I am struggling to perform my job

Question

I graduated in May and was already hired for a dream job. I work in a STEM field and there is a lot to learn. However, I had always done well until now. I got straight A's in school, worked exclusively with school faculty on certain jobs, I even worked with my school's president on a job. I was their first choice for a lot of things. I completed an internship with positive feedback from the employer. I had two job offers before I graduated. Now, suddenly, it seems like I'm failing on just about every task I'm given at work. I work for a small company that is trying to grow rapidly. My tasks go beyond my education and I do a lot of administrative stuff too, which I love.

Most of my job is very techincal. I knew my ability to perform this job was going to take effort on my part to keep learning outside of school. I frequently spend my weekends studying new things related to my position and completing tasks I couldn't finish during the week. I was never really given any training for this position. Everyone I work with has decades of experience and I have less than a year's worth. I often tried to ask for help when I didn't understand something but I was given loosely sketched drawings and told to look at previous projects that were similar. I've been there for half a year and I barely feel like I've caught on. I am getting paid exactly what I asked for and I really do believe in this company, so I want to stay. But the idea of simply joining a larger company that has better training and less demands sounds too tempting some days. Have you been in a similar situation? What would you do in my situation? Before I do anything too big, I know I should talk with one of my superiors, but I'm not sure how to even approach that conversation. Any advice?

Answer 1

First: It is quite normal to be struggling if you enter into a new and demanding field. Especially so at a startup, where you constantly take on responsibilities outside of your normal field of work. Not because you are qualified to do it, but because you are currently the most qualified that is available. The good thing is, this will get better, the more the startup transitions into a regular business.

Rapid growth goes with a constant overload, that is just normal in a world where you do have limited resources. So I guess your colleagues basically feel the same, they are just more experienced and thus are used to it and don´t get stressed out so fast.

If no one complains about your work, and you get assigned new responsibilities form time to time, that is a sign you are doing alright! If someone seems annoyed by you not knowing everything, maybe they expect you to step up and take more responsibility for dealing with things nobody knows how to deal with, yet?

I suggest you seek to establish regular 1-on-1 feedback with your boss and/or any of your colleagues you think can help you develop. This goes both ways, so you can also give them valuable hints on where you think the organisation needs to improve. The good thing: As the company grows, you can gradually give away responsibilities to new hires and shape your position much more to your preference. Until then, you will learn a lot more than any trainee-program could teach you (with a lot more struggling involved).

Answer 2

Work and school are two very very different things. Every last one of us, even those of us with decades of experience are STILL learning. As to learning things and completing things on your own time, that is TYPICAL in the STEM fields, especially when you are starting out.

As for no training, stop thinking like that. You are not in school anymore and people will not hold your hand. You're doing the right thing by learning on your own. Keep it up and don't expect training.

Moving to a bigger company will not help. While they may be more willing to train you, you'll find that the training has limited benefit at best. At worst, a bigger company will be far less tolerant of mistakes and errors. As you're new to your field, you're going to have plenty of those.

School gives you all of this wonderful theory, what you are experiencing now is the same shock that most students get when they enter the REAL WORLD(tm) of what you've learned as it ACTUALLY is.

Or, as a dear, departed friend of mine used to say "In theory, theory and practice are the same, in practice, they are not."

Every last job I have ever had in the technical field has exceeded my education, again, in the STEM fields that's to be expected.

The training wheels are off, and you're in the job now. Keep studying, keep making mistakes, keep learning from them and stick with your job. Don't expect your coworkers to drop everything to teach you, you already know enough, not it's time to apply what you know, and learn on your own, the things that you don't.

Answer 3

I was in a similar situation just under 2 years ago. Got my Masters and my first real career job not just side gigs to pay for survival. I work for one of the largest companies in America, within the top 15 of the Fortune 500 but my department works somewhere between startup and a company with >200k employees. The department is 40 people total now and we have hired a few people right out of school like me. It was a bit of getting used to for me too working vs school. All in all, since I started we have hired 6 fresh graduates including myself. All either MS or PhDs. Only four are left. Two left within three months of being hired and from where I say it look like it was because they could not make the transition from schooling to work.

As Richard U pointed out there is a difference between the two. You probably feel imposter syndrome, as do I still all the time. I think the big to remember is that saying 'i don't know' is ok, as long as it is followed by 'but I work in figuring it out' or 'but I know how to figure out what the issue probably is'. After spending some time on it, it it is ok to say you need help, as long as you can show that you did work on your own toward the goal. Being given new things to do is a good sign. The place you really don't want to be is where tasks aren't given to you because people higher in the food chain don't feel you can even figure out what you don't know. You don't want your tasks to be ones where people higher up feel they are damage limitation tasks, ones where the damage you cause is the damage someone else will fix with the least amount of effort.

One of the two people who left us recently used to not bring up issues or problems he ran into. We run scrum and he would work on things all through the sprint, in the second to last day he would then bring up in standup that he was stuck in all his tasks and had been working on research projects the last week. This is not the guy you want to be. He was someone new tasks weren't given to, his task assignments were damage limitation.

The other thing I want to bring up is employment type. I will assume you are probably salaried. My boss likes to say being salaried has many benefits but also means there is no time limit to a day. That can be taken in two ways, either The first 6 months I was working I spent probably 2 or 3 extra hours a week at work learning our systems, understanding code, trying to extend our products with functionalities (these usually failed but gave me much better insight into how things work, and the two that did pan out looked really good come review time :D )