Getting through your probation period

What's actually assessed

Not lines of code and not knowledge of technologies. Three things:

Learning. How quickly you stop asking the same question. Not "do you know" but "do you absorb".

Reliability. You took a task and finished it. You gave a date and warned when it slipped. You said you'd look and you looked.

Working with people. Whether you ask, whether you take feedback without taking offence, whether you flag problems.

Technical ability is assessed, but partings happen most often over those three. Someone weak but reliable and quick to learn gets taught. Someone strong but difficult doesn't.

The first month

Write everything down. System names, who owns what, where things live, how releases work. Asking the same thing three times is what gets remembered badly.

Ask, but not instantly. A sensible rule: try for half an hour, then ask. Not two days and not two minutes.

Ask well. Not "it doesn't work, help" but "I'm doing this, I get this error, I tried that, I suspect the cause is this — am I right?". That costs the other person five minutes instead of thirty, and it gets noticed.

Batch your questions. Urgent ones aside. One visit with five questions beats five visits.

Learn how to ship a change. Travel the whole route from code to production as early as possible, even on a trivial fix.

What not to do

Don't stay silent when stuck. The most common cause of a failed probation. Three days of silent struggle looks worse than a question in the second hour.

Don't say "will do" without understanding the task. Better to ask again than to build the wrong thing.

Don't rewrite existing code to your taste. The first months are for understanding, not improving. There's often a reason behind a strange decision.

Don't argue with feedback on principle. Clarifying, yes. Defending your position with reasons, yes. Arguing so as not to look weak, no.

Don't go quiet. If you're ill, running late, or slipping, say so. Silence reads worse than any news.

About feedback

Ask for it yourself. After a month, go to your manager: "How have my first weeks looked, what should I correct?" Many wait for the final review and hear the complaints at the end, when it's too late to act.

The question also demonstrates maturity: someone who wants to know how their work looks from outside.

Act on feedback visibly. Told to write clearer names? The next change should show it. A correction that's noticed is worth more than a perfect first attempt.

If you feel you're not coping

The usual feeling of the first months, and almost always exaggerated. You're surrounded by people with years of experience, and comparing yourself with them is pointless.

But if the doubt persists, say it plainly: "I think I'm going slower than needed. Is that right?" The answer will either reassure you or tell you what to fix — either beats guessing.

About an honest outcome

Sometimes it doesn't work: the wrong field, the wrong team, the wrong pace. That happens and it doesn't mean you're unsuited to the profession.

Parting during probation is routine, and on a CV it looks far less alarming than it feels from the inside.