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

The analogy that comes to mind is I've been playing basketball in my local town, and now I've gotten promoted to play in the big city. I now feel like a small fish in a big pond.

If you enjoy software engineering, I'd say, double down. Now that you're at the medium software company, seek mentorship and coaching from others.

In addition, there might be more homework (hitting the gym sort of), things you also have to do on your own.

It isn't going to feel good being humbled and I've been there myself. But if you think about the goal as "learning to get better" than "prove to others I am better", you'll have a better time walking through this challenge. This all comes from a person who is a PM.

So some tactical thoughts of possible advice: 1. Face the issues head on -> take all the negative feedback on the code and rework the medium complexity task 2. Learn to unlearn bad habits. Yes, it's harder, but it comes with practice. 3. Commit to maybe taking a course work online (maybe seek advice from others on what are good ones to address weaknesses you have)

Hope this helps.

BTW, you don't need to be able to code things the right way to be a PM. Coding is only one specific skill and not always necessary for a PM.

Also, one needs time to get used to a new project, new environment, new colleagues, etc.

In every domain, the more you learn, the less you feel knowing about, and that's a good sign.

In this industry, the ones that make it, are the ones that keep on going forward.

I think this is definitely an option if you want to go for it. There might be some companies who will discriminate against you, but they'll definitely be some who won't. The key will be explaining to them (and convincing them) that the reason you're not as senior as one might expect is because you were never exposed to good practices or challenged to do better, rather than because you tried and failed to learn how to do things better. It sounds like this is genuinely the case, so I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to find people you can convince.

However:

> If you read my resume it'll seem I am a senior but I don't really know where to place me in the "experience" spectrum

To me it very much sounds like "junior". So it really depends if you are prepared to suck it up and learn everything afresh with an open mind. If you are, then I'd certainly be willing to hire you for a junior position (if I were interviewing you).

Start small. Like how to do a flavor of integration testing. Perhaps take some online courses? There is also a huge amount of YT vids out there.

One thing you may need to do is go back to the basics. Also make a task of it. Have a set time where you for 1 hour a day 'learn new coding skills'. Such as refactoring, code style and when and why to us it. Also find a project that you are interested in and follow it. I learn quite a bit doing this I have a dozen or so I follow and watch the pull requests to see interesting uses of code and style, even if I disagree with them. I do not contribute to them but I follow the style and commits they do. You can learn a lot by doing your own code reviews of other peoples code. Seeing how other do it and work on that.

If you can spot your own code smells, you're doing fine. Otherwise, read up on how to do so. I recommend Code Complete.