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Comment by mihaigalos | Hacker News Reader

Feeling the world is going to implode is overwhelming, I admire your courage for speaking out.

From your post it is a bit unclear what you mean by feeling under-experienced compared to your peers. Is it at technical level? Work ethic/principles? Understanding of the whole technology stack? Or perhaps process in your company?

While any of these topics can be tackled and improved independently, little would contribute so much as literature on:

- Clean methodology from Robert C. Martin. In particular, "Clean Coder" (ISBN-13 : 978-0137081073).

- Software craftsmanship. In particular "The software craftsman" (ISBN-13 : 978-0134052502).

These should give you, in my humble opinion, some fresh motivation and abstract overview on software development in general.

I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors!

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> These should give you, in my humble opinion, some fresh motivation and abstract overview on software development in general.

Thanks for the kind words!

> From your post it is a bit unclear what you mean by feeling under-experienced compared to your peers. Is it at technical level? Work ethic/principles? Understanding of the whole technology stack? Or perhaps process in your company?

I feel the greatest trepidation around devops. Particularly in recent years I have noticed I am struggling to grasp the fundamental concepts of common tools. Kubernetes is a convenient example. Beyond k8s itself, I feel as if I'm drowning in the ecosystem which has grown around it.

At some point my mind seems to all lost all plasticity.

> These should give you, in my humble opinion, some fresh motivation and abstract overview on software development in general.

Absolutely! Both books gave me great encouragement very early in my career, I should read them again. Indeed, I will hopefully have a greater appreciation and better understanding of the topics covered now that I have more experience.

I stopped reading books on software around the time I started feeling inadequate in my position. They became more of a source of anxiety than inspiration. That must sound perverse!

I recently started reading "A Philosophy of Software Design" (978-1732102200). It has been a refreshing experience and I am hoping eases my back into such literature.

> Beyond k8s itself, I feel as if I'm drowning in the ecosystem which has grown around it.

Everyone else is drowning in it too. There's a recent photo making the rounds on twitter showing the insanity of how many components are part of the Cloud Native Foundation's offerings.

My advice as someone with a slightly different situation, but similar feelings of inadequacy is this: Remember that the higher up you get, the more your knowledge about how businesses work, and how to deliver value with software matters. Those skills I feel like are gained and honed with experience, not with knowledge of ever shifting tech stacks.

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