
Ask HN: Should I Leave Tech? - thruwuhway
I&#x27;ve been programming professionally for about five years. I have a liberal arts background and didn&#x27;t learn to program until I was in my late twenties. I assumed that I would be bad at programming because I wasn&#x27;t a successful math student and I struggle with things like sudoku and chess.<p>After five years, I am exhausted by the emotional endurance required to continue my programming career. I end many days feeling inferior. I don&#x27;t mind that programming itself can be hard and I enjoy programming as an activity in isolation. Rather, I&#x27;m tired of petty feedback in PR reviews and unsolicited lectures from other developers who assume they understand more than I do.<p>On a recent PR, someone said &quot;you should really find a way to do x&quot;. I had already spent half a day attempting to do so. This made me feel bad because it implied an assumption of thoughtlessness on my part and did little to help me out. But I wanted to be open to the feedback, so I spent more time trying to make it work. Finally, I brought this to the team and the consensus was that my approach was fine, that I hadn&#x27;t been wrong in concluding there wasn&#x27;t a good way to do x anyways.<p>I am continually having experiences like this and I&#x27;m completely tired out. I don&#x27;t know what about my personality inspires this behavior. These comments seem to be directed more at me than at other people. I suspect it is because I don&#x27;t hang out in Slack showing off how much I know about programming, don&#x27;t participate in the shop talk. I make good money programming but I am tired of feeling bad about myself. Can I find a better situation as a programmer or should I leave tech?
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jc01480
First off, your manager, team leader, or whomever is supposed to be mentoring
you is likely worse at “leadership” than you are at programming. If you get
the opportunity to provide feedback, give honest feedback. Tell them they suck
at mentoring, they make you feel inferior, and that you would not recommend
anyone work there based on the extremely poor environmental, professional, and
career-development qualities. Second, get the hell out of there. Again, get-
out-of-there. You don’t have to play the social reindeer games to simply be
treated as a professional.

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uberman
I have seen junior employees run up against a hard cap before. Programming
might not be for you, BUT just as likely my bet is that your employer and
peers have permanently pegged you as "the junior dev".

I have consulted at large, medium, and small companies and have seen this
behavior frequently even to the point where employees with 10 years of
experience are still referred to as "junior devs" (always will be) and treated
as such.

I know it is not a great time to be looking for a new employer, I encourage
you to at least cast about for new opportunities outside your current
employer.

Also, with five years under your belt, you at not a junior programmer and you
should be looking for intermediate or senior positions. If you have ALL the
qualifications of a job posting then it is likely beneath you. Look for
opportunities you can grow into but still ones where your skills can be taken
advantage of.

If after a second or third appointment you still feel like this is not your
cup of tea then move on to some other career but one that hopefully can
leverage your experience.

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sosilkj
Sounds like a not-so-great culture and probably poor leadership. I can relate
to what you're going through; I've worked in places that sapped every last
ounce of emotional energy out of me. It was hard.

No, I don't think you should quit tech. Politics are everywhere. I think a
good or bad office culture is (mostly) orthogonal to whether it's in tech or
not. But looking for another job makes sense; you'll probably make more money
and a change of scenery could do you good at this point in your career. It's a
big world out there.

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chuck9302
> This made me feel bad because it implied an assumption of thoughtlessness on
> my part and did little to help me out.

You need to man up. How was your colleague supposed to know that you had
already attempted that if there was no evidence of it and you didnt mention
it? I can see absolutely nothing wrong with what the reviewer did in your
example. The only thing wrong it seems is your attitude.

> I don't know what about my personality inspires this behavior. These
> comments seem to be directed more at me than at other people.

Is it possible that you just don't produce the quality of work that the rest
of the team would like you do produce? What do you expect the others to do?
Not point things out in your PR reviews because they dont want to hurt your
feelings? This isn't kindergarten.

> Can I find a better situation as a programmer or should I leave tech?

If you left tech where would you work instead? Do you think that lawyers don't
point out faults in each others work? Doctors face law suits all the time if
they make mistakes. Or maybe you want to leave the professional world all
together and take up a trade like brick-laying. Do you think that a building
site manager won't say something if your brick-laying is sub-standard? It
sounds like the issue lies squarely with you here.

~~~
sosilkj
i wouldn't put it quite like the person above did, but i would say: there are
ways to diplomatically address, deflect, or dismiss (as needed) these types of
things from teammates. if what you did was good enough in your opinion, then a
one-line response saying 'yeah, tried that, didn't work' is probably fine.
start thinking about the politics of your workplace. e.g., think about: who do
you need to keep happy in your team/dept? the answer won't be 'everybody',
that's for sure. your time matters.

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askafriend
> On a recent PR, someone said "you should really find a way to do x". I had
> already spent half a day attempting to do so. This made me feel bad because
> it implied an assumption of thoughtlessness on my part and did little to
> help me out. But I wanted to be open to the feedback, so I spent more time
> trying to make it work. Finally, I brought this to the team and the
> consensus was that my approach was fine, that I hadn't been wrong in
> concluding there wasn't a good way to do x anyways.

Why didn't you push back? Software is a team sport. It's a collaborative
effort where people bring their own ideas and approaches to the table.

When your co-worker gave you feedback in a code review, it's feedback. It's
open for discussion. You could have brought it to the team earlier for more
discussion or help making a decision.

Nothing you described has anything to do with the tech industry.

