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Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#111

Post by scsilver »

burnoutgal wrote: post #37
lazyant wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High-risk deploys and slow iterations is not on you but on engineering management. Not knowing who's responsible for reviewing your code is also not on you but on your manager, bad onboarding, bad documentation and general communication. Still you can check in the repo who's been working recently on adjacent work and reach out to them on slack/whatever and ask them. I suggest to try and get small wins (like merging t…

I think the "constant failure" comes from comparing myself to all my peers who have been successful, gotten rich, been promoted, written books, etc. I don't expect to be the best of the best, but obviously some people are thriving at these places. Why am I failing?

Are they happy or are their parents happy at their “success”. Go watch some Frasier, it’s good for some perspective on success and happiness across career, family, personal baggage.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#112

Post by scsilver »

akamaka wrote: post #39

I have the same problem as you right now. Long break from work during the pandemic, joined a new company, and have only managed to merge one tiny PR in my first month. It feels terrible. What I’ve figured out is that I need to have a new way to measure myself. I wanted to be a hotshot from day one, and impress everyone by cranking out new features. But on a project this complex, it will take half a year to ramp up an…

At the last place I joined, I just wrote out tests for the code. It got me easy quick prs, a context of the codebase, and appreciation from about every stakeholder.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#113

Post by scsilver »

nurettin wrote: post #110

Two steps to success: 1. Set up a local development environment. (what I call "setting up shop") 2. Read the source. Understand all of it. Debug it. Take it to dinner. Read it at bedtime, coffee time, sexy time. Don't wait for "buddy" to come teach you. If you are too tired/unmotivated/unable to do those things, just rethink your career. If you do those things, congrats you are a hacker so what exactly is the problem…

Love the code, be the code, test the code, and you will become the master of the code. But seriously you don’t have to make it your life, just start writing tests for different modules during your work day and you’ll be embedded in no time.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#114

Post by hogrider »

This seems a normal, even successful career to me. You were just burned out and maybe had a mesiah complex. I never had these kind of problems because from the beginning I always had a very mentally checked out a la office space perspective on everything. You pay me for 8 hours of best efforts to untangle your ball of problems but nothing is ultimately my fault and at the same time I see very little of the overall success in the company so why should I care beyond not getting fired?

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#115

Post by faangiq »

burnoutgal wrote: post #56
faangiq wrote: post #50

Sounds like you hit the lottery with that one startup and got promoted to a level far above your competence. Common problem. Truly senior people and true startup people do not struggle to find projects and contribute PRs. Find a job at an appropriately junior level at a real company. (FAANG will downlevel you appropriately.) Learn some real skills then try the startup thing again in a few years if you want.

I wasn't a director or anything, I've hovered around senior/staff engineer depending on the company. Still an IC role where I expected some help onboarding and picking a first project.

Yea senior/staff engineers don’t have trouble with that.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#116

Post by Terry_Roll »

legerdemain wrote: post #92
Terry_Roll wrote: post #83

Maybe move into sales if that is possible, very few people in sales are technical enough and let companies down, you however sound like might know enough to answer those board room sale pitches which require technical details. You can also then find out more about what the customer wants and then use that feedback to drive the technical direction of the product. By being able to code, you can randomly QA the product…

Maybe quit it with calling sales non-technical? There are many technical people working in technical sales and post-sales roles: customer advocates, sales engineers, evangelists, solutions architects, and probably lots more. So enough with your dusty cliches about sales.

I've yet to meet any sales person who is technical enough to explain their product and you can be sure I ask lots of questions! So its not a cliche.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#117

Post by muzani »

multjoy wrote: post #67
cj wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stop joining startups. Idiosyncratic-Culture Risk is off the charts for startups I think that's true when joining a young startup (e.g. company less than 2-3 years old). But there are plenty of 15-40 person "startups" that have been around for 5+ years and are profitable - I would say these types of companies are good to join (if they've had a stable and consistent management team) since after 5 years, the company…

Is a company that's been in business for five years with a staff really a start-up?

There's two popular terms: 1. A fast growth company 2. An organization looking for a repeatable and scalable busines model

Neither really have much to do with age. An agency can be doing contract work for 10 years looking for a business model, and it could technically be a startup.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#118

Post by Kletiomdm »

burnoutgal wrote: post #58
Kletiomdm wrote: post #49

If you haven't done any pr for so long, what do you do? Do you don't work in a Team? Or aren't you building up a team or org? Either it's your position to see issues and solve them for the org or it's your job to execute. If you can't come up with things to do, but it's your job, you should search for a team or product and not for a company.

When I joined my manager had a few onboarding tasks, I did all of those, and started protoyping my first PR. It was actually a pretty meaty open-ended project and in retrospect it was sort of high-effort, low-reward. I iterated on that several times, wrote proposals, solicited feedback, but ultimately nobody really gives a shit about it, so it hasn't gotten shut down or moved forward. At this point I've kind of accep…

Sounds to me that you need to find your team then?

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#119

Post by stego628 »

burnoutgal wrote: post #22
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #5

What I got from all this is that you are telling yourself that you want to do work that continuously causes you a great deal of distress. Why is that?

Partially because it's very well compensated, and my partner has a disability so I'm the sole income for our household. Taking a pay cut to do something else would be a big life change. More importantly, I can't imagine doing anything else. The first 5 years I was in the industry I loved it and was very successful. I got to travel and learn and felt like I was on top of the world.

So you expect to be on top of the world all of the time? You seem to have a lot problems but your career isn’t one. You’re in an extreme privileged position. Treat your therapy seriously because no job will make you happy if you don’t get a grip.

Re: Ask HN: How do I get over constant failure?

#120

Post by tssva »

necheffa wrote: post #101
cardosof wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to get downvoted to minus infinity but let me say this: consider also less techy firms. Or, companies that do have technology but aren't tech. I have some friends having a blast working with agriculture, there's lots of technology involved, but it's as far away from the stereotypical startup culture as you can get.

I have to say, as someone working in a stable non-tech company, it isn't all roses and unicorns. The code base is absolutely awful, mainly because a lot of non-technical people have hacked it together. And there is never time or money to attempt some kind of cleanup. It gets exhausting having to repeatedly say "we are going over budget due to unforseen complications as a direct result of low quality code". It gets ex…

None of this changes when you work for a tech company except technical people hacked together the absolutely awful code base.
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