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Firstly if you feel like you have anxiety go see a professional, it helps. At the very least look up CBT. 1. You could fix this by changing your method of "lea

Firstly if you feel like you have anxiety go see a professional, it helps. At the very least look up CBT. 1. You could fix this by changing your method of "learning", maybe you could do sketchnotes for things you learn if you are more visual or record yourself answering a pretend question about what you learned (i.e. explain to someone what a reflection in Java is.) 2. Nearly everyone in tech has impostor syndrome - let the recruiter or company decide you aren't skilled enough - if you think you aren't worthy you are holding YOURSELF back. Being a senior/lead dev doesn't mean being 2-10x quicker, neater etc. than a junior developer. 3. Hard to comment that the clock is ticking without knowing if you have a mortgage or family but as /u/slededit said life isn't linear and you are doing yourself a disfavor by acting like you are behind. I personally think I am behind of people who have traveled more even though I am doing very well in my career. 4. There was a comment here weeks ago about people painting vases - one class was told they have a month to paint a vase, the other class was told to paint one every day and then start again the next day - the ones who practiced everyday did it better. Accept that your first side-project won't be perfect in terms of SEO etc and give it a go. There aren't many tech-debt style things that you can stuff up with that you can't fix later down the track. Just to finish, everyone feels like this - just take a break and reconsider whats important for you.

__exit__ 8y ago
Thank you for the response. I skimmed through the CBT definition and it seems to fit my case up to some point. Will check it more in detail. As for the 'clock is ticking' part, what I had in mind was that somehow I need to learn as much as possible now so that my future-self is better professionally. This arises from the 'fear' that I will not be a valid professional by (say) my 40s-50s, as from what I understand, software engineers by that age are a smaller population compared to the younger one, and in addition, younger engineers are preferred over older ones. Of course, I am probably mistaken, but it's the general feeling I got by reading posts over the Internet. This, again, has to do with the feeling of 'rejection'. I'll try to reconsider my situation by taking a break. Also, will improve my learning methods from your advice.
- matt_s 8y ago
  I think you may be mistaken on the 40's to 50's part. What you don't see from experienced, well aged professional software engineers is they probably don't want to work in SV or at startups because they may see it as silliness (take home pay beating out lottery ticket options). They don't care much about new & shiny frameworks, etc. unless it helps solving a problem in a better way. They probably have seen new tools/frameworks come and go a few times. Maybe look for opportunities to work on tougher problems to solve. Maybe explore other options like project management or people management? Don't be fooled into thinking those are the only path to more salary though. It's also common to forget things with how many libraries and apis we have to use. A common concept in a lot of these is pushing complexity down the stack so you don't have to have it in mind when doing things. Least used things get forgotten.
thisone 8y ago
> 2. Nearly everyone in tech has impostor syndrome - let the recruiter or company decide you aren't skilled enough - if you think you aren't worthy you are holding YOURSELF back. well said. I've had such a hard time convincing really great people that if you find the job interesting, but say sideways from or two+ steps up from your current position, call the person advertising it and talk to them about it. Then if you still like the job, apply for it! You're (most often) much more skilled than you think you are. (plus the phone call can help to get your CV noticed when you do put it in ;) )

__exit__ 8y ago

Thank you for the response. I skimmed through the CBT definition and it seems to fit my case up to some point. Will check it more in detail. As for the 'clock is ticking' part, what I had in mind was that somehow I need to learn as much as possible now so that my future-self is better professionally. This arises from the 'fear' that I will not be a valid professional by (say) my 40s-50s, as from what I understand, software engineers by that age are a smaller population compared to the younger one, and in addition, younger engineers are preferred over older ones. Of course, I am probably mistaken, but it's the general feeling I got by reading posts over the Internet. This, again, has to do with the feeling of 'rejection'. I'll try to reconsider my situation by taking a break. Also, will improve my learning methods from your advice.

matt_s 8y ago
I think you may be mistaken on the 40's to 50's part. What you don't see from experienced, well aged professional software engineers is they probably don't want to work in SV or at startups because they may see it as silliness (take home pay beating out lottery ticket options). They don't care much about new & shiny frameworks, etc. unless it helps solving a problem in a better way. They probably have seen new tools/frameworks come and go a few times. Maybe look for opportunities to work on tougher problems to solve. Maybe explore other options like project management or people management? Don't be fooled into thinking those are the only path to more salary though. It's also common to forget things with how many libraries and apis we have to use. A common concept in a lot of these is pushing complexity down the stack so you don't have to have it in mind when doing things. Least used things get forgotten.

thisone 8y ago

> 2. Nearly everyone in tech has impostor syndrome - let the recruiter or company decide you aren't skilled enough - if you think you aren't worthy you are holding YOURSELF back. well said. I've had such a hard time convincing really great people that if you find the job interesting, but say sideways from or two+ steps up from your current position, call the person advertising it and talk to them about it. Then if you still like the job, apply for it! You're (most often) much more skilled than you think you are. (plus the phone call can help to get your CV noticed when you do put it in ;) )