"Do something, even if it's wrong." - eighty year-old gentleman at a poker table when people would think for too long.
Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
121–130 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#122Is it possible that you're not making the "right" moves because you're the CTO? Leadership is hard and it's hard because you're making bayesian calculations on suboptimal choices. Almost by definition. Say a Jr. dev has a problem that they can't solve. They kick it to an intermediate. The intermediate can't solve it so they kick it up to a senior. The senior can see a couple of solutions, but want's to run it past th…
^^^ This.
Remember, as CTO, your primary responsibility is making the tech deliver the bottom line sustainably. Not impress other devs.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#123I 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…
You’ve described the Dunning-Kruger effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#124How are you the CTO and a developer? If you're coding features as the CTO your company must be really small so it doesn't really matter if the code isn't 'perfect'. If the company is big enough where people have the time to call you out on shitty code and think they can do better - awesome! Let them code it, and you can focus on technical direction. Tell them what to do. Delegate. Let them write the code - it's what…
This hits the nail on the head. I'm at the bottom of our management tier so I am still expected to do some programming. I feel schizophrenic at times because the mindset required for management and programming are very different. The demands are also very different.
I joke that if I only do programming in the 15 minutes between emails/team messages/calls/meetings/etc. The reality is that if I can't solve the problem in 15 minutes then I have to delegate it. Anything else is my ego getting in the way of getting the problem solved.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#125> When I look at a new feature I just think that I will make it shitty or get called out on not doing things the "right" way.
You will likely get called out whichever way you make the decision by people tunnel visioning on one side of the coin. Getting called out doesn't mean the decision was wrong. Your goal should not be that no one calls you out. Rather it should be to be able to say: Yeah I took that drawback into account.
> CTO of a company that is growing like crazy.
Well if the company is growing like crazy then you must be doing a lot of things right?
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#126How are you the CTO and a developer? If you're coding features as the CTO your company must be really small so it doesn't really matter if the code isn't 'perfect'. If the company is big enough where people have the time to call you out on shitty code and think they can do better - awesome! Let them code it, and you can focus on technical direction. Tell them what to do. Delegate. Let them write the code - it's what…
It is a young startup; the technical cofounder needs to code, there is nobody else to do it yet.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#127Can be anything.
But from my own experience: it might have to do with lack of energy.
It sounds like you are responsible for the decisions you make. If you don't have a lot of energy you don't have energy to deal with possible bad outcomes. That's when you start to overthink your decisions to protect you from energy loss in case you made the wrong choice.
So check your energy levels.
And if the responsibility is too much for you be honest about it. Involve others to make the decision.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#128I highly recommend Kent Beck's keynote talk from RailsConf 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aApmOZwdPqA (or if you prefer, a more recent blog post with a similar message): https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/accountability-in-software.... Software development is hard, and it's easy to do things the wrong way. The thing to do is figure out how to do things that give you confidence you're doing things the right way.
In some ways, it can look bad for someone in leadership, like a CTO, to get called out for not doing things the right way. At the same time though, if you and the leadership in your company have hired the right engineers working with you, even if you are the CTO hopefully people working with you know more about specific areas than you do, and as CTO you can help make sure that things fit together. So what if you get feedback on how to do things better? You as CTO have a chance to set an example to others on the team for how to receive feedback constructively.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#129It 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 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. Heh, the job I just left had a team like this. I'd bring up ideas _for discussion_ all the tim…
What would drive me crazy is pointing out code that _clearly_ did not do what it was supposed to do and get back, at best, a shrug. I think I'm pretty open minded on most tech topics -- I started with PHP! If the code works I'm happy, everything else is gravy! -- but to have people insist that, no, this is fine and, yup, being on-call with services guaranteed to wake you up at 2AM at least once during your rotation and our stakeholders sending nasty grams once a month is just normal... crazy making.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#130You might call in a consultant as a "technical therapist", to talk over your decisions and issues, technical challenges in the company, etc. That's a lot of what they do. If you're feeling lack of confidence, does that mean things have been going wrong? Alternatively maybe there are some engineers in your company who you can trust having those sorts of conversations with.