First Job Advice / anxiety

anxiety
1

Hi there,

I’m a recent CS graduate who moved to a new country (primarily non-english speaking), and after no particular idea of what I wanted to specialise in, I chose a front-end web development job, and I’ve been working at a company for a few months.

I’ve suffered many mental health problems in the past, specifically around anxiety and bouts of depression, for context.

Essentially, in the work environment, after working there for a couple of months, I came to realise that many people had been fired, and people in the company are often worried about being fired. It’s a relatively small ‘start-up’, but towards the later end of their development. Whilst I’ve been there someone has been fired for no particular reason, so every day at work I am extremely anxious that I’m doing a bad job / I’m going to be fired. After speaking to others, they have said that people got fired in the past for no particular reason, and for some reason despite the amount of time they have worked there, they seem to have to leave immediately the next day. I think i’m doing an OK job, but it’s really hard to know, they don’t seem to give much feedback, and I have no clear manager.

One of the main problems I’ve found is that as I’m living in a non-english speaking country, and my fluency in the language is very low, I don’t get on very well with anyone in the work place. I also become really paranoid that people are speaking about me in their native language, and I worry lots about how i appear in front of the other staff members.

In addition to the above, I have generally been working about my career trajectory and whether I even like web development / coding. The company I work for isn’t working towards anything I’m passionate about.

This being my first job, I also have terrible anxiety around leaving - I feel terrified at the thought of even telling them I’m leaving, or how I’ll do it, as I feel like I will have let them down!

I was wondering if anyone could share any advice or similar stories that could help in this situation?

thanks for reading this!

2

Hello.
I don’t really have any advice but I read your story.
I am trying to learn front end web development and wondered what it was like so your story got my attention.
I don’t know enough to do it for a living though.
I wanted to tell you that I hope your anxiety and depression gets better.

3

Hello!

I’ve been through a few situations similar to yours, at it sucks going to work every day in fear of getting fired. One thing you should do is ask someone in management for feedback on how you’re doing. Don’t ask if you’re doing a good job because you may not get an objective response. By doing so, you would eliminate any doubts you have about your performance, and perhaps find out things you can improve that will help you later in your career. It also shows that you care about the work you do for the company.

Regarding the thoughts of leaving them, don’t be afraid to do so, and never put their needs before your own. It’s good and noble that you don’t want to let them down, but companies these days are not loyal to their employees - at least not in the US - and they would not hesitate to terminate your job if they have to. If this job doesn’t offer you the opportunity of doing what you want to do in your career, and if on top of that it affects your health, I would start looking for greener pastures and move on. Of course, make sure you have another job lined up before leaving this one.

Best of luck!

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