Edit : I appreciate all the PoVs and I will reply to everyone. This is important to me. Just going to go rest a bit and I’ll be back.
Edit : Leaving the self-insulting language in, but yeah… Point taken, I should stop being so mean to myself. And to add another FYI, I’ve been on this codebase for about 3 months, which I probably should have mentioned.
I have no idea what is wrong with me. I get tasks, I work on them, they NEVER seem to close. Meanwhile everyone around me is left and right solving their issues. I reach out for a second opinion because I must just be stupid, and every time I reach out the person is never able to assist in any meaningful way.
It’s like my tasks always have blockers that everyone around me seems perplexed by, I get a lot of, “Wow, that’s crazy,” or, “Yeah your job does seem to have a lot of unusual blockers.”
I’m at the point where I’m in a daily meeting where I explain what I’m working on to a senior dev because obviously they noticed I’m a person on the team with sometimes zero points in a whole month. It’s so discouraging to have to go to a daily meeting because apparently I’m stupid? The thing is, when I explain what I’m blocked by, every person has said, “Oh weird, this seems like a really confusing task.” Or, “Damn I’ve never seen anything like that.”
So obviously I look at other peoples’ tasks… what are they working on? And their tasks are SO simple and straightforward, yet I’ve NEVER had a task like that, all my tasks were opened years ago, remained open for months or years, then were assigned to me. And they’re all fucky. Wth.
Tbh I’m running out of things to write because I don’t want to justify it, because I feel like I should be doing better. What the hell is wrong with me?
I have wanted to change jobs for close to two years now… but you’ve all interacted with recruiters… they never help, and job search is impossible as a person with anxiety and possibly autism?
I love coding, I hate my coding environment… Anyone else ever have this type of issue in programming?
I tell anyone entering the job market or is a young professional that absolutely no job is worth losing yourself over. Your skills change over time and will never leave you completely. I’m a competent designer, a reasonable developer but the most marketable skill that I didn’t actually develop until my late 20’s was soft skills—mostly developed by gently explaining to tech illiterate coworkers why what they wanted developed was impossible, impractical or just a bad idea.
I did this by treating every coworker as if they were the client. Be polite, professional and let them know that you want to solve their problems. It’s sounds stupid but people just put their guard down if you lead with, “I’m here to help you”. You can then have more honest conversation about all the bullshit keeping you from doing your job, provided it’s phrased as matter of fact and sprinkle in niceties.
The cruel irony is that this same disposition that started as a way to make me a more effective developer ended up pushing me into a position where I don’t get time to develop.
Well, one thing I do have going for me is that everyone I work with seems to talk me up to management, otherwise I have a feeling I’d already have been removed from this team and moved back to in-company-work. I just can’t seem to translate that to getting points.
Everyone likes working with me, but sometimes I can’t work out what I’m even contributing. If that makes sense… I just wrote it and it barely makes sense to me… just working through this one bite at a time so take this post as “thinking out loud”.
If others sing your praises, then you’re golden. To this day, I despise performance reviews and dread them every year and yet, every year they’re glowing reviews from my peers.
Being high-functioning often means you’re blind to your own contributions and more critical of your own work than others perceive. In time, I learned to accept the praise from others and blindly trust that things are ok even when every fiber of my being says I’m fucking up.
Sounds like you need validation more than anything. The points are bullshit if they don’t reflect the effort. Unfortunately, the corporate world is full of bullshit metrics to gauge productivity. I felt this at the bottom and nothing changed moving into “senior leadership”. It’s all bullshit and I encourage everyone to collect a paycheck and just go home.