No. This is false. Even senior engineers can have this problem. It's not a differentiator for success. This is counterintuitive but actually there is raw science to back the opposite fact up. I'm not joking. The more delusional you are as in the less ability you have to take and accept criticism the more likely you are to be successful. There is a positive correlation for this verified by science. It gels with my ane…
If the 'delusion' stops useful output, they won't be very successful. If the 'delusion' is useful and produces better output, then is it really a delusion?
At some point, I realized that there's a disconnect between "me" and "my work". My work is a result of circumstance, like, what my mood was when I did it, how well I know the particular domain, if I've seen solutions to similar problems before, what tools were available and understandable to me at the time. In other words, the quality of my work depends much more on what the particular task was, than on some inherent…
It's easy to disconnect the work from yourself if there are circumstances outside of yourself, like an unrealistic deadline. But your mood or level of experience (examples you gave) seem exactly the sort of thing that someone could use to blame themselves...
Kind of, but, my mood is not me.. I can be in a bad mood, I can be tired, there can be any number of reasons I'm not living up to my expectations of my normal output.. but that's still not _me_, it's part of the circumstance in which the work is done, and if it sucks, it sucks, doesn't make me suck any more or less.
I've done pretty decent stuff, I've done pretty silly mistakes. Thing is, that decent stuff, probably came at just the right time.. The silly mistakes, they probably seemed right at the moment, either due to some lack of information that I should have had, or something I simply hadn't learned yet.
> I think you actually are, in a very real sense. Someone else would have written different lines of codes. The lines of code are a function of yourself, an inherent part of you. Criticizing the lines of code criticizes that part of you. You can’t criticize a novel without implicitly criticizing its author. When we criticize an LMM’s output, we are typically criticizing the LLM. Perceiving criticism of one’s own work…
Part of this reads as if you're not allowed to be criticized for some reason. How is "I am not a perfect coder" really different from "I'm inherently flawed"? Being flawed just means you're not perfect. People are flawed. Everyone is. One doesn't have to feel bad about it. One only needs to take responsibility for it. And then one can actually feel good about having acted responsibly.
> Part of this reads as if you're not allowed to be criticized for some reason.
That was definitely not my intent, and I'll take that on board as an area to improve on :)
I had a job where they gave training on how to constructively engage with the open source community, and one of the big points was, "you don't suck, the patch sucks". Oh you have a bug in the patch? No, there's a bug in the patch. Oh you missed an edge case? No, there's an edge case nobody had documented yet. The point was mostly about how to give feedback on the patch, and to never phrase it about the person persona…
I was hoping someone would have something about learning to give criticism. I was legit scared when the top posts are, "learning to take criticism is how you become a senior programmer." Not that that is worthless, mind; but becoming aware of that in the process is what makes you senior. By definition of it being part of growth. With time, you will have been no both ends of more and more reviews. Hopefully you start…
Agreed. One reason you can't "policy away" snark is another reason it's best to separate your sense of self from your work: what you hear as snark when you're feeling down, maybe wasn't even snark, it might have been lightheartedness. I can think of a review I gave recently where I saw someone having to work around something confusing that my team is ALWAYS having to work around, and I just commented on what a mess it was. In hindsight, it could have sounded like snarky criticism of the patch, when in reality it was meant as supportive, empathic, camaraderie. If I was giving the code review face to face verbally, probably would have come across. At least we have emojis.
What you have encountered is actually one of the necessary steps to really become "a senior developer". And congratulations, you have already passed the biggest part of that hurdle: becoming aware of the issue. There are things that are fragile, things that break when they encounter a shock. Such as porcelain, when transported. There are things that are non-fragile, things that do not break when they encounter a simi…
Uhm...I have to chime in here. "Anti-fragile attitude" when it comes to criticism is not built by tolerance. Quite the opposite actually. It is a common misconception. While making yourself numb against criticism IS a solution but not by far the best one. A high criticism tolerance is learned by understanding that ones self worth is not attached to output or delivery. (This is hard in our industry) It comes from self…
The lines of code are not even your lines of code!
They are lines of code until you reveal them to the world. Then they are part of the world. When someone else improves them (or tries to improve them) you must rejoice that the ideas you have given the world have attracted enough attention to be criticized and improved!
Only by keeping the code private would the criticism be criticism against you. Once you distribute the code, the only truly negative thing someone can do, from your point of view, is to ignore the code.
That’s my point of view anyway. Elsewhere in the thread someone commented positively on your self awareness and in parting I must echo them.
I’ve heard similar statements from other people, and I have a disconnect that prevents me from understanding. Why would someone want to detach their self worth from what they do? If someone ought not feel a negative emotion in response to doing something “bad”, by what logic can they justify feeling something positive in response to doing something “good”? I cannot conceive of a world view that allows one to feel pro…
To give a slightly different answer than other commenters: To detach emotions from work without throwing out the value of good work: attach your self-worth to something UPSTREAM "doing good work", a cause of good work, and not the work itself. You do this by realizing that the emotional attachment to your own work was never really about the work, it was what the work implied about you; the emotional brain jumps to co…
In almost all industries: you are splitting the check, not the atom.
As others have said, it's a senior dev thing, after awhile you realize you won't care by next week. There are some coworkers that are jerks, but they are usually in the extreme minority if you are working at an ok place.
In the lab we used to say "Well, at least no one died!", usually to defuse a situation that was bad. Like say, water from the ceiling leaking on to your half a million dollar laser...
One of the best things anyone ever told me, one of my old bosses once said to me, when I was frustrated and angry about a bug I created, “There are two kinds of experiences in life, winning experiences and learning experiences. And what you’re having right now is a losing experience.” I subsequently learned to keep my perfectionism in check. As others here have said, honesty is the prerequisite to solving any problem…