I failed..

Today I got my confirmation that it’s not just an imposter syndrome. I am a failure. I work as a full stack developer and today a coworker, who I helped out at the beginning, was assigned to review my back-end code.

I have nothing against the coworker, it’s not about the coworker, it’s about me that after 4 years in this company, I can’t be put as a master on a project that I have been working on for 6 months.

It’s like a slap in the face. I can’t blame anyone besides me. I am in my mid 30s and thought it would have been easier by now, but in fact it’s harder. With all my private stuff going on and work, I finally admit I’m defeated by work. It has left me completely empty. And I don’t know what to do next.

My first reaction was to quit right away and what then? I have been offered other jobs from numerous other companies, but as soon as the HR interview was over and the next step would have been the coding part of the interview, I would back down. Coming up with excuses like “I just decided I would take another offer” or “My current company just offered me a new position” or “My private matters restrict me right now to take a new job”.

The only thing that makes me happy is when I can help others to solve a problem. But usually that doesn’t last long, either they figure out I am not that good — never claimed to be — or they just become better than me [as in the case of the coworker].

Don’t think I am mother Theresa of programming and I just want to help. I like to help with problems because it helps me gain more knowledge and trains me to express myself better. Again, I don’t claim I am good, I’m just saying I am willing to help you and we can try to figure this out together. Not, I have all the answers. No, I definitely don’t have the answers.

My whole career is based on google searches. Lately, one of my friends and also a programmer, decided to try out and apply to another company. He and I talk on a regular basis and I asked him about the coding interview. Not going into details, but his story reminded me of my failed coding interviews in the past and that, even now after 4 years, I will fail them again. One basic step of reading a file to gather information to process it, I need google to search “how to read files in typescript”. I know what I need, but I don’t know the syntax. Programming is a process and I don’t have the full idea of how to write it until I start to write it. And yes, my friend did good on the coding interview.

And by the way, the reason another coworker was assigned to review my code and every else’s on the project’s back-end services is because the coworker who did is on vacation. And the fun part is that the coworker [on vacation] and I are the only seniors on the project.