Unproductivity | Hacker News Reader

Unproductivity

After being in the SE industry for 4 years I'm starting to doubt the state of my abilities. I'm unsure if the slow pace of progress and the neverending googling is ever going to come to an end.

Daily I'm experiencing the Dunning-Kruger-effect and the meaningless hours chit-chating on slack doesn't do me any good.

I'm not denying that my issues might be rooted in my lack of skill/IQ and that I might merely be whining.

However, I do have to admit that I am getting somewhat tired of the constant nitpicking to the likes of my tech-stack.

I want the gap between my ideas and the technical implementation to be minimally small. Is that possible?

Does that mean I should cater to the Ruby-community? Python? Elixir? Or even JavaScript?

Maybe this is how things are supposed to be. Maybe I'm just lazy. Regardless, I'm unsatisfied.

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I can tell from direct experience that most - if not all - individual contributors (from junior to senior+) at nearly ALL major solution providers are frantically searching on Stack Overflow and GitHub every day to solve the problem at hand, and most likely recently even switched to tools like Copilot just to keep up.

Because most if not all people at the managerial level (or up) don't give a shit about how much knowledge at hand you have, as long as you are able to hit the agreed milestones, so that the project gets delivered on time and they get their bonuses.

Hell, most of them don't even give a shit how terrible the delivered codebase looks, especially if the poor customer decided not to sign a (very expensive) support contract.

In other words: Don't be so hard on yourself.

To me Tech is all about being curious, learning new things while coding and designing, being the best you can, and having fun while making worthwhile stuff.

If you don't feel like you have that particular mindset, maybe its time to explore what is fun and worthwhile for you

Disclaimer: I'm not a therapist.

Try to find out whether your own emotions are blocking you - when I was going through a major depression without treatment, I felt like the worst, an absolute impostor even though I luckily wasn't perceived as such.

Personally, getting treatment made me feel much better and relieved the pressure I was putting myself under - my own perception of the quality of my work improved and it was easier to get into a flow state at work.

To get good at something do it repeatedly.

Focus on one problem, one tech stack, and master it. You can make a whole career out of this and you don’t need to constantly start from zero.

Picking companies based on tech stack and process makes it easier to get hired and easier to perform.

Don’t fall into the trap of being nothing to everyone. Trying to learn different frameworks, hopping between domains and jobs, always at the bottom of a learning curve.

I had the same problem for decades. ChatGPT helps me bridge the gap between my goals and my skills.

Also, pick one thing to learn at a time and earn an industry certification in it (on your own time.)

I'm studying for an Adobe Certified Professional certification in Premier Pro so I can prove I am good at video editing.

Come up with a good question, then maybe you'll find a good answer.

Easier said than done

edgy.

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