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Ask HN: How does someone get more confident?
Hey, I've been a professional developer for 3 years and some change.Before that I graduated with a CS degree (1st class) or close to 4 for US people.
I started fiddling with computers around the age of 12 (now 26). I build a few websites being the early 2000, did some irc shell scripts etc, got involved with game emulation for e.g world of warcraft etc.
Now comes the time where I want to move forward with my career and prolly in less than a year from now move Countries, find another job or do contracting, or ideally land a remote job.
On the company I am now I've builded a whole dashboard that reflects the website, I've designed their "sales" website which is the public face of the company, I've builded a full on hybrid mobile app for a complicated social network, I worked on nosql db, sql db's and graph. I've also done scaling, TDD, got involved with our API's and expanding them etc.
Our stack works on C# and JS mainly.
I have personally been working on more JS and frontend work the past year or so, and I'd consider myself more proficient in JS including frameworks like angular, CSS, HTML.
My issue is that for some reason I can't convince myself that I can find a better job than what I currently have. I believe that I lack in many departments and I am afraid that I won't be able to land another job at my level of skill.
1) How can I become more confident or at least find my skill level and where do I belong? Do I go to interviews and take tests to see whats what?
2)How do I get past the thought that there are millions of people out there that are way better than me and will land that job that I am looking at?
TL:DR I've been a professional software developer for 3 years, have a CS degree and have spend most of my life fiddling on computers. I am not confident that I could land another coder job other than mine due to the massive competition out there, and I am underestimating my current skills. Is there a way that I can get past this?
- tomohawk 10y agoFirst, find a mentor you can talk to and who can guide you. In your case, getting a mentor who does not work where you work would be better. Perhaps someone at church, or within the local tech community. Second, it sounds like you may be overthinking things. Get yourself out there and start interviewing. You'll find that your thought processes will often change in response to actions. When you get out there and start looking, keep this in mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1WiCGq-PcY
- ankurdhama 10y agoDon't just be a "tools experts". I have been into software development for over 10 years and in last few years I realized that what we developers sell and hone is the skill of being an expert in a set of tools. Tools that allows us to translate the so called requirements into software. We need to be more than that, we need to understand the real world and its problems and get out of our digital shell. Learn other stuff, read about physics, logic, maths, philosophy anything that allows you to think about things in different ways and expand your mind. In the end, don't try to be the smartest guy (the world already is filled with pseudo intellects) , rather try to be curious (about anything and everything). One more thing, whenever you meet someone smarter than you, don't be just in the awe of it rather realize that here is your chance to know more and learn more.