My advice? Quit. I know it's the quintessential answer to every other Workplace question on SE but let's look at the facts.
You have no effective allies within the company. No one involved here is in your corner in the slightest.
You, the developer who is working on the nuts and bolts of this t...
I've updated with some more details, I want to thank you for taking the time to write this, I honestly smiled reading this. And I believe that proceeding in that Direction will be my best option
Hey u mind removing the tag? Issue is i have no Prior experience in our economy ima have a really hard time finding a job with not experience
I would also add that (whether intentionally or not), it sounds like OP is being setup to fail. No one should expect a fresh out of college person to be the sole developer on a production e-commerce site. That's crazy! And setting the poor junior dev up to fail. Actually even if it were a senior dev in the hot seat, it'd be setting them up to fail. Let alone a fresh-out. Run, don't walk, because the writing is on the wall that if you don't, they'll wrongly blame the failure on you and fire you. Better for you to quit IMHO.
I recently went through the hassle of hiring a junior. A good junior is hard to find. Based on nothing but the contents of the question, OP would have probably gotten the job. I agree with the quit now advice, but for a 25yo with a child, reality may make that impossible.
My first thought on reading your post, @Azurry, is that you are being set up for failure. 520 is correct in this answer; you are doing the right things to turn into a great developer. (A beginning developer who decides himself that he should use Git is well on the way to becoming an advanced developer.) Unfortunately, I can say from experience that even if you were already an advanced developer you're unlikely to be able to convince managers like yours to implement successful development practices; they're doomed to be disappointed in any developer they hire.
I normally growl at suggestions to quit without notice, but I can't help but agree. Your mental health is more important then whatever demented delusions of grandeur the CEO is having.
@bob A senior would have quit on the spot or latest when setting the deadline from August to February. That's ridiculous.
@user5151179 Reality makes it even more urgent. He just needs to find another job, so he can transition smoothly. He gets pressured anyway, so why not spend some hours a day in jobhunting?
I don't agree with the advice to quit without having a new job lined up. I did it once. You think the mental suffering at work is bad...you know what's worse? The mental suffering of not being able to provide your family with food because you've quit your job and don't have money coming in. (edit: didn't downvote, btw, because I agree with the rest!)
@AaronF I don't disagree that unemployment and the problems it brings can be stressful in itself, I've been there too. But compared to this current scenario, at least he'd have the opportunity to do something about it. Job hunting can be an extremely time-consuming activity, and this company isn't giving him the slightest room to breathe. If money is the sore-point, there is nothing stopping OP from taking temp work as a shop assistant until he finds something better.
@520saysReinstateMonica yes that's true. It also depends on the local job market and ease of finding something new. I still feel it's a bit extreme and binary, though. Personally, I'd first try stopping working unpaid overtime, and use that reclaimed time to hunt for jobs and go to interviews. But yes, sometimes things are so bad that you just have to get out! :-/
I would also add that aside from the current mental health, staying too long in this environment could result in developing bad software development habits. OP is early enough in career to develop good habits and seems to have the drive to do so, therefore should get out for that reason also.
OP's first "error" was probably getting the gears into motion too fast - if your initial timeline was August 2019 to August 2020 (and here I'm putting in something from my own experience .. ) then you start in November and have a running base system by end of November .. that's darn pretty impressive but at the same time it was giving them the lever to put pressure on you. They probably spoke to the customer behind your back about the amazing progress you made in the 1 month since you started on the overdue project ... so the customer in turn asked for more features which they readily promised
Also its not clear OP will get to stay too long in the current environment as it sounds like they may be getting setup to be fired as a scape-goat, and quitting looks much better in interviews and on resumes than being fired (even if being fired for a fabricated reason). So I would definitely recommend quitting before that happens if OP agrees with my assessment that being fired is a real possibility here. It sounds like it to me, but only OP can make that call.
@eagle275 Yeah I think there may have been a problem with expectation management here too: the CEO saw something that looked almost done and couldn't understand that it was never actually that close to done. So it looked like OP did a ton of work for a month and then slacked off for months. Which is not at all true of course. This further increases my fear that OP could be in real danger of being wrongly fired, and should seriously consider quitting before that happens to preserve their professional reputation (also best not to use this employer as a reference).
Metrics of software development @bob .. 90% of the project (the base system with basic functionality) is done in about 10% of the initial time frame - the remaining 10% of the system tend to take 120% of the initial time frame (and more so if the initial 90% progress was based on false impressions on the CEO's side )
@eagle275 Yep! That affect has taken me by surprise a number of times with my own projects--it's easy to see something "working" and assume it's almost done, but it's far, far from done.
Discussion on answer by 520 says Rein…
Discussion on answer by 520 says Rein…