11–20 of 1001 posts
There's often wide variation in how long something takes to do, and you have been given the benefit of the doubt. Also, however, you may have been judged relatively underperforming, and missed out on some fun & interesting opportunities as a result.
Hopefully you can find a way to spend your workdays that feels better and more honest. You've already taken the first step.
I happen to be very productive when I like what I do, and very lazy when I don't. I even work weekends for free when im loving my work, but I slack for days and weeks when I don't.
It's fine.
I do feel the same as you, though - I'm always concerned somebody's going to put me on the spot and say, "what have you done for me lately?" I will say, I've been doing this a long time and that's never really happened. I go through the performance review song-and-dance every year and I can point out quite a few things I actually have done when the time comes, and so far it's made them happy.
Yes, after 20 years of doing it, I believe you've at last discovered that you're an incredible talent.
Sometimes I'll know I need to write some code or some function and I'll just think about it in the back of my head while doing other things, sometimes for a whole day or two. Then I'll sit down and write it in like 20-30 minutes. Did I work 20-30 minutes, or have I been working for a day or two? I would say a day or two, and the 20-30 minutes was the time needed to produce the deliverable of that work.
If I were your manager, we would have a talk about what motivates you and what you need to be productive.
You're capable of being a 4-5x developer compared to what you're doing currently (if you think about 5-10 hours versus 40 hours a week). But perhaps you lack mechanisms for motivation and continuing to explore spaces that benefit your team/org and might lead to faster promotions/career growth.
I.e., just haven't figured out as many intersections yet for what's sustainable and enjoyable for yourself and what directly benefits the businesses, teams and people you work with.
My suggestion is to add a few "virus" candidates (i.e., potentials for exponential growth) to your day to day. And push yourself more.
Getting a lot more productive starts with getting productive and gaining confidence/experience in small things. Assuming that's something you want (i.e., being even more effective) and that you're not just happy with the current steady state of where you are.
But to your points - a lot of software developers don't realize that they're in a steady state and are living a comfortable life (still a good deal for the company you're working for) when they could be making a lot more / having greater impact.
Part of the issue is that with programming our jobs are focused around 'automation' (in the form of software), so that very often we reach a point where our required effort really plateaus (and yet for the business still scales and provides value). If you want to really have exponential growth for yourself, you have to push yourself in those plateaus (i.e., find intrinsic motivation).