
Ask HN: How to cope with professional anxiety/self-confidence in tech? - __exit__
First of all, my apologies for the possibly ambigous title. I do not know the exact terms to describe my issue, so I&#x27;ll try my best to outline it.<p>I would describe my problem as a combination of lack of self-confidence, self-discipline and anxiety, mostly related to the tech field (I&#x27;m a full stack developer with 4 years of experience).<p>The thing is, even though I proved myself greatly at my current job (and previous ones), and my colleagues think I&#x27;m skilled, my feelings are the contrary because:<p>1. Whatever I learn, I forget rather quickly. I simply read and code, but this is not enough to &#x27;learn&#x27;, I know. However, there is too much stuff to learn, and I feel partly overwhelmed by this fact. This is a problem because the tech field requires an approach to constant learning.<p>2. Due to the feeling of being stuck in terms of knowledge, I believe to be stucked professionally, and to be unsuitable for more-skilled jobs. Recruiters contact me with nice offers, but my feeling is that I would be rejected.<p>3. Additionally, I am lost in terms of career path development. I haven&#x27;t found a career path I would firmly pursue (yet) and feel that the clock is ticking, making me nervous.<p>4. As a result, I feel bad and lack self-confidence. I consider myself NOT ready to start a side-project (as means to improve my tech skills), because it overwhelms me due to the large number of considerations (for a web app: setup, choosing libraries&#x2F;services&#x2F;frameworks, good SEO, best coding practices...) and its complexity. Therefore I struggle and potentially leave the project aside.<p>Have you ever felt like this, completely or partially? If so, how did you cope with these feelings?<p>Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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amorphous
The feeling of overwhelm in our industry is more common than you might think.
It reflects the sorry state where getting older and having more experience
does not relate to gaining value, most of the time the opposite (imagine a
doctor being dismissed for having too much experience)

Some ideas for coping:

\- try to focus on learning fundamentals, things that are still useful 30
years from now.

\- don't worry at all about knowing the latest sh*t, framework, language.
they'll disappear. focus on your toolset, but ignore the rest. Instead, see
above

\- your career only partly depends on your tech chops. You need to decide
where you want to go: into management? focus on social skills. Technical lead?
Take as much responsibility as you can, get around, also people skills. Going
freelance? Specialise, and gain as much domain knowledge as you can (e.g.
automobile, telecom)

\- clock ticking? See point before, but with only 4 years into I don't think
anything is ticking for you. In fact, I don't believe this at all. Ageism
exists, yes, but there are plenty of ways to prosper

------
itronitron
I have felt like this at times, and recognizing that my feelings on the matter
change often helps me accept that if I am experiencing anxiety then that
feeling will eventually pass.

Forgetting the stuff you learn quickly is an asset rather than a liability. It
leaves space for future stuff that you will need to pick up. It also shows
that you can pick things up and solve problems quickly. I recommend keeping a
journal in which you summarize technical tasks that you resolved and that
involved learning something new. After several years that will stack up.

A big challenge in tech is knowing what the lifespans are for specific
technologies. Casting a wide net and focusing my learning by personal
interests (in addition to tech hype) has worked out for me. The small
technologies seem to win out over the big ones, as they require less effort
for people to pick up and adopt, so if learning something seems like a huge
effort you are probably not alone and are probably better off looking for
alternatives.

Career path is an odd one, focus instead on working with the most capable and
professional people that you can.

If you want to do a side project, I recommend breaking it up into tiny
independent chunks. Consider how you would develop a web app without a web
server, where would you host it? what tech would you use? what is the least
you would have to do to make it useful? Those types of thought exercises are
incredibly useful because often in a tech job you aren't making all the
choices so you have to invent creative approaches to working with other
people's decisions.

------
wallflower
> 4\. As a result, I feel bad and lack self-confidence. I consider myself NOT
> ready to start a side-project (as means to improve my tech skills), because
> it overwhelms me due to the large number of considerations (for a web app:
> setup, choosing libraries/services/frameworks, good SEO, best coding
> practices...) and its complexity. Therefore I struggle and potentially leave
> the project aside.

Read "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F___'. It talks about how many of us want
to become X but are not willing to go through the _pain_ (including failure
and frustration) necessary to actually achieve it. If you really want to
become a successful side project developer, you're going to need to bite the
bullet and focus on what is below the iceberg (marketing, SEO, promotion,
building a community). Choice of stack/code is not that important.

Personally, I haven't even attempted a side project for the reason that I just
don't really want to go through the pain.

