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Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

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Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#241

easy. Build something.

Yeah, that's was my first thought. But perhaps it's not quite as simple as that.

I've been a developer for almost 4 decades now. My confidence in myself ebbs and flows. But the pattern is highly predictable: when I develop something that works, it flows, and when an idea doesn't work out it ebbs.

When I start any project I always think it's a cracker of an approach, of course. Sometimes that's true, something it's not.

What that means is "Build something" doesn't always work the first time. But if you keep building things you will accumulate hits, and eventually confidence that brings.

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#242
post #76

I saw two videos related to this that gave me pause to think. First was that when you are higher up the chain, you should not be making decisions on small stuff. You should be delegating to the smartest people that report to you. Second, in the executive level, you should be focused on strategy and identifying industry trends, not on doing day to day grunt work.

Can you share the both urls?

Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?

#243
post #56

Is it possible that you're not making the "right" moves because you're the CTO? Leadership is hard and it's hard because you're making bayesian calculations on suboptimal choices. Almost by definition. Say a Jr. dev has a problem that they can't solve. They kick it to an intermediate. The intermediate can't solve it so they kick it up to a senior. The senior can see a couple of solutions, but want's to run it past th…

This is great insight. I'd like to offer a slight alternative for "You just kind of have to minimize the wrongness". I think a CTO should have several mental models for making decisions. Minimizing wrongness is just one. Some examples: - Is this decision reversible? - Does this choice allow my team to grow technically? - Will this matter a year from now? - Is this something I can buy instead of build? - Is this a cor…

Terrific checklist
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