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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?

#11

Post by anyonecancode »

It does sound like burnout, and also like not being in the right environment (which contributes to burn out). I had one job where there was a lot of technical debt, but my manager did not respect me and my colleagues had what was basically a "learned helplessness" attitude. So I'd go around trying really hard to make things better, but everyone responded to me like I was just crazy or naive or didn't know what I was talking about. Thankfully my previous job had been one where I had earned a lot of respect from my colleagues and managers, so I knew that I wasn't the problem, but even knowing that I found the doubt starting to creep in.

I left. My new job has lots of tech debt, lots of processes that are broken, but when I propose changes people listen. When I put in the work I can see progress. It's hard work and frustrating, but I know that it's because the problems I'm tackling are hard, not because I'm a failure or lacking. That's a very different environment.

I can only give a very broad bit of advice here -- having a positive, open environment is very important. Gaslighting will bring down even the most secure, confident person over time. If you can't change the environment, leaving to find a better one is the right thing to do. What that looks like will differ on one's situation -- might be a long break from coding, might be changing teams, might be changing companies. But we absolutely need people around us who believe in us to work sustainably.

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

#12

Post by cwitty88 »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #7

CTO and developer separate into distinct roles as a company grows. How big is this company? Is it a small company with few developers where you hold the CTO title because you're a founding developer or the most senior developer? If so, you might be missing the reassurance that came from your previous life where you had a manager to check your work, peers to review it, and feedback from people who didn't report to you…

The company is growing in all facets. We added 17 engineers this year when we previously had a total team of like 10.

You hit the nail on the head though, I got the role because I was the first engineer and employee at the company. In no way am I a great CTO, just lucky timing.

I'm actually stepping down as CTO and becoming a developer again because I am not a good manager, that I know for sure.

I think I need to be better about getting over perfectionism. I think I let it haunt me that everyone looks up to me with my title as if I should be the best when I am very much not. Thanks for the thoughts here, I really need to reflect on this some more.

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

#13

Post by cwitty88 »

DarthNebo wrote: post #10

You could try focussing on other facets of the tech industry, rather than the one you are currently surrounded with. Meet-ups, hackathons etc are good ways to stay up to date on diverse topics & letting your brain work on new stuff instead.

I miss hackathons, those are fun because the entire purpose is that you're just slamming shit together to make something work in a short amount of time. In the early days that is basically how our entire codebase was.

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

#14

Post by shrimp_emoji »

cwitty88 wrote: post #5
raxxorrax wrote: post #2

Well, look at the positive side, as a CTO you probably don't have much time to code anyway. Jokes aside, did something happen before? Did a software not perform or caused problems? You say growth is fast. Sounds good and that means to make compromises here and there in software that might not fit your aspirations of quality. Is this a new position? Or did you see a topic that was just beyond you in any conceivable wa…

I've been CTO since the beginning but it was almost all coding in the early days. Now it is much more of a management role. I actually just started the process of stepping down and going back to being a developer because I dislike the management side of things a lot. I think I am questioning my abilities because we built things in questionable ways and now everything that I have done is being scrutinized by all new t…

>we built things in questionable ways

Classic. I know brilliant people who wrote pretty ugly code years ago and beat themselves up about now (in a tongue-in-cheek way -- they joke about it frequently).

Coding is hard; if it was easy, people as smart as them would've written stuff perfectly the first time!

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

#15

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

I would recommend reconnecting with the fun of being a developer.

Make something purely for yourself, just because you want it for yourself (whether an app or a website or a desktop program, a game, etc).

Design and code it how you want, focusing on making it work without obsessing about doing it the right way.

I think that will help you recapture the pure joy of coding.

Once you have recaptured that, then I think a lot of other stuff will kind of get back into the right perspective.

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

#17

Post by nscalf »

This seems like less of a development problem and more of a self confidence problem. You should have a session with a therapist, there is probably a deeper cause of this in your life and you'd be better off trying to figure out that than finding a bandaid that HN could provide.

There are tons of remote options like BetterHelp where you can get an appointment quick without much hassle or commitment, so it's a pretty low threshold to give it a shot---that might be a good place to start. Good luck!

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

#18

Post by cwitty88 »

anyonecancode wrote: post #11

It does sound like burnout, and also like not being in the right environment (which contributes to burn out). I had one job where there was a lot of technical debt, but my manager did not respect me and my colleagues had what was basically a "learned helplessness" attitude. So I'd go around trying really hard to make things better, but everyone responded to me like I was just crazy or naive or didn't know what I was…

I kinda figured I might be going through some burnout. I have thought about taking a sabbatical to try and recoup from it a bit.

The company itself is great. All of the feedback I receive is very respectful and understanding, it still just eats at me though. We're even working on a plan to address some of the tech debt/complexity in 2022.

I think my self-doubt is just being on a podium at work teamed up with being burnt out. Maybe an extended vacation is really what I need to do.

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

#19

Post by mym1990 »

Its so hard to untangle everything that might be going on here(based on 3-4 sentences), but at the end of the day if you know you are a decent developer and you have been able to hold down a CTO role for this long, you are worthy of confidence in yourself. Not every decision you make will be a good one(and that is absolutely ok, if people working with you can't understand that, it is on them), but one of the worst things you can do is to stop making impactful decisions out of fear that some of them will not have great outcomes.

If you have a mentor or someone close that you really trust, I would really sit down with them and talk through this. Slumps are expected, and everyone has different ways to get out of them!

Also, this doesn't sound like burn out, but I could definitely be wrong.

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

#20

Post by trjordan »

As CTO, you probably don't have the time and space, structurally, to be a good developer. You have things to do that aren't a single project or feature! So of course other developers will be better at "being a developer" than you, by some measures.

I've seen two successful models of CTO that are "good developers:"

1. Knows the core tech of the company really well. There's some small bit of tech at your company that's legit an enabler of your growth. You should probably know it better than anybody. Maybe it's moved or changed or grown in the last 8 years, and you've lost touch a bit? It seems reasonable to carve out time to build something on your own, in the same space, using the new stuff. You probably have a better sense of what's important to get right than anybody else, so building a personal project with that tech on company time _is_ actually a great use of time.

2. Knows the system dependencies better than anybody else. This particularly applies if you have reliability woes or other systematic issues. You have a great position to ask other teams to educate you. Get a couple good devs from each team in a room, drop your ego, and have them teach you what they know in their domain. Do this across a bunch of teams. Some folks might find this irritating, but most folks will like the time to show off their work and share their worries.

Everybody is constrained by where they spend their time. If you want to go back to being a great IC ... you need a different job. Which it might be time for! But you can be technically great as a CTO, and I'm sure I've missed some other ways you can do it in the context of you "day job."

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