DEV Community: solariatu

Imposter's Syndrome?

solariatu — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 07:47:45 +0000

And here I go again with yet another moan at me being incapable to grow as a professional.

Now, I am indeed quite newbie in IT industry, having complete a CS degree, and so far working as a developer for 3 years... But!

Most of my colleagues don't come from academic environment, hence I end up giving myself plenty of frustrations when it comes to arguing my point.

In my current company we used to have one-to-one meetings with a line manager, where we can discuss whatever we feel we want to discuss. So this is where my gears are starting to grind.

On the first one-to-one I had, I jotted down a list of things to suggest to the line manager, where one point was about implementing some new of the standard 'Software Engineering' processes into place, i.e. workflow charts, class diagrams, etc. That, in my opinion can improve a lot of issues even before the work has been committed. As an answer to this I got this: 'I don't think this will do any good for us! This is an ancient approach to agile methodology, in fact, it's a waterfall kind of process.'

What? Seriously?

Now how can one say that, having the knowledge/experience with 'Software Engineering'? - Easily: they just don't have that knowledge.

Now for those who think software engineers and software developers are of the same kind, please do a thorough revision.

Anyhow, lately it's been going in direction of redress. All of a sudden I see that my suggestions are creeping into to our workflow... But!

It appears that none of them are actually my suggestions. Our all mighty manager is pulling the dev team with those brilliant ideas. Holy Life Betterer!

So what everybody else think of this in the dev team? - Well, seems that I am not capable of being a part of this whole thing.

I get the human factor obstacles, but how does one suppose to achieve something, when it just comes to point where I need to shut up while a senior colleague is talking out of his... But*

Conclusion:

Imposters syndrome has place to be, but not always on it's own. Maybe it's just me, yet I feel it's being fabricated by the all mighty experienced lot.

Bla, bla, bla... Moan, moan, moan...

Self-taught || Educated

solariatu — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 11:22:33 +0000

So, many devs argue on which way to go.

IMHO on this one, but I would go both, which I actually did.

I started off from having to copy paste stuff from video tutorials as I watched and listened, which was advised by my old friend, who at the time was already bashing through the industry.
Having to notice that I don't really have a good idea of what I'm doing, and the lacking structure of online tutorials, at least what seemed to me at that point, I decided to take on a degree in computer science.
From my observation, many of the student fellows I started the course had been dropping out each year. So by the end of completing it, I had only couple of students having success with their degree. The rest were mostly the once returning from either academical holiday or those who would have had their study on a part-time basis.
When I join my current company I was full of enthusiasm, that I have finally found a job where I'd be spending a lot of time learning from senior colleagues.
Guess what? I didn't find it being the case.
All along, which is 1 year and ~6 months, I've been continuously discriminated against academical knowledge and it's applications. Yet some of the senior developers in this company are struggling to understand why you would use class properties visibility accessors and how it reflects on object mutation. Okay, fair enough, as long as your code is not breaking, we're cool. At least that is what our line manager says.
Now I don't want to sound like I am full of myself, as I never against anyone who is self-taught, educated or whatever they do, but what is it to do with me being educated?
Nevertheless, I had some family issues, that had affected my mental state, plus all the hate at work, and obviously, my performance as a developer has gone down a slope.
Line manager had approached me and it seemed that he had some empathy towards that, yet couple of weeks ago I was sent to HR manager to discuss this.
Funny, but how do you measure developers performance? I am sure there are metrics you can use, but would that include an in-depth analysis of contributions made by a worker?
From this meeting I also learner that none of my colleagues are educated to any degree, that includes the 10+ years experienced line manager. And all of those people are complaining how bad is the current education system. Well, I have personally not come across people with degree who would say it's waste of time.
It's also interesting how simply checking the amount of story points completed during a sprint(Agile Scrum methodology) may say about the actual performance of a dev. I see this as most ridiculous type of metric you can use, as 50% of the time the story points are just estimated incorrectly in out team.
So now I am officially being micromanaged having the deadlines of story points to achieve. Feels like a bit of modern agricultural field with a bit of benefits, as if someone owns you and throws a bone from time to time.

P.S.
Now that my personal life is sorted my story points gone up by 3 times, which is something senior devs do in our company. Still getting those leftovers in terms of pay, recognition, etc.

Abstract World

solariatu — Thu, 28 May 2020 15:38:33 +0000

Intro:

Hi,

Am I someone to listen to or be read/heard about? Possibly not. It might not make any sense at any point of what I say or decisions I make.
I spent most of my social life trying to prove my point about one or another point. With regret I can say it was never a success, but a failure in the eyes of those who ever had any contact with me.
So am I really that lousy?
One of my first harvests of success was back in the teenage days when I was a bass guitarist in a band. I got a contract offer that was implying a small, but stable income just for what I like doing in my own leisure, considering the fact I had to invest financially into this hobby before I would had got the contract.
Social opinions made their best to keep me were I was. No contract, no money, poor social status was the result of emotional pressure from my social environment. I mean, I was 18, what did I know?
These days I find it no different. Moving into IT industry put more questions into me, imposing the above complications.
If all of this might not made any sense so far, I have one thing to say, that I learned throughout many courses of traditional education - be sceptical, abstract as much as possible from what you see, hear, or feel.

P.S.
OOP is based around abstractions for a fair amount.

Thanks