I'm in my first job as a software engineering grad in Canada. I took a job with a government agency this September after an offer fell through late (April) and I took the first job I could (as you will see, I am a person who needs proof that I am capable and that offer was a beacon in a mess). It has good pay (especially for my area which is not a software hub), but I can't wait to get out of there every day.
The problems:
They are extremely cheap when it comes to software spending for the developers. Bug tracking system? Too expensive. So we just don't track bugs in a centralized way. Independent QA systems? No, the three QA testers must either use one test server or learn to compile software themselves. We were told to just keep renewing our IDE trials every 30 days, so they don't pay for those either. We have very minimal access to cloud services because of the cost. We have to go easy on Jenkins to conserve hard drive space.
The team is inexperienced as everyone gets hired on a temp to hire contract. The median time for a developer there is currently 6 months. The only person to be there more than a year is our lead. As a result, nobody knows anything about the systems.
They oppose documentation because of "Agile." Forget documenting code, they don't even document features. I have been repeatedly assigned to develop features which already exist.
Things just move so slowly. Each developer is supposed to do 21 points of work a sprint and a sprint is two weeks. I have consistently finished in under 6 days, including unit and Selenium tests (myself and the new QA are the only ones to do this type of testing). They don't finish and accuse me of "pushing the pace."
My background. I have never had a proper software job before, so I don't know if it the environment or the job I hate. Past jobs were in quantitative finance, where the work was highly individual, as well as at a startup, where I was one of two developers. This is the first job where I don't make my own calls as to the pace of work or how complex things are, or don't get much insight into the project and just get handed widgets to do.
What are my options after 6 months? A friend offered me a spot with her startup (I have done all their prior dev work), but with a recession plausible in the near future in Canada, I'm worried that 6 months as a government worker and time as the main dev at a startup will look absurd on a resume.
I realize this isn't a discussion forum, so I have two clear questions.
Is this normal for software development? Is it representative of your experiences?
If it is not, then what can I do for my market value in the next few months (I'll stick around until at least March to avoid seeming like a job hopper).to exit effectively? I have a good engineering degree from a top Canadian university, good grades, a pile of hackathon awards (and can get more if they are useful), have a decent project to show off (my friend's tech startup website), etc. I have an ok StackOverflow profile too if that is worth anything (2000-3000 points and 150ish answers).
It's just how to deal with landing badly after university which scares me.