> I've done some projects I would consider fairly complex but they weren't great: The code quality never was amazing, the code was rarely as fast it could/shoul

> I've done some projects I would consider fairly complex but they weren't great: The code quality never was amazing, the code was rarely as fast it could/should be, rarely bug free etc... Code doesn't need to be "optimized" by some random metric if that is not important to the business. If you are spending too much time to write code optimized to be the fastest possible on a given hardware, and that effort has no tangible benefit to the company, you are not a good developer for that business. > I remember a senior at my last job who after I spent a day struggling on a problem was like "ppfffft, here, i did that in 30 minutes" in a very condescending way, and looking back I'm thinking, was he an a-hole?was he right?both? I have found that it is very common in people to forget how they were before they learnt something. These kind of people are terrible teachers, terrible leaders and terrible long-term systems thinkers... but are incredibly confident and can do things that are good for short term incredibly quickly. Sounds like one of those people. >Is there any kind of objective metrics to know if you're actually decent at this? IQ test is one good metric. A high IQ means you are able to see patterns and hence learn and grasp things quickly (given that you spend time learning). Mensa has online test you can take. Similarly, OCEAN/MBTI may be something you want to try to see if you learn something about yourself... which can be useful to a point.