how do you guys deal with supervisors that don't teach you the ropes? i need to learn some job specific stuff quickly, but i don't get much attention and it kind sucks to step on someone's toes. at this point, going over my immediate superior feels like the only thing i can do...

I always tell the devs under me to take an hour out of my calendar to discuss anything they want.

If they don't, that's on them.

Be proactive about asking for help. At the very least, you will have proof that they aren't helping you(for whatever reason) when you follow the chain of command.

@sariel yeah i do text him always, but he often doesn't read or just leaves me on read

@darksideofyay

Make a list of questions, best showing your own understanding and possible solutions / problems, and hand it out to him.

Wether via e-mail / chat / whatever. Best as a PDF with proper (text-) structure and formatting.

To be precise: Make an _undeniable_ effort.

If you _feel_ you need to go to a superior, be prepared. And be respectful regarding time. At least wait 24h after sending the questionnaire to your supervisor.

This is not only for your superiors… but mostly for yourself. It's a good thing to be not only prepared, but to have something visible that assures you you did everything you could.

Makes the "hard talk" a bit easier. :)

Don't go over your bosses head unless it's a real last resort. It'll likely just lead to animosity.

That being said, is there anyone else you can talk to in your team, or any other more friendly faces in other teams you can call upon who might help? This really shouldn't *all* fall on your boss - others should be able to help too. I'll expect to put aside a good chunk of my time to get someone up to speed when they join and I expect the team in general to be helpful and accomodating - but I get not everywhere runs like that unfortunately.

@AlmondSauce we only got to this point because there's no knowledge sharing in the team. no one else knows how it's done, and I'm supposed to become his substitute

@darksideofyay That's a dysfunctional team in that case, you're not to blame and I wouldn't hang around longer than you have to.

Literally did a CS MSc after a Physics BSc to avoid this problem. It's very easy for managers to teach you enough to do the job and nothing else. I've probably been guilty of this before, but I try really hard to protect anyone I have responsibility for. That's a lot easier when someone above me trusts me and is protecting me too. My current job, I'm having complaints because I'm "taking longer than expected" on tasks I've got no experience with. I'm expected not to bother learning the library we're using, just Google shit and copy/paste. There's this vague "if we aren't seen to be producing, we're gonna get complaints", which I slightly get, but someone agreed to deadlines on my project without discussing them with me. It's quite short sited and misses the "bursty" nature of software engineer productivity.

At the same time, I'm new so I get that they aren't sure if I'm fucking about. That said, I've given opinions that I didn't want to put forward too forcefully coz of their attitude (comments at interview that in hindsight are utter bullshit but hindsight..). They didn't listen. Gave really clear explanations of the problem. They didn't listen.

My manager spends a day trying to understand what I'd been doing, sends me messages complaining about problems that I'd worked out how to avoid and documented.

Long story short, I've had a really good weekend writing the basics of a "code+maths explained in code+machine learning" tutorial/course/whatever. So that's been fun. When I've got at least one topic explained, I'm gonna stick it on github. Will probably be an explanation of SVD (linear regression analytic solution) in pure python.

I'm also not a manager, so it's easier to not worry about short term deadlines.