> Don't conflate being a good programmer/engineer with being a good employee. Very true. I've been working in IT since 1994, initially as a programmer, later

> Don't conflate being a good programmer/engineer with being a good employee. Very true. I've been working in IT since 1994, initially as a programmer, later as a sysadmin, and nowadays as a cloud-guy. In all my jobs I've done good. Except one. I just didn't fit in. Tasks that even I could recognize as being simple were a real struggle, and I was frankly doing a terrible job at them. I've always fit in, I've always had both people and technical skills, but in that one particular company I was doing a terrible job and it was obvious to everybody, and myself. The topic of a "performance improvement process" came up, but I admit I'd spent so many weeks struggling to get better, to do better, that I just quit the day it was raised. It seemed obvious that for some random reason I just couldn't do the damn job, and it was better to admit defeat gracefully than stretch it out over additional weeks and months. I've done a lot of reflection, but even now I don't know what was going wrong, or why I was so bad. All my other employers have been happy with me, and I've always felt proud of my work. I guess culture/skills fits are real, in a way I'd not appreciated until then. Happily the very next job I accepted things worked out wonderfully from day one ..