Hi! This is my story. - <a href="https://dly.to/0EbH47kqdW8" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://dly.to/0EbH47kqdW8</a>
I posted about this last year, but I’m still torn between staying at my job or resigning. The salary is pretty decent, but my learning progress has been very slow.
I became a sole developer right after I graduated during the pandemic (purely online classes). No one taught me how to properly code in the company. I was left to handle old, unorganized systems with incorrect logic. Since I had no professional experience, I thought those codes were “good enough,” and they became the foundation of how I learned.
Later, we hired new developers who were around my age but had experience working in IT companies. I was honestly shocked at how organized, efficient, and knowledgeable they were. It made me question myself.
I know I’m not dumb. I know I’m capable. But I’m the kind of learner who thrives with guidance. I can learn fast, but I struggle with studying on my own because I’m afraid of learning the wrong things or developing bad habits. I hate that about myself sometimes.
I grew up competing in math, and that’s how I fell in love with coding and problem-solving. But now, I feel like I’m at my lowest point as a developer, questioning whether this path is really for me.
I’m also scared — what if no company will hire me because my skills are something AI can already do?
Should I stay and try to grow where I am, or take the risk and find an environment where I can learn properly?

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Developer's Journey is a place where we share our stories, career growth, technical adventures, and personal milestones, no matter where we are in our journey.

Developer's Journey

A junior developer shares their struggle working as a sole developer after graduation, learning from poorly organized legacy code without mentorship. After seeing how experienced peers work, they're questioning their skills and career path, worried about AI replacing their abilities, and seeking advice on whether to stay or find a better learning environment.

At My Lowest Point as a Developer — I Need Advice

I think a lot of developers hit this phase. It doesn’t mean you’re failing; it means you’re growing. This might just be a tough season, not the end of the road.
Take time to reflect on whether this is what you truly want. If it is, commit fully and permit yourself to grow through the discomfort.

This is my first post on this platform. And I’m using to tell you that this is way way WAY more common than you’d think. When you “grow up” within a company with limited resources, you yourself become limited by those resources and the experience you can get there. It can be fine if the company is stable and you want that to be your long-term employer. But if you want to grow and expand, my recommendation would be to go to your leaders and let them know the risks that exist and what you want to have happen. If they don’t let you run with that, I’d strongly recommend finding somewhere that will let you learn and grow. Any decent company, and any decent leader, will want you to grow and be better. If they dont, or dont know how, that’s a red flag. 
Also, never undersell your own institutional knowledge, in many cases that’s worth way more than you’d think.

After reading a few paragraphs of your post I already knew this is going to be a long answer and it won’t be soothing at times, because that’s just how thing are expected from us, so let’s see what kind of advice this IT dinosaur can give you. 😉 Not everything might apply to your case at first, but it’s a summary of 20+ years in the industry.
TL;DR version (for my reasoning on this, the longer version is further below):
<ul>
<li>everything’s on you - don’t expect the company to guide your career;</li>
<li>develop learning habits - the industry is constantly moving forward, so learning is constant - if you stop, you fall behind (unless you settle for legacy, which might also be a valiable career path);</li>
<li>define your style - your code is like a fingerprint and everyone has a coding style, so you need to define your own (it’s actually a natural process if you write a lot and learn);</li>
<li>learn from your peers - the experienced people, if avaiable, are a valuable source of knowledge; talk to them, discuss things, get to know their perspective - if anything, it will give you things to research further;</li>
<li>that being said, obviously you don’t have to learn everything;</li>
<li>don’t be afraid and try using you logical judgement and common sense to evaluate if what you’re learning is worth it (also comments from the community MIGHT be helpful - keep an eye on them);</li>
<li>if you’re a “Jack Of All Trades” at the company, you have to calculate the time needed to learn the bare minumum to accomplish your task into your estimates.</li>
</ul>
Now, the longer version.
A fair amount of entry-level (and sometimes mid-level as well) developers have that mindset that, while working as a dev for a company, it’s the company’s obligation to guarantee their growth. Nothing more incorrect. A company with a established IT departament requires a concrete set of skills - you either already have them or they’ll provide some means for you to learn them (most of the time: on the fly, while working on a project, so not too in-depth, mostly by getting knowledge from your peers and perhaps a training budget).
In a company that doesn’t follow this, however, you’re on your own - you have a degree of freedom to choose, but tightly coupled with how much time and money they want to spend on things like that, so you’ll have to do things quick and dirty sometimes. This is also related to your post about the company wanting AI system - there are also two routes here: the longer and one-time cost (mostly hardware) on-premise system building, where you set everything up yourself or the shorter, monthly-billed cloud/agent-based option, but that’s a separate and long topic on it’s own.
Regardless which company option you end up with, the company is only interested of pushing your skills as far as it benefits THEM. The rest (and the most) is on you. As for whether I was there - yes, I was. More than once before finally learning the hard truth. It’s also a learning experience. 😛
This brings us to developing your learning habits. There are a lot of techniques and approaches to choose from. My personal favourite isn’t any kind of technique or framework, but a simple approach: dedicate at least an hour a day to read and learn something, be it a blog post, tutorial, a course you started. The “kayzen bare minimum” - if you can’t do it fully, try to do as much, as you can, but consistently. Consistency is key.
The main problem is how you define yourself. Do you want to be a Python dev? Java? JS or Rust maybe? Systems programming? Embedded? Maybe web development or gamedev? Think long and hard about it, as pivoting at a later stage is troublesome (time consuming at the very least). You yourself have to have an idea of who you want to be. This sets you up on a set course, where the amount of things to learn is already limited to what you’ll actually need. It’s not easy - as with everything, do you research: which language feels most natural, how does the market look (job offer availability), how it pays, and most of all: do you like it (the last one is important, as it prevents burnout the most, and you will suffer burnout as some stage - that’s a given)?
After that, you need to define your coding style. It’s your workshop of common (good?) practices, known patterns, knowledge of DSAs (data structures and alogrithms - if anything this helps with problem solving and algorithmic thinkins) and basically how you approach things. There are books that on the topic of design patterns, clean code, clean architecture, etc. However, they’re not a silver bullet. You follow them as needed, because not everything can be efficiently implemented using these approaches (trading system, for instance, go down and dirty the “full efficiency” path, so if good practices get in the way… guest what happens to good practices in that scenario? 😄). The bottom line is: know them and know when to follow them (and when not to - again, it’s a common sense thing).
When in doubt do what you did here: ask the community. Just remember: the more concrete the question/doubt, the more concrete the answers will be. And they will be diverse, so again: use your judgement and what feels natural. 😊
As for the “Jack Of All Trades” part - that one’s tricky. As I already wrote, you have to calculate the time of learning into what you’re doing. The more you do that, the easier it becomes - a truism, I know, but that’s how it works. You don’t need to give out the vibe of “I don’t know it, so I need time to learn first”, but rather “We can do it, but it requires significant research, as we never did that before” - position yourself as capable, able to do it, but describe the topic as “needs research”. A bit of diplomacy/coaching BS sprinkled on top, but it tends to work on management. 😉 This one is never easy, though.
That’s my take on things after 20+ years of professional software development. Hope this helps a bit. 🙂

