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

Ever since I joined this industry I have been surprised and disappointed how little structured training I have received. I am wondering how normal this is?

With the exception of one team that did a lot of pairing and was great, my experience of joining a new team has generally been "look around the codebase and see if you have any questions", with perhaps a couple of days of pairing, or being assigned a buddy who loses interest after a week or two. Mentioning that I'm struggling generally results in someone recommending Udemy courses, or asking "how much time do you need to get up to speed?"

I guess I expected something like 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. I've literally never seen this. Even the "pairing" team basically only did it because we all got along well.

My initial years of experience were in consultancy companies, so I put it down to that: there's a pressure to act like every member of your team is an expert when they are being charged to the client on a day rate. But I've since joined a big product focussed company and the experience has been exactly the same (and massively exacerbated by working remotely for a year).

As I result I've become the classic "one year of experience five times over", rather than "five years experience" guy.

I don't want this to read as a complaint - I'm fully aware that many people thrive in the environment I described. I've seen them thriving! I'm mostly just curious. It's too late for me anyway, I'm clinging on to my current job until I get fired or figure out what my next career will be.

I guess I just want confirmation - is this industry only for people who very self motivated and don't expect any hand-holding?

I'm afraid that's mostly the case. That's why it pays so much BTW - you're expected to be thrown into a middle of complex shitstorm and start delivering value soon afterwards. In return, you get a salary in 90-95th percentile. My best recommendation is to not change projects too often - after at most two years on a project (unless it's some absolute behemoth like MS Word or Unreal Engine), you become one of the project elders, who touched most of the areas of the code already and for whom working is a breeze.

The hand-holding part is correct. The 'self-motivated' part, well, I'd rephrase that as earnest corporate slave. If one is not an earnest corporate slave the job can be potentially soul sucking.

About the training part, while the language/framework hand holding is not expected the system specific architecture and specifics hand holding is indeed a must. Most teams skim or do not pay sufficient attention to the latter, resulting in a new hire not coming upto speed as quickly as he would ideally have.