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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?

#191

Post by simonblack »

That sounds somewhat like "Imposter Syndrome".

All of us have to combat that Syndrome at some time or other. For many of us, it strikes more than once.

In my case, I've had it strike in several of my 'professions': Pharmacist, Programmer, Pilot.

I'm beginning to suspect that 'Imposter Syndrome' is a normal 'Rite of Passage' - on moving from mid-level to a higher-than-normal level of expertise in that particular field. You get the 'Am I good enough to match those others who are already in the upper echelons of the field?' doubts.

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

#192

Post by hamlsandwich »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #165
nickjj wrote: post #158

I highly recommend reading the Linux kernel management style guide at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/management-st... . It has this gem of a quote: > It helps to realize that the key difference between a big decision and a small one is whether you can fix your decision afterwards. Any decision can be made small by just always making sure that if you were wrong (and you will be wrong), you can always u…

This observation is profound, and also resonates with my experiences across different companies, some of which had highly mission critical / reliable systems. I used to imagine from the outside that such places must have highly elaborate testing regimes, backup systems, and genius-level developers. However, my lived experience is that they're just really good / disciplined about reverting to the previous known good s…

Different domains, too: it comes up frequently in my - admittedly limited - experience with woodworking: _"Don't cut it 'til you need to cut it!"_.

There are some one-way doors (cutting a long piece of timber), or doors that inflict a big cost if you back-track through them (gluing a precisely cut joint), and you're well served by minimizing them and planning your operations to make sure those ones safe.

So, you 'sneak up' on a cut line incrementally rather than cut directly to it, allowing you to check fit as you go and ensure your final, precise cut is removing not a big, clumsy chunk but a tiny controllable shaving.

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

#193

Post by bhagyash »

What I can feel is that you aren't able/wanting to keep up with the rapidly evolving technologies. Maybe CTO and success has put you in a comfort zone. Maybe after being CTO of a crazy growth company you feel you've made it. Maybe what you're doing doesn't fire you up anymore. Maybe you just got lucky and opportunistically became CTO. You can either continue this stable, secure life and slowly decay or change course, whatever that may be.

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

#194

Post by jjtheblunt »

bhagyash wrote: post #193

What I can feel is that you aren't able/wanting to keep up with the rapidly evolving technologies. Maybe CTO and success has put you in a comfort zone. Maybe after being CTO of a crazy growth company you feel you've made it. Maybe what you're doing doesn't fire you up anymore. Maybe you just got lucky and opportunistically became CTO. You can either continue this stable, secure life and slowly decay or change course,…

Or the person had an epiphany that the only things rapidly changing are ephemeral, and that feels futile?

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

#195

Post by oriettaxx »

This is a smart brain thinking: I am inadequate!

This is 100% normal: you are comparing yourself to the world nowadays and, since you read HN, to many real brave people (I am scared myself too ahahahah).

My advice is to cool down and tell to yourself: "developing is not rocket science"... but practice, a lot of practice (as in any art) is needed: no practice, no speed.. no result, which is as in any field. :)

do not be too hard on youself

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

#196

Post by TruthWillHurt »

A counter argument if I may -

When I was CTO I built the MVP and coded at first. Then after adding engineers we started shifting the architecture to their designs (because it's important to allow people to be creative and own things, right?) and I started feeling like a sub-par engineer, not creating sophisticated code as they did.

Well, turns out they overcomplicated things, focused on complex problems rather than end-to-end feature delivery, and waisted a lot of time rebuilding things that wete better (albite simpler) in my MVP.

For me, the takeaway is - trust yourself. You know best.

It's not the same lesson for everyone, some people are too controlling, but it seems you and I are closer to the other end of the spectrum.

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

#197

Post by blitzar »

caminante wrote: post #160
nickjj wrote: post #158

I highly recommend reading the Linux kernel management style guide at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/management-st... . It has this gem of a quote: > It helps to realize that the key difference between a big decision and a small one is whether you can fix your decision afterwards. Any decision can be made small by just always making sure that if you were wrong (and you will be wrong), you can always u…

Can you explain the last sentence of the quote? Seems ambiguous.

> Suddenly, you get to be doubly managerial for making two inconsequential decisions - the wrong one and the right one.

You get to wield the power of being the person who makes big decisions, some might say the finest decisions: decision 1 pick wrong path - decision 2 backtrack and pick correct path.

I guess in contrast to the person who wont decide - everyone has stood around in a meeting room staring at the senior manager fumbling with the most basic of choices.

Having the knowledge and conviction that it doesnt really matter anyway makes decision 1 appear decisive and strong. If it turns out to be wrong and you have to backtrack, you arrive in the correct place, and can take credit for correcting the course.

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

#198

Post by schwarzmx »

crehn wrote: post #182
nickjj wrote: post #158

I highly recommend reading the Linux kernel management style guide at https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/management-st... . It has this gem of a quote: > It helps to realize that the key difference between a big decision and a small one is whether you can fix your decision afterwards. Any decision can be made small by just always making sure that if you were wrong (and you will be wrong), you can always u…

At $company, this is core to how decisions are made. There's no need to get stuck for an extended period of time on "two-way door" decisions; they can always be reverted. Inversely, decisions that cannot be reverted require due consideration. When there are multiple pending decisions, categorizing them into "one-way door" or "two-way door" decisions can help greatly.

I also worked there and what I like about the phrasing in the quote above is that it surfaces the possibility of turning a one-way-door into a two-way-door.

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

#200

Post by NoPicklez »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #148
tombert wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true (I don't know, I've never done it), but my point is that I would have thought that I could implement something as large as Linux or macOS in a few months, when in reality that's certainly not true even with my ~decade of experience, let alone when I first dropped out of college in 2012.

There's no reason you shouldn't have been able to. Programming basic things like an operating system shouldn't be as hard as it is. (Honestly, programming an entire OS is easier than programming within existing systems, at this point, for many applications – but only if you can cope with bare-bones serial I/O.)

You're completely missing his point. He was simply using "programming operating systems" as an example. His point still stands regardless of how easy you think something is or should be.
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