
Ask HN: Feeling stuck and insecure. How do I grow as a software engineer? - programmerthrow
I&#x27;m a 32 year old software engineer. Been coding&#x2F;hacking since I was about 14 and I still love doing it. Been mostly working on web-related projects&#x2F;jobs. Worked in the industry for ~7 years now. No CS degree.<p>My current job is a web-based SaaS tool, mildly successful. Been with the company for ~4 years, an early employee.<p>With the success of the company, we have grown, and the pace has become much faster and I feel I am not keeping up.<p>My day to day is very hectic, before I can blink the day is over without much work done. Part of my responsibilities (except my core of coding) are interviewing candidates, being a go-to guy in the team and code reviews.<p>Lately (~4-5 months) I&#x27;ve started feeling very incapable. I&#x27;ve had several tasks and small-medium projects that I keep getting &quot;stuck&quot; at, and they drag on and on. I also feel that as a senior developer, others look at me as an example and I feel like I&#x27;m setting a very bad one.<p>I&#x27;ve noticed that I feel more and more insecure, a fear that I won&#x27;t be able to deliver on my projects, that I always require another team member&#x27;s assistance to complete my work. Everything has become difficult, and I mainly feel that I have no &quot;quiet&quot; space (mentally) to be able to think and break down my tasks, and even when I try I hit a mental wall and more feelings of inability to handle the tasks.<p>Also, I feel my mental capacity has shrunk. I can hardly handle more than one thing in parallel, and even just one thing, as I said, has become hard.<p>I feel that I haven&#x27;t grown as a developer as my peers have, some of which are newer and less experienced.<p>The challenges are interesting and hard, and I feel I need some guidance on steps I can actively take to improve myself and get out of this long rut.
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itamarst
It may be you simply don't have time to do all your work. If you're
continuously interrupted for code reviews and interviews and so on, you won't
get uninterrupted time for coding.

So you can choose to say "I don't have time for coding, _this_ is more
important", or whatever method of prioritization you can come up. And/or get
your company to hire someone to take some of the load off of you.

Or: you need a (very long) vacation.

