Ask HN: Is it normal in this industry to receive almost no training?

> results in someone recommending Udemy courses

I don't want to sound snarky but have you taken those Udemy courses?

That's pretty structured training. Sure, it's not specific to your codebase but the foundations would be applicable. Also, if you ask someone for advice and they give you a suggestion and you don't follow through on it, don't be surprised if they're less than willing to help you out the next time. Even though the advice is not exactly what you were looking for, you might find it more applicable than you realize. Take the course then circle back with them and say something like "hey, I took that course you recommended and I had a question about X from it. Do you have a minute to talk about that?" Most likely they'll take the time because you've now built some trust with them that you're open to their advice and feedback.

Yes, you do need to be somewhat self-motivated. If you get more value from listening than reading, then yes things like udemy or coursera are something you should be taking and watching a little bit everyday. Most reasonable companies will pay for it if you go to your manager and make a case for it.

> I expected...a technical lead who would initially spend a lot of time talking me through everything, then maybe start giving me small tasks and working through them with me.

A technical lead may have years at the company. Expecting them to walk you through "everything" is unrealistic. If you're not getting small tasks, then yes, being proactive and asking for small tasks is important. Figure out what specifically you're stuck on and ask for specific guidance. Asking for someone to "spend a lot of time talking you through everything" is not going to go over well. You won't retain much of it and it will generally be a waste of time for both parties.

Think of learning like concentric circles expanding outwards. Start on a very small thing and complete that and then slowly expand outwards. It sounds like you want to start the other way. It doesn't work like that.

What is your educational background? People who thrive in the software/computing usually have a strong STEM background/significant experience with solving physical problems, though there are exceptions. People skills may be valued by HN commenters but companies do leetcoding tests for a reason. In consulting you often have to go the extra mile to persuade the client or to make them happy. For computing it is the same but your focus is on being able to learn new technologies and abstractions rapidly. Most academic CS training follows much of the same route too, the ramp up from "CS 101" to higher level courses is often very steep.

Fundamentally software engineering deals with abstraction and complexity. Perhaps consider studying some backend? Knowledge across the stack will help you improve a lot too.

Try to gain a high level understanding of how to apply various technologies and methods. You can gain tremendous career growth by leveraging your already excellent people skills but you absolutely need to be able to follow a conversation between two engineers on a high level.

It's one thing not to get training on standard technologies that are publicly documented; it's another thing not to get training on internal systems that you can only hope to decipher through reverse-engineering. I've seen both, but the former is much more common. I don't think you can get away from that version.

If the latter is your main problem - i.e. you're willing to self-teach where material (like Udemy courses) is actually available - then one option is to look for a gig where you're the one creating the systems from scratch. That removes a big part of the problem, because you're the expert from day one. Getting into a startup at the ground level is one way to do this; working for a company that's always creating demos for other parties, like a design agency, would be another. (I also have a pet theory that enabling this kind of thing is a main motivator behind the microservices push)

This. I think this is the only reason why IT pays so much: it’s difficult, there is no documentation and you need to educate yourself.

How do you think the college more experienced than you has learned all he knows? Could be through another experienced college, yes, but chances are he learned by himself. We, IT people, are somehow elitist when it comes to knowledge: we think meritocracy is the way. I don’t like it but that’s how it is.