.