Why I Feel Inadequate at Work
Photo by Martin Martz on Unsplash
I feel inadequate at work. I think I’m not the only software developer to feed this way, and I likely won’t be the last either.
I wouldn’t say I feel inadequate all of the time, it’s just really in the time between logging on and logging off each day.
I’m starting to believe that this isn’t entirely my fault.
Context Switching
I’m expected to switch between projects, and it feels like I never truly understand anything. It takes time to work out what a system does, why it exists and which person made the questionable decisions contained within it. When someone asks me about a project I’ve rolled off working on I feel like I’ve suffered a head injury as I can’t remember anything about it.
AI has made this much worse than it ever was before. I barely know what I’m doing, as Claude goes off and writes the code for me (and makes a whole host of mistakes I would never have done if I were carefully crafting the code). At our company we are expected to switch projects and get on with pushing features immediately, with no ramp up or time to actually understand the code before jumping right into the code.
It’s like an interview where instead of passing on the candidate that fails to ask clarifying questions we are happy with people jumping into code and adding together whatever kind of solves the problem spec without the necessity of further thought.
If your business rewards behavior that would never pass the interview for the same business something is going incredibly wrong.
Meetings
Meetings don’t help either.
I’m fairly quiet in meetings. There are always people who can instantly answer every question, have opinions on every topic, and somehow remember decisions made eighteen months ago. Meanwhile I’m still trying to work out what the acronym in the meeting title stands for.
Then there is the daily stand-up.
Every morning feels like a variation of the same question:
“Is it done yet?”
No, it wasn’t done yesterday when you asked.
No, it isn’t done today.
And if you ask again tomorrow there’s a decent chance the answer will still be no.
The Commute
I also enjoy commuting into the office to collaborate with my colleagues.
Unfortunately, my colleagues have chosen to “collaborate” from home. Some of these are enjoying the remote contracts that they secured from the covid-era, while those of us that joined later are expected to come into the office.
So I sit in a half-empty office attending video calls with people who are technically in the same building but several hundred miles away.
Estimates
Management has solutions to these problems of course.
If a piece of work is estimated at ten days, somebody will suggest we can do it in five. It’s the only way that you can
Then somebody else will suggest AI can make us three to five times faster (as they are actually demanding at my company).
So who knows what any particular estimate should be? They were always pulled from the sky, but do we give the human estimate or the AI estimate for any given task?
I’m unsure what to do, and there is nobody to ask such questions.
At this point I’m never quite sure why they hired me in the first place. Surely one laptop running ChatGPT should be enough.
Blocked
Software development often involves waiting for other people. Waiting for access. Waiting for approvals. Waiting for requirements. Waiting for reviews.
Then, during stand-up, you explain that you’re blocked.
The following day you’re still blocked.
Eventually somebody asks why you’re not making progress.
I don’t know. Perhaps because I’m blocked.
Conclusion
The strange thing is that despite all of this, most developers I know feel exactly the same way.
Maybe the secret isn’t that we’re inadequate.
Maybe it’s that modern software development is surprisingly effective at making competent people feel that way.
About The Author
Professional Software Developer “The Secret Developer” can be found on Twitter @TheSDeveloper and regularly publishes articles through Medium.com
The Secret Developer has simply listed a variety of excuses for poor performance.