------
slededit
1\. Forgetting is the brains coping mechanism for too much data. Its an
integral part of learning. If you feel your forgetting algorithm is misfiring
consider trying to leave bookmarks for yourself you can look up later.

2\. You're rejected for 100% of the positions you don't apply for. You have to
try.

3\. I feel this is closely related to #2. Nobody is born innately knowing
exactly their life path. You have to open yourself up to try new things and
accept you may fail at some.

4\. The key here is to just start. It doesn't matter if any of your choices
are suboptimal, that's not really the point of a side project.

~~~
__exit__
Thank you. Will try to follow your advice. Even though your points seem
obvious, it is very easy to miss them when in a situation like mine.

I'll just start small when learning or starting a side-project for the sake of
focus.

------
jackgolding
Firstly if you feel like you have anxiety go see a professional, it helps. At
the very least look up CBT.

1\. You could fix this by changing your method of "learning", maybe you could
do sketchnotes for things you learn if you are more visual or record yourself
answering a pretend question about what you learned (i.e. explain to someone
what a reflection in Java is.)

2\. Nearly everyone in tech has impostor syndrome - let the recruiter or
company decide you aren't skilled enough - if you think you aren't worthy you
are holding YOURSELF back. Being a senior/lead dev doesn't mean being 2-10x
quicker, neater etc. than a junior developer.

3\. Hard to comment that the clock is ticking without knowing if you have a
mortgage or family but as /u/slededit said life isn't linear and you are doing
yourself a disfavor by acting like you are behind. I personally think I am
behind of people who have traveled more even though I am doing very well in my
career.

4\. There was a comment here weeks ago about people painting vases - one class
was told they have a month to paint a vase, the other class was told to paint
one every day and then start again the next day - the ones who practiced
everyday did it better. Accept that your first side-project won't be perfect
in terms of SEO etc and give it a go. There aren't many tech-debt style things
that you can stuff up with that you can't fix later down the track.

Just to finish, everyone feels like this - just take a break and reconsider
whats important for you.

~~~
__exit__
Thank you for the response. I skimmed through the CBT definition and it seems
to fit my case up to some point. Will check it more in detail.

As for the 'clock is ticking' part, what I had in mind was that somehow I need
to learn as much as possible now so that my future-self is better
professionally. This arises from the 'fear' that I will not be a valid
professional by (say) my 40s-50s, as from what I understand, software
engineers by that age are a smaller population compared to the younger one,
and in addition, younger engineers are preferred over older ones. Of course, I
am probably mistaken, but it's the general feeling I got by reading posts over
the Internet. This, again, has to do with the feeling of 'rejection'.

I'll try to reconsider my situation by taking a break. Also, will improve my
learning methods from your advice.

~~~
matt_s
I think you may be mistaken on the 40's to 50's part.

What you don't see from experienced, well aged professional software engineers
is they probably don't want to work in SV or at startups because they may see
it as silliness (take home pay beating out lottery ticket options). They don't
care much about new & shiny frameworks, etc. unless it helps solving a problem
in a better way. They probably have seen new tools/frameworks come and go a
few times.

Maybe look for opportunities to work on tougher problems to solve. Maybe
explore other options like project management or people management? Don't be
fooled into thinking those are the only path to more salary though.

It's also common to forget things with how many libraries and apis we have to
use. A common concept in a lot of these is pushing complexity down the stack
so you don't have to have it in mind when doing things. Least used things get
forgotten.

------
bdiu
One of my breakthrough moments in my career while I was transitioning into a
full time developer role was when I realized this:

There will always be developers better than me but I am definitely better than
"that guy" over there - and I am getting better every day.

I was concerned that I wasn't good enough and I almost treated the above
statement as a mantra.

~~~
rajacombinator
Better yet, don’t care if you are “better”! If you are the worst developer
that can get the job done, that’s good enough.

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mabynogy
It's a self-esteem problem. One easy thing you can do is not to express it too
much. For example, avoid to be sorry about stuff you're not responsible for.

About the "career", it's an HR meme. You're supposed to be the perfect guy who
is never wrong and always healthy.

Don't buy what the others say even if it's told by someone who is supposed to
know (like someone on tv or a teacher). Make yourself an opinion on
everything.

------
delbel
buy a copy of The Now Habit by Neil Fiore. it's about overcoming
procrastination, but the advice could definitely help you out in my opinion.

~~~
__exit__
Thank you. I will look for the book and read it as soon as I can.

