My first day as an Intern developer in a startup was a DISASTER, and no I am not over exaggerating. I had mentioned it in my first blog (check it here) about the story of how I got the internship and knowing that one can guess, why my first day would have been a disaster. I had no idea what lied ahead, going into a new realm of work. Being from a different background of study and then working in a very different field altogether was quite overwhelming.
I can never forget that first group call, we were introduced to the team where we exchanged a few light-hearted comments with other developers, along with their backgrounds and field of study. To my surprise, almost half the developers were in fact from no CS field, but later on, had shifted to computer science. This certainly gave me some confidence and hope that I can maybe survive here. It happens sometimes right? try and remember the school days when you forgot a notebook on the day of submissions and you are worried about the punishment that follows, but you notice that 20 more have done the same, and now you feel less worried for no reason, it was that kind of feeling. So after the formalities were over, we were assigned tasks for the day, my task, now when I think of it was fairly simple and very easy, but when it was instructed to me, I had no idea how will I complete it. I can't explain the whole thing here but it was of creating a plugin on a third-party website." plugin', "third party", "XML" these words were brand new to my brain, and as anyone's brain does, my brain refused to comprehend them. All in all the task was more research-oriented than coding because even our manager knew that he had to keep it light for me on the first day. On the other hand, I despised him for giving me such a task. From the 1st minute, I knew I won't be able to complete it because I had never heard anything like it, and secondly I didn't know where to start from? Knowing where to start from is half the battle won, but not knowing what and how to do it certainly kicks your confidence to the ground.
We all know that it's important to learn from experiences and not repeat the mistake ever again, but nobody talks about how difficult it is to see yourself make that mistake and do nothing about it, anyway, the day went by , i couldn't do anything. At EOD we all met for another call and discussed our progress. I had nothing to talk about because I had made no progress, I was ready for the embarrassment that was due to be followed, "first day, first impression, and he did nothing !!" I knew I had to hear the inevitable, but to my surprise, all I heard was," no worries, tell me what were the obstacles that slowed you down?" How nice of him to save me from the embarrassment, but on second thought, what were the obstacles that slowed me down, I didn't have anything to answer to that either! and just when I was about to say that I don't know how to answer the question, a realization struck me, all this time I was looking at the problem from an outsider's perspective and never really thought of solving the problem, all I was thinking the whole day was, how would I start? instead, I should have thought about whats the problem at hand, broken it down into small hurdles, and should have crossed each hurdle by the minute slowly and steadily, treating it not like a race against time, but ensuring that I cross each hurdle with the right mindset and direction and thus friends my little hurdle theory was born, and the day that I did nothing went on to teach me a lesson that never kept me idle.
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