I recommend you build a Java-based logging utility that is secure.
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Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
41–50 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#42Serious answer: drugs, specifically psychedelics like Psilocybin. There is a reason use of these medicines is often called "tripping" - it will take you to a new place and offer you new perspectives. None of the comments here will give you the faith in yourself that you seek (that is not to say they are not good, or not beneficial). You are the only person who can give you that.
I've been super interested in trying Psilocybin as an long term anti-depressant. Looking forward to more research coming out on this topic.
It's a fungus that literally grows on cow shit - what have you got to lose? Humanity have been using this for thousands of years. Nothing to be afraid of! (tl;dr You don't need to wait for the right research to appear on your doorstep in order to give it a shot)
I utilize both micro and macro dosing and would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone. If you or your family have had histories of serious psychotic disorders, bipolar, schizophrenia, etc... it can potentiate that - tread carefully - but otherwise I give the thumbs up.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#43You need to find other smart people in a similar place but with no skin in your game and rubber duck with them about what you're thinking about.
This has a lot of benefits: you can serve as their rubber duck and help solve their problems which feels great.
You can sanity check your thought process and conclusions. This will help assuage the doubt.
And it's a social connection which helps with anxiety.
Also, go easy on yourself. No one knows the 'right' answer. It's great to look for the best move but it's ok to make a bunch of merely really good moves, too. Allow yourself to accept the context under which your decisions are made.
Don't forget to give yourself space. You're CTO. Delegate the shit out of everything you can, even the stuff you're best at. Call it a growth opportunity for your team. But if you don't give yourself the space to make great decisions, everyone suffers. Avoid the 'busy-ness' trap at all costs. That's not your job.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'm not in a startup, but you should comfortable answering/acknowledging something along the lines of we needed it working quickly, and this did the job for x amount of time based on the time available at the required throughput. We have the time now for refactoring ... or we'll add a ticket to the backlog, etc. Second, everyone looks at some code, wonders what idiot did this ... and at some point discovers it was th…
Yea that is about right. Given the knowledge and requests I had at the time I solved it the best way I knew how. No one opts for worse it just happens from time-to-time given business constraints.
I all too frequently wonder who wrote this and see that it was me. You're right that it's a good sign of growth :).
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#45It 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 left my first job for that reason, management had a complete inability to progress from "it works" to "it works well".
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#46Yeah, I've been in a similar situation. One ugly side about being a developer I find is that if I stay away from the practice of coding for even like 3 or 4 months I feel rusty or I feel like you've missed out on a lot. I remember when I took off 4 months and then started doubting my moves.
The time I took off was restful, for sure, but the insecurity I felt was extreme. It took me another 3 months to get my groove back and just feel like, "no, you know what? I'm a decent programmer and I have earned the right to be here with the other devs. I'll catch up in my knowledge gap."
I always wondered how female programmers who go on mat leave cope with stepping away from it all for like a year.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#47I actually think that self-doubt is a sign that you're growing as a developer. If you had asked me how hard it would have been to write an OS kernel ten years ago, I probably would have said something like "Oh yeah, that's pretty hard, it would probably take me like four months to make Linux."
If you asked me to reinvent the Linux kernel now, I would probably first say "I don't know anything about that, I'm not your guy", and if you were really insistent I'd give a huge number, like 10-15 years, with several disclaimers of "seriously, I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass".
Did I become a worse engineer in the last decade? No, I was just inexperienced ten years ago, and as a result I wasn't really able to differentiate "easy" and "hard" problems, and since I was a goofball (with too big of an ego at the time) I just assumed most projects were easy. Nowadays I have a much better handle on what I know and what I don't know, and as a result I find myself in doubt about things all the time. It's easy to get into a spiral of "I don't know to do this and omg I'm going to fuck it all up."
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#48I've been thinking about how in much of software engineering there is no "right" way to do anything. The only "wrong" decisions are those made without adequately considering all the tradeoffs or made without much thought at all. I would say your role as CTO is not to know everything and make unambiguously "correct" decisions all the time. It's to make sure the right questions are being asked and considered when technical decisions are made.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#49I had a CTO in your same situation. His remedy was to schedule more meetings.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#50It 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 bu…
> Maybe an extended vacation is really what I need to do.
100% adding a +1 here that this sounds like the right thing to do to start.
> it still just eats at me though
To me, this stands out. I think it's important to answer the "why" here at some point, whether that be before/during/after an extended break. Some potential things to investigate:
- Maybe the company is respectful, but the environment is still too critical / focused on bettering code constantly rather than focusing on product.
- Maybe there's too much focus on code quality over product generally, to the point that it's not helpful.
- Maybe it's not actually as respectful and understanding as you originally thought.
- Maybe the way it's delivered works for others but you need a different format and can communicate that need to others.
- Maybe the feedback coming from people below you (reading into "on a podium") is different than from peers and you're internalizing it.
Whatever it is, I hope a break helps you reset and gives you space to figure it out!