Ask HN: How to recover from a career false start?
I graduated with a CS degree from a top 10 school in 2011. I did a small internship with a 15 person software company. From there I spent a year studying (natural) languages.
After that I did a few odd jobs until I landed my first programming job in 2014. It was programming part time for a startup mainly using python. I always felt utterly confused about what I was doing. I left the company after 6 months. I told them I was going on to a new opportunity but really I just felt like I couldn't contribute at all.
Some more odd jobs and I landed a full time programming job using Ruby on Rails. I had built my own ruby on rails project as practice and felt like things would go pretty well. After entering the company I couldn't seem to get anything done. We did pair programming but I could never keep up. After a while I just used the pair programming to try to hide the fact that I wasn't keeping up. After 6 months the boss and I have a conversation and agree to call it quits. I felt relieved because those last few months I honestly felt like I was stealing.
After these failures I decided to try freelancing. I met with a company multiple times and they seemed keen, but every time I met with them I felt like I was getting more and more out of my depth. Finally we agreed a rate via email and they asked for a few bits of paperwork. I completely froze up and couldn't reply to them. That was 9 months ago and I never did manage to reply. A similar thing happened with another freelancing gig.
Now I look at my resume and feel like it's full of holes that I can't explain that well. I look at freelancing and feel like I can't take on anything because I'm not sure I'll be able to do it.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? Does anyone have any advice?