Imagine one day, the developer who wrote 95% of the product is about to leave. What would you do?
I was worried knowing the fact that one day, the rest of the team will have to maintain the codebase. FYI, the codebase is not badly written compared to another system I have worked before. I was having a hard time dealing with impostor syndrome. The code, that I wrote, wasn't working at all. Hearing the news the main developer would leave the team soon, making the negativity in me even more.
All of that negative thought keep coming at me. I even had a thought of leaving so I would avoid any errors I would make while maintaining the codebase. Then I realised, the worst thing could happen is the time taken to solve bugs would take longer. I wasn't sure that I can continue the high code quality like the other guy but I told myself that at least I will work hardest possible to keep the system running smooth.
A couple of weeks later, there was a bug in the system that I attempted to fix it without asking the main developer for help. It took me a while to solve it. But I proud of myself for fixing it without any help. After that, I pushed the commit to production without running test (just joking, I didn't).
Have you ever been in a situation like me? If yes, what did you do to overcome the fear?
Top comments (1)
The bus factor! Documentation, knowledge sharing through code reviews and making sure people aren’t becoming silos of information is how we try to deal with it.