
Ask HN: Future without being an expert/good enough? - tuyguntn
I am struggling with my work&#x2F;job, but I have good intentions, but still all others who came before me after me are better than me. Some of them have enormous experience, some of them have little but growing fast.<p>I feel bad about this. What do you think, do I have a future in current industry (IT&#x2F;Software) if I am not good like others
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MrLeftHand
1\. You have to like what you do. If you don't then think about what would you
actually like and do that instead. No reason to work in a job you actually
don't like that much.

2\. We all have different speed when it comes to learning and progress of one
individual. Just because you might be slower doesn't mean you're stupid
compared to others.

3\. Look at them from an other angle. By learning one, or two things really
well, takes time. And that time is taken away from something else. They might
be experts in A, but they have close to zero knowledge of B, C and D. What
would you like to have more 25% of A, B, C and D, or knowing one of them for
100%?

4\. There is a saying "if you're the smartest person in the room, then you're
in the wrong room". Which means, don't feel ashamed knowing less then the
others. Use it to your advantage. Get help from them. Get them to explain
things. Knowledge is passed down by people to the people. Wether you're
reading a book written by someone, or a colleague explaining something. The
end result is the same. You grow.

Extra:

Lot of people think IT and Software Development is only coding and nothing
else. But that is far from the truth. It has a lot of human aspects from UI/UX
to team management. I always say, that when you write code, you write it first
and foremost for others to read. Because you're working in a team and others
will read what you wrote. But most of the developer ignore this simple fact.
Also there are so many jobs and skills needed in IT next to the regular stuff,
but people don't see it most of the times. That's why I roll my eyes when I
see fantastic developers become managers and struggle, because they love to
code, but they don't want to manage people, etc... If you're a people's
person, you could become a Scrum Master, a Project Manager, Product Owner,
etc... There are so many other things in IT besides coding. But you have to
look closely.

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Mz
"Don't compare your insides to someone else's outsides."

Your framing suggests you _feel_ you are struggling. Do you know for a fact
that they didn't feel the same way? Do you have objective measures showing
that you are actually underperforming compared to them?

I was a good student in school, but I still got nervous taking tests. I said
that one day for some reason to my French professor. She expressed surprise
and said that I _looked_ so calm. (The conversation was in French and a
million years ago. But that is the gist of it.)

You need to try to get objective metrics for your performance. It is
incredibly common for people to feel stressed out and to feel they are
struggling while others make it look easy and so forth. How a person
subjectively feels is often unrelated to the objective metrics of work
quality.

