The mission of initial teacher education (ITE) will be to educate good teachers, and beginner teachers’ well-being and ability to continuously develop can be considered the two main criteria of ITE effectiveness. In the last decades and across Europe research on ITE has been tremendously invested calling for nurturing partnerships between higher professional education institutions and workplaces, and effective induction programs. Implying new policies, structures and agency, this ITE agenda is still developing and sometimes pacing back due to the “standard based reform”, even if the economic crises is largely invoked to justify it. In fact, research studies continue to notice about beginner teachers’ difficulties adapting and pursuing their careers. Aiming to promote reflection on the conditions of beginner teachers’ well-being and professional development, this paper analyses the perspectives of different generations of Portuguese teachers about the impact of ITE on their first years’ work experiences and careers. Research findings coming from research studies methodologically inspired by narrative inquiry and referring to different generations of teachers will be taken as a whole, allowing to conclude on the main objective of this paper but also on the need of identifying new metaphors to talk about the construction of teacher professional knowledge.