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I have been at my current position for ~1.5 years as a developer. This is my first full time position after finishing school, and I have worked with 2 other developers on a multitude of projects during my time so far.

One of those developers (let's call him Bob) has been at his current position for ~3 years. He was the first developer at the company as well as built many of the "first" projects that are still running. At this point in time he has been as developer for 10+ years, but he is leaving for a new position in a few weeks.

The other developer has also departed, so I am soon going to be the only developer left.

My question is - Being someone who is generally new to this line of work (compared to my peers) how can I best prepare for being the only developer? (I'm thinking inheriting code written a few years ago, and not having 5x the amount of experience to off set the lack of help)

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  • @JoeStrazzere The interesting part is that my current manager has been at the company for ~2 weeks, so I am hesitant to even ask since he is still figuring things out. – confusedandamused Sep 5 '17 at 19:09
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Why don't you ask to schedule a 1 on 1 with the senior dev who is leaving? But before asking, go through the projects that will come your way, compile a list of questions and languages used, such that you can focus down your conversation when you have it.

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  • Thank you for the suggestion - thankfully he is making himself available to me even after he leaves. Which is very nice, but I would prefer not to bug him a ton since he will likely be busy. – confusedandamused Sep 5 '17 at 18:44
  • Ensuring that project functionality is important to an organization, if you are familiar with the bus factor en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor, then I am sure that he/she will appreciate the fact that you trying to glean as much wisdom and knowledge from him/her before he/she leaves. – Frank FYC Sep 5 '17 at 18:48
  • I knew of the bus factor, but didn't know that was the name it went by - thanks for the link. Thanks for the idea! – confusedandamused Sep 5 '17 at 18:50
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    This, plus make sure that your senior documents anything that isn't documented now (about the systems they wrote, gotchas, anything really) – 2rs2ts Sep 5 '17 at 19:14
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    Documentation, if it isn't already there, I doubt it will be in the upcoming weeks. See one of my closed and downvoted questions, workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/96714/…, documentation is hard to begin with, asking it from others? Well... if you find a solution, let me know. – Frank FYC Sep 5 '17 at 19:34

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