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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 firs
by akamaka 5y ago
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 and become an important part of the team.
In the meantime, I’ve realized I can’t simply call myself a failure every day. I need to find smaller goals that I measure myself against, like learning a new part of the codebase, building a relationship with another developer, building a little prototype that might not get used, and so on.
- burnoutgal 5y agoI tried this - I taught myself Rust and Scala, built several prototypes, it was all kind of satisfying for a while until I came back to the fact that none of it translates to job security. I can sit in a corner by myself and build things nobody uses, but it's not going to keep me employed.
- akamaka 5y agoThat’s interesting. Sounds like you’re a solid developer, but that your company doesn’t put much effort into making its employees feel secure. This suggestion might be a bit out of left field, but reading The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts has helped me a lot with this problem.
- agumonkey 5y agoEven trying to be a hotshot, something i often do naturally, I believe comes from anxiety of joining a new group; a way to justify, ensure my place in it.
- scsilver 5y agoAt 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.