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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?

#201

Post by NoPicklez »

Firstly, I think its excellent and of great benefit that you are a CTO that has experienced what your fellow developers do.

However, you're the CTO and your role realistically shouldn't be developing, but it should be weighing up the decisions your team is making as THEY develop, building connections and looking at the forward strategy.

It sounds to me that you made the move into the CTO role, without fully making the break with what you used to do in your previous role as a developer.

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

#202

Post by RickJWagner »

Walk 10,000 steps a day. As you walk, listen to various podcasts that touch (not direct-hit) on your workspaces.

What you'll get:

- Brand new ideas (new learning)

- Confirmation of ideas you already hold, but weren't 100% on

- Knowledge of some ideas you held that were wrong (without anyone else knowing!)

Also set aside a little time to do some 'fun coding'. Maybe Go or Erlang or C#. Something that's a little close to the metal, but not mind-numbingly difficult to get going with.

Good Luck. Given a little time spent right, I'm sure you'll be bursting with confidence in no time.

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

#203

Post by 3np »

pcmoney wrote: post #147
sam0x17 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reminds me of what Jeff Bezos said about Type 1 and Type 2 decisions There's a cautionary tale buried here. Many seemingly Type 2 decisions are actually Type 1 decisions in disguise. Case in point, Amazon's decision to not allow warehouse workers to have their phones when working in the warehouse has resulted in the 6+ deaths and many more injuries that we saw in the tornado last Friday. Now there's no going back,…

Not every quote about Bezos/Amazon is an opportunity for an off topic virtue signaling “dunk”. If they are breaking the law lets prosecute them. If there is a law you want changed vote for a legislator to back it. If you don’t like them, don’t buy from them. This isn’t complicated.

It sounds like you’re saying that ethical/moral responsibility does not exist outside of what’s required by law in any given jurisdiction and the only venue for change is lobbying legislators? That it’s OK to do anything imaginable as long as it’s not explicitly prohibited by law?

If so I hope you reconsider one day.

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

#204

Post by Waterluvian »

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 passage just helped me describe something I do and teach a lot at work: how to turn big decisions into small ones.

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

#206

Post by ghiculescu »

optymizer wrote: post #65

How 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 and the comment below are super broad advice that you absolutely don't need to listen to.

I'm the CTO at 100+ person company and write code about 50% of the time.

Do the work you enjoy most. As long as customers are happy and you keep finding more of them, the rest will work itself out.

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

#207

Post by ghiculescu »

Hey OP, sounds like we're in a similar boat in terms of role, tenure, experience, and (guessing from username) age. My email's in my profile, if you want to trade notes or just vent feel free to reach out.

I think you're getting so much terrible advice in this thread, from everyone attacking you for writing code. You should be writing more code if that's what you like to do. I spend about two thirds of my time writing and reviewing code, take the lead new features (core and experimental), fix bugs, and generally work on whatever I find the most fun and think will be the most useful for customers. You can do the same and still lead a very large and fast growing company. This idea that as a leader you should abstain from doing real work is nonsense and results in bad leaders.

If you find yourself stressed about the code you write adhering to everyone else's standards, I'd suggest 1) not worrying about everyone else (easy to say / hard to do), or 2) finding a commercially valid excuse to make a new repo and try some fun ideas out there. If the ideas are good, incorporate them into the main codebase and get back to what you do best.

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

#210

Post by literallyaduck »

Technical Managers move to Non-technical over time.

Here is another secret, no one has the right way to develop. There are many development styles and some produce better short term or long term results.

Unelegant code that works might be just the thing until more robust, better architected, unit tested code takes its place it all comes down to the purpose. A small one off hacked together solution for on boarding might be better than spending three months to "get it right " it all depends on risk appetite, project standards, and the scenario.

Don't act like you know better if you don't. Listen to other developers ideas, they might have input you haven't thought of.

Always Be Learning, not as catchy as always be closing, but the path of a developer is a path not a destination. You can always make progress.

Fear of failure or being called out as a fraud shouldn't stop you. Remember everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect, lots developers think they write the best code in their shop, and would critique your code even if you objectively were the best developer of all time.

Learn the industry standards as you can and shore up your weaknesses with good underlings that will help you learn.

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