Ask HN: I've realized I'm a bad software engineer and I'm over 30, what's next?

Project management is potentially a good option. Before you give up though I think you are potentially being too hard on yourself. Projects fail (a lot of them).

I'm guessing that potentially you brought your smaller problem solving skills to a bigger task than you are accustomed to. If that is true it might simply be the case that if you were to have broken the large/medium task into a bunch of small tasks then you would have been a smashing success.

What was this medium complexity task? I wouldn't discredit your ability entirely on the basis of one project.

You know there are issues, so that is a good thing.

Hang tight. You can clearly learn to fix these issues and become better at building/architecting solutions. Spend some time reviewing projects on github and see how others have tackled the issues you are struggling with. Practice by creating your own projects. They don't need to be complete but will allow you to try different strategies for structure, hard coded values etc.

You could become a PM if you really wanted to... the PM's I work with have zero coding experience. This would be difficult for me as I don't see a PM as being creative and I like to build things.

You can do this!

Being a PM doesn't mean you have to code. In fact most PMs can't really.

Another option is to progress to team leadership. That role is more about listening to your team's good ideas and having good enough instincts to empower the good idea rather than you being a rock star developer yourself.

Alternatively you can just keep doing what you're doing but use this awareness you already have to continually up your game. Even the best of us are constantly learning.

1. The quality of your work as a developer has no bearing on the quality of your work as a PM. It's a different skillset altogether and you may or may not have it but your experience as a developer is only an asset when applying to be a PM. Whether you decide to go in that direction is a personal decision, but you should do it because you're interested in that kind of work, not because you think that your software work is subpar.

2. You don't need to take a break. You can incrementally improve on the things that you know that you're doing wrong at your current job and improve while you're still there. Since you're already aware of a bunch of them, it shouldn't be too difficult to improve on them over time.

3. You may or may not be too self-critical. The way to find out is to prepare for interviews for a bit and then try out a few. Don't disqualify yourself, let other people do that.