Academic Abstract: Background: Newbies in their early stage of software engineering careers suffer from unfitting task assignments, unclear job expectations, and insufficient communications with managers frequently, which leads to personal frustration, unsatisfactory team performance, and low employee retention. Goals: The goal of this research is to investigate new software developers’ “sink or swim” early career experience from the following four dimensions: job assignment, newbie-manager pairing, job satisfaction, and thoughts and suggestions. Methodology: To achieve our research goal, we conducted an empirical study by distributing an online questionnaire that includes both qualitative and quantitative questions. Results: There are several factors contributing to a “sink or swim” early career experience, such as unclear about what to do, who to report to, lack of communication, and vague expectations, posing negative impacts on both individuals and the organization. In addition, we also propose a new community smell in our paper - Newbie Sink or Swim, based on our investigation. Conclusions: The early stage is critical to software developers’ careers. A failing start phase has detrimental effects on software developers and development teams. Our study empirically examines software developers’ early careers from various aspects, providing deeper insights into how to build a more supportive and productive working environment for entry-level developers in the software community.

Lay Abstract: The significance of software engineering in our technology-driven world cannot be overstated. Software bridges the divide between technology and business, resulting in the creation of dependable, secure, and efficient software solutions to complex and cutting-edge problems in our society today.

Software developers are pivotal in developing such solutions. Even though the examination of software developers is not a new topic in the research community, the investigation into early career professionals from an empirical view is limited. To fill this knowledge gap, we surveyed early career software developers (newbies) with a varied demographic composition to investigate their “sink or swim” experiences. We scope this experience within four perspectives: 1) whether or not newbies know or are clearly informed of what to work on; 2) whether or not newbies know who to report to, or who is responsible for managing them; 3) newbie’s job satisfaction, described as feeling valued and contributing to the organization; 4) thoughts and suggestions sourced directly from newbies to enhance early career experience.

Our study results revealed several factors that play a significant role in causing a “sink or swim” early career, such as new developers do not know what to do and who to report to, lack of clear job expectation, and working on tasks that do not match their skills. “Sink or swim” early career experience leaves newbies distressed and demotivated, leading to a higher chance of quitting their jobs. Our participants also offered their suggestions to mitigate the “sink or swim” early career stage, such as self-advocate and frequent meetings with managers. Meanwhile, it is noteworthy to mention that organizations should be committed to building a supportive working environment and uplifting culture for all employees, especially for early-stage software developers.