I work as a junior backend developer at a company for about 1.5 years now, in the UK. In the beginning, everything was great, but as time goes on, I increasingly feel that I can't continue here. They assigned me to an ML project that I handle alone, developing from scratch, in an area and with technologies I have never used before which is Computer Vision. They provided a plan, a goal, and told me to work on it. I thought, great, at least I'll learn new things. However, this was good for a while, but after about six months, I reached a point where no matter how hard I try, I'm stuck, unable to overcome the problem. I asked for help, and the response was that they can't really assist me because there's no one in the company who understands what I'm working on. So, I got the answer to try to solve it on my own. So, I continued, meanwhile, they assigned me another project, a full-stack project to work on. In this project too, about 50% of the technologies are ones I've never used.
So, I'm working on two projects, almost entirely alone on one, and on the other, there are unrealistic expectations and very difficult tasks. I work 8-10 hours a day, sometimes I even forget to eat because I'm so nervous and stressed that I want to work non-stop to achieve goals.
The problem is that the senior developer said it's time for me to finish the project I'm working on alone because they want to sell it. And I'm like: what??? This whole situation seems quite absurd. After that, he said that if I don't finish it by the end of the year, I should throw the project in the trash because if I couldn't do the whole thing in this time, it's better not to. I couldn't believe my ears. How can they sell something which was developed by a junior developer alone, almost 90% of the product?
What do you think? What should I do? Should I take it to heart? According to several senior friends, it's time for me to find another job because they think I'm being exploited. My salary is also terribly low, and there's no bonus. However, I already feel that if I stay here any longer, I will come to hate programming. Any advice?
This might be a bad opinion, but maybe if you really hunkered down and finished it, and saw it as your mountain to climb, you will feel really accomplished for doing so, and you will be known as that guy around the company that finished a task no one else even knew how to do. It could be great for perception in the eyes of your superiors, but I don't know your company so that's just a guess. I understand that throwing it out would make you feel like you wasted so much time and energy for nothing and at the same time letting your bosses down. If you think there is a chance though, a chance you could do it if you tackled it as hard as you could, that could really change your outlook on these things and raise your confidence so you don't feel so nervous all the time. Just see it as a challenge, give it that "Eye of the Tiger" moment where you laser focus on it. Just my humble opinion though, I have no idea what your work environment and culture is like.