Eighteen months as an intern at Sonoka, condensed to four lines on a sticky note above my desk. The longer letter, for anyone who wants the why.
The premise
A short letter to past-me about how to spend the first year and a half. Skip nothing. Read it all twice.
Listen first
For three months I treated every standup like a job interview. The shift came when I stopped trying to add a contribution and just took notes. The architecture I tripped over in week one was something senior engineers had explained in week zero, but I hadn't been ready to hear it.
Ship small
The PR that taught me the most was 14 lines. It fixed a CI flake nobody else wanted to chase. I read the entire test runner that week and never had to ask "why did CI fail again" without a guess.
Read the diff twice
Once for "does this work," once for "is this the right thing." Most bugs that shipped on my watch were caught on the second read by someone who wasn't me. Be that someone for your team.
Ask the dumb question
The dumb question is almost never dumb. The one time I bit my tongue, we rolled back a release three hours later because the answer I wanted was the answer everyone in the room wanted.
What it cost to learn
A few embarrassing PR comments. One memorable rollback. Eighteen months of free education from people who'd been doing this for longer than I'd been programming.
Six lessons, taped to the fridge
- Listen first. Notes beat opinions, every time.
- Ship small. Compound interest applies to code too.
- Read the diff twice. Once for green, once for right.
- Ask the question. The room wants you to.
- Own the boring. Boring tasks teach the most architecture.
- Be early. Standups, retros, doc reviews — show up, listen, learn.