~~~
Zelphyr
I disagree somewhat with it being a team sport. It’s more of an art, which is
the problem here. The way I solve a problem and the way you solve it may be
two completely different yet perfectly valid ways. Who is right in that
situation? We could go rounds arguing whose solution is better. In the end,
the problem been solved. Sometimes that’s enough.

We as an industry need to get better at recognizing when a problem has been
sufficiently solved and move on.

~~~
askafriend
> The way I solve a problem and the way you solve it may be two completely
> different yet perfectly valid ways. Who is right in that situation? We could
> go rounds arguing whose solution is better.

If this is what the discussion devolves into, then I expect additional context
to serve as the guiding light. What are the goals of the project? What is the
timeline? What is the ROI? Who are our customers? What are their tolerances?
Do we have SLAs? What internal commitments do we have to other teams? etc.

If none of those are enough to serve as the guiding principle, then who really
cares how a problem is solved as long as it's solved? You're building a
business, not making art to be admired.

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sethammons
It could be a crap environment, or it could be that your team is bad at
communicating, or any number of other things. We've ran into cases before
where competing advice was given to mid or jr devs by senior members and they
waste cycles spinning in circles trying to make everyone happy. However, with
some communication, things get cleared up fast. In this particular case, the
recommendation to the dev running in circles was to get the folks with
different opinions together at the same time and talk it through. More often
than not, there are misunderstandings on both sides. A quick discussion can
lead to unblocking things, stopping the spinning in circles, and get things
done. On the other hand, the people you work with could just be lacking in
professionalism and you can always change to a new shop.

In your particular case, it is unclear to me if you pushed back. If someone
asked you to find a way to do 'x,' and you already tried for a considerable
time, I'd expect any non-jr dev to push back saying they've tried and they
don't see anything and to either seek additional help or escalate the issue to
get a resolution -- I would not expect them to spin more wheels unless there
was a consensus from the team or higher ups that 'x' needed to be done.

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Antoninus
I'm in a similar position at a growing startup. Condescending PR comments,
poor leadership in a sense where 'you should x' because another developer
likes it that way even though 'way x' is not researched.

I just laugh because in reality its not a big deal and its just software. We
get paid a decent amount of money to transform business requirements into
reusable, testable code. Not take ourselves seriously and demean our
colleagues. I try to be extra nice and supportive of everyone in almost a
tongue-in-cheek way because I have life outside of programming that is pretty
sweet and don't link my identity to the quality of my code (or what others
think of it).

My advice would be to grow thicker skin and not take things too personally.
With that, don't take your colleagues so literally either. No one is as
'smart' or 'dumb' as they appear.

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danbolt
I’ve been programming professionally for about five years as well and I feel
the same way. The culture’s emotionally exhausting, and I feel like I’m
feeling more and more dull to career growth. I think I’m simply going to have
to find ways of emotionally disengaging and the right spot where that meshes
well.

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janstice
Do you work for a tech company, or a tech department in a non-tech
organisation? Having worked in both, the IT culture are quite different, and
you might fit better if you swapped from one to the other. (Of course the
politics are very different as well...).

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hedora
If you’re that bad, they should have let you go. So, you’re probably not that
bad, or they’re not very well run and are lucky to have you.

Either way, try to change your situation.

If you want to make things work where you are, ask your manager to set up some
sort of mentor for you. (Either the manager, or someone else.)

Frame it positively: You want to improve so you can start to move up in the
team (or something like that). At least you will show you’re motivated to
improve, and not content slacking off and drifting along.

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_bxg1
Many tech companies have a toxic machismo culture around knowledge and skills.
But there are lots that aren't that way; I'd say, try and find one of those.

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MyHypatia
Try finding a better situation. Don't change your livelihood just because
negative people are bringing you down. Dump the negative people and find a
better group of people who act like a team and know how to be supportive. It
can be hard to find a good team, but don't let the negative experience with
your current team dissuade you from finding a better situation.

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uselessphd
code less, do more water-cooler time, if you can I could not and left tech

