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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?

#131

Post by Metricon »

As CTO, your primary responsibility is leadership, so assuming you have other development staff, your Principle Engineer/Senior Architect/Lead Developer (or multiples of these in a larger organization) should be providing you with technical options. Your job should be to weight the pros and cons of each within a larger perspective of resource impacts and return on investment. The technical solutioning should be delegated and then affirmed by your direction.

If the CTO title is more ceremonial (or your organization is very small) and you are actual performing the role of the most senior developer, know that there is no “right” solution to any software development task. Any working solution outweighs any theoretical optimal solution. The only real metric that matters is that each time you make a decision that it is better than the last one; where better is an amalgamation of (personnel * knowledge * skills * metrics ) / time available.

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

#132

Post by randomNumber7 »

Beeing a bit self critical is a skill and i think it's actually good for a CTO. Defenitely better than the opposite.

Maybe search on some colleagues where you can discuss technical things at eye level. You beeing CTO doesn't mean you have to know everything better (imo, dependent on the company culture it may backfire).

Maybe it's something unrelated and you are just a bit depressive. I can easily imagine that happens to a lot of people with all the reduced social contacts due to covid....

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

#133

Post by diarmuidking »

I think if you have been CTO for 8 years and its growing like crazy (and your growing your team) your doing a good job as CTO - at that team size its not really the job of CTO to make individual contributions - the job is more to find new talent for the team, to nurture existing talent on the team, and to make sure that good technical decisions are being made.

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

#134

Post by gwbas1c »

> I've been a software developer for about 12 years, the last 8 of which I have been the CTO of a company that is growing like crazy.

I think you need to find some good mentors; and/or find some good people in your organization that you can talk about these issues with.

> or get called out on not doing things the "right" way

Assuming you're working in a team setting, you need to direct the people who will call you out into planning to make sure that things are done the "right" way. And, then ask yourself, why aren't these people writing the coding guide, picking the patterns, writing the design, or reviewing such work? Why aren't you delegating to them?

One big mistake that I see is a general lack of mentorship when someone is "leading" without at least decade under their belt. You might be the smartest person in the room, but without experience, you're going to make mistakes that are "obvious" to anyone who's been in this field for 10+ years.

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

#135

Post by tombert »

latexr wrote: post #123
tombert wrote: post #47

I 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

Yep! I'm aware of that.

That's why I'm saying that being unsure of yourself isn't necessarily a bad thing.

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

#136

Post by AstroDogCatcher »

sam0x17 wrote: post #90
anon2020dot00 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of what Jeff Bezos said about Type 1 and Type 2 decisions. Type 1 decisions are one-way door decisions that needs to be deliberated deeply and consulted on with higher-ups. Type 2 decisions are two-way door decisions that small teams can be empowered to make. There is a balance between empowerment and the higher-ups taking responsibility. I've been in an organization where-in the higher-ups just abdicated…

> 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,…

This is nothing to do with one-way/two-way door decisions, you are conflating that concept with an understanding of "unintended consequences" in order to take a cheap shot at Amazon. Ordinarily I'd enjoy that as much as the next person, but this case is too ham-fisted to leave unchallenged.

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

#138

Post by SBArbeit »

Pick a new-to-you technology you're interested in, do File/New Project... on it, and just build something. Give yourself permission to be a beginner again. Build something that no one else will see, but that you'll regain your confidence with by proving to yourself that you're still capable of learning and growing. You'll see that something that took you 20 hours to do in week 1-2 will take you 20 minutes in week 8.

And remember: this is art, not science. We all make artistic decisions about how to do things in programming all day (we pretend it's science or engineering... it's not) and you will, too. Give yourself permission to do things how you want to, it's all just a learning opportunity.

I did this when I turned 40 after years of being an architect... it refreshed my love for coding.

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

#139

Post by adriand »

sam0x17 wrote: post #90
anon2020dot00 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of what Jeff Bezos said about Type 1 and Type 2 decisions. Type 1 decisions are one-way door decisions that needs to be deliberated deeply and consulted on with higher-ups. Type 2 decisions are two-way door decisions that small teams can be empowered to make. There is a balance between empowerment and the higher-ups taking responsibility. I've been in an organization where-in the higher-ups just abdicated…

> 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,…

I don't know anything about the details of Amazon's policy in this instance or the specifics of what happened, but strictly going on what you wrote, I'm not sure that this tragic outcome necessarily means the decision was bad.

There are multiple ways of looking at any decision: perhaps, for example, employees with cellphones were more distracted and thus more prone to accidents.

My eleven-year-old daughter has no cellphone because we don't think being connected at her age is good for her (she also seems indifferent to having one, unlike my son, who is all about being connected). We also let her walk home from school on her own, and have for a couple of years now, because we believe she should be independent. I can imagine (although I try not to) situations in which those two decisions interplay and lead to a bad outcome, but I still think they are the right decisions for her.

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