Have a question for more seasoned developers/techies in the industry. I started my first software development job 7 months ago and I am contract to hire. There’s only two developers (including myself) on my team and we’ve been working on two separate projects that’s apart of a bigger system. He was a contractor but because our company took too long to get back to him about converting he interviewed and accepted an offer at Amazon (don’t blame him). Now I have to take over his project as well as mine which would be overwhelming to say the least... our team is almost entirely remote so it can be difficult to communicate sometimes and our company is heavy in process so development moves slow. Should I start looking for other opportunities or should I stick it out and gain experience even though the workload is unrealistic?

That’s only 2 projects.

I self dev 3 ecommerce platforms plus the background automations and a handful of legacy projects - I would like to turn off but companies will be companies.

Speaking of which, I really need to hire a dev next year 😨, but that’s a long ass list of requirements I’m going to need to write down.

Back on track... If the workload is too much, feel free to request another dev.
Absorbing extra projects is not for everyone, and becomes a battle for time management and conflicting logic per project (where it exists) which is easy to get lost in which project does what.

@C0D4 the workload would be what I was doing plus what he was doing... so yeah it would be literally two people’s worth of work. Fortunately my manager realizes this fact and let me post pone the one I was working on to focus on his project (reading the codebase ect) to prepare to continue its development.

@C0D4 sorry but “that’s only 2 project” is a bold statement. Projects vary too greatly in size and complexity to ascertain that 2 projects is manageable by one dev. Especially when most of the time projects are tackled by multiple devs.

Not to mention the non dev related stuff that comes with each project. Like interfacing with different teams, mapping out dependencies, getting access to different systems, ect...

@dalastTomCruise I know, and don’t get me wrong, i wasn’t having a go at you.

I’ve absorbed the workload of 4 (full time) devs in as many years, either moving to other teams or left the company.
It’s gotten to the point I’m forced to hire someone to take up the slack, as I have roughly 3-4 (including the bunch of legacy projects) hours a week available per project and a never ending list of requirements being spat out of thin air for each.

Which brings me Back to the over Burden of time management and company expectations.
Either you’ll be able to Manage the excess workload or you won’t, both scenarios are completely acceptable and I wish you good luck in managing your time.

The first absorption was the hardest, breaking up time to allow For multiple projects was a hard transition, 2 & 3 was easier to adjust too, but time was impacted deeply, now I’m out of time and working weekends to keep up, which I know will only lead to burnout in the short term.

@C0D4 Damn, yeah doesn’t sound fun. Hope you find a solid dev that can take a lot of that weight off your shoulders. Thanks for the encouragement, I will definitely need to manage my time a lot better and be more confident with reaching out when I need questions answered. I have a bad habit of not reaching out until the last minute and then when I finally do a lot of time has been wasted. So I guess I just need to have more confidence and be more attentive during meetings to be sure that I understand the details so I can make the requirements. My coworker was actually more experienced than me so it was nice to have him guiding me every now and then. But now I’m taking his role so it’s gonna be a challenge. But with every challenge comes opportunity.