My main advice:
<ul>
<li>Take responsibility for your own development. Do not be passive. Approach it with full intent.</li>
<li>Don’t be afraid of “learning the wrong thing”. I have done that. It didn’t kill me or others. And I learned good things later.</li>
</ul>
As others said: a company optimizes for the company. If they benefit directly from your development, they would help you. But do not count on it. Instead do it yourself.
Things that have worked for me:
<ul>
<li>Approach your own development as a job. Dedicate time, effort and resources for that. Yes, schedule time, and budget for it. Be consistent.</li>
<li>Determine what you want to do in 10 years? Cliché but needed. Define the what, not the where (e.g., a web developer, AI engineer, sales engineer, full stack, a SW engr manager, a data scientist, a technical writer, a tech recruiter, solutions architect)</li>
<li>Plan 2 or 3 steps to get there (e.g., get really good at Python and become the SME (subject matter expert) in analytic tools at company XYZ; find a job at company OPQ as a senior data analyst; join a startup as their CTO)</li>
<li>Develop professional connections. Peers, Meetups, vendors.</li>
<li>This network will help you find a mentor. They don’t have to be tech luminaries. But it helps if they “have done it before”.</li>
<li>Find engineers in that network that would look at your code.</li>
<li>Find a good “side-project”. You will learn about: gathering requirements, minimum viable product, over-engineering. And you will have code to show others for review (see above).</li>
<li>GitHub has lots of ideas for new projects: <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=github.com+good+side+projects" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=github.com+good+side+projects </a><a href="https://github.com/The-Cool-Coders/Project-Ideas-And-Resources" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://github.com/The-Cool-Coders/Project-Ideas-And-Resources </a><a href="https://github.com/maxprilutskiy/awesome-side-project" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://github.com/maxprilutskiy/awesome-side-project</a></li>
<li>Or contribute to an existing project: <a href="https://github.com/topics/good-first-pr" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://github.com/topics/good-first-pr</a></li>
<li>Teach/mentor others. You develop a better understanding of things when you explain it to others, and see them from their POV. I’ll repeat, you don’t have to be the best to be a mentor.</li>
</ul>
Equally important:
<ul>
<li>learn to be OK with discomfort. It is part of life, and a great catalyst for growth.</li>
<li>if you are paralyzed, look for help. Mental health therapy is a good tool. Think of it as the tune up for an expensive vehicle. It helps you identify patterns, and teaches you ways to work with them or around them.</li>
<li>Friends offer a different POV</li>
<li>Be pragmatic. Do not expect perfection on things. I struggle with that. I Remind myself a coat with short sleeves is better than no coat 🙂</li>
</ul>