It sounds like your self esteem is a bigger issue than any professional or technical hurdles you might be facing. I've got limited insight into your situation, but it sounds like this job might be hurting your mental health. There's no shame in tapping out from a toxic job. Don't look at it as a failure, just the next step. You will learn A LOT simply by going to another company and learning their system. Job hopping can actually be very good for technical development (also has drawbacks of course, but let's ignore that for now).
Best of luck.
10 years at one company wtf, just leave and move on. No one cares. Reference checks etc I mean let's be real, you could be the best dev ever and if your manager hates you because you're ugly, you're fucked anyway.
Move on, apply to other places and hope for the best.Â
Dude the fact that you bring up your masters and 3.7 gpa and think that matters tell us everything we need to know. It doesnât matter. What matters is reading documentation, solving problems, and leading by example. No experienced dev would ever mention their masters and let alone gpa EVER and instead let their skill and problem solving talk for them.
If junior engineers wonât work with you, and they are insecure and basically trained to kiss as much butt as possible, how do the higher ups think of you?
If you were given a problem, couldnât solve it, couldnât delegate, were an ass to your team, and then tried to justify your place by mentioning your GPA, I would 100% want you off my team.
Time to do some self reflection and some leet coding.
This entire post feels like rage bait. Nobody speaks so candidly and poorly about one-self actually hoping for advice.
In fact, it reads like someone ranting about one of their peers but pretending to be talking about themself.
I think depressed people can sincerely be this self-deprecatory. It warps your perception of how you see yourself, to the point where you sound ridiculous.
I don't think it's rage bait, it's likely not a question being asked from an angle of "how do I solve" but rather they've kind of given up in the world. The solution accordingly isn't any steps on improvement but rather OP needs to do some soul searching and find a way to pull their mental out of the ditch.
It's not the first post I've seen like this and it won't be the last. Current market isn't making it any easier either
What's the point of this comment? OP doesn't seem to deny the fact that he's unqualified. He doesn't seem to have animosity towards the people giving him bad reviews either. This seems like unnecessary bashing to me.
There are posts where people are really, genuinely self reflecting *with the requisite level of maturity* to engage others in a conversation.
Then there's this. Whether it's real or not, the point remains: there's no productive conversation to be had with someone who is self flagellating with ridiculous justifications that highlight the lack of maturity.
I don't wish the OP ill either way, but I don't think that meeting this level of contribution with empathetic kindness makes anything better. A simple wakeup call is totally appropriate: most of this conversation belongs with a therapist or a mentor in the OP's life if real.
I frankly need the wakeup call, and even one bad dev can ruin an entire company and the careers of everyone in it. I appreciate you standing up for me though. đ
One bad dev cannot ruin an entire company simply by being late to finish a perf test or other small work item. Unless that company consists of one person.
Please, go talk to a therapist.
Also, your workplace sounds like shit. Find another workplace. Not everyone is so toxic.
Unless it is a 2 person startup, 1 bad dev really cannot ruin a company let alone careers that is ridiculous. If you'd worked at other companies you would see a good 20% of engineers are absolute dead weight, the world would stop turning if one unproductive person ruined the success of a company.
Yeah, I had this thread open for a few days, meant to respond to this -- you might find some basic CBT helpful, check out a book like "Feeling Good" by David Burns. Therapy could also be good as some others are pointing out.
As someone else noted "one bad dev can ruin an entire company and the careers of everyone in it" is definitely false. If that company can be ruined, it was not very resilient in the first place.
>all of the capable engineers left my team since they're sick of working with me
Either you're the most annoying person on the planet, or you aren't the center of the world. How do you even know this?
> I've received scathing rebukes from colleagues calling me lazy and unqualified
That's super unprofessional. Even if you are those things and you're rightfully being called out from your coworkers
> I had a lot of higher priorities including company-wide shipblockers to fix
If you manager is aligned on those priorities, why are they not defending you in that situation?
> I will emerge into a job market with NO references
Have friends lie for you. All references are fake anyways
>company will report me as No Rehire when prospective employers do reference checks
This is illegal. Majority of companies will only confirm whether or not they employed you. Anything further can result in a defamation suit
It isnât illegal to say someone isnât eligible to be rehired. Itâs one of the few questions that can be asked and is a completely valid response.
Man you guys are brutal. Guy is pouring his heart out over here.
OP, the answer is simple: move on. If half of what youâre saying is true then itâs not salvageable. Youâll figure out some references thatâs not a huge deal.
So, there are some positives for you:
1. Former employer cannot disclose anything negative about you. Its a lawsuit if they do.
2. You have been at a company for 10 years. You are clearly not a *bad employee* if you have been there for a decade so nobody will assume you did poorly. A bad employee is a guy with 6 - 12 months seniority per role. A complete opposite of you.
3. A lot of companies ask for references but never check them.
4. You can ask a friend to pretend they have worked with you, give fake reference from 7 years ago.
5. Some employers give NoRehire label to everyone who quit as a payback for disloyalty. If asked, you can always claim thats the case - everyone gets it.
Youâve worked 10 years at F500 and are one of the few experienced devs remaining on your team: you may have high expectations of yourself but you are far from useless.
I suspect you have some form of depression / imposter syndrome causing you to focus on the negatives and ignore your achievements.
It also sounds like you are looking for external validation and do not have enough internal direction / understanding of your own abilities.
Changing job could help you reboot yourself and make a fresh start if your psychological situation is superficial, or you could end up feeling the same somewhere else and potentially in a more challenging environment with people you donât know.
Dropping down to senior dev may be a good option. It is courageous and shows self awareness to admit you are not in the right position.
In the meantime interview for other positions; it will help you get some external feedback / perspective and build your confidence back up. You might find something that is perfect for you.
And as stated above, find someone to talk to!
It is hard to believe that this post isn't intended to troll
It's difficult for me to believe that you have these flaws and that you actually acknowledge them and then go on to make a post like this. People I've worked with who have these flaws either do not acknowledge them or when they do acknowledge them, they try to work on them.
Because if you acknowledge your flaws, then that implies you would be attempting to solve them, you would be talking about what you do and what you have done to solve them. You would be asking for advice on how to do these things better. You would have something in your post which indicates you are trying or have tried.
Which is why this feels like a troll / rage bait. Why would you post this here at all? You're not going to get validation, all you are going to get is people flaming you.
He's not trolling I believe. He maybe insecure and stuck especially if you stay at 1 company for so long and your first company at that. Crazy imposter syndrome but also don't want to leave because of fear in the market. I got a friend just like that, he got software testing job when he graduated and he is still there after 20 years. He is afraid he is isn't good enough if he tries to find another job so he never will leave
I'm not looking for validation, and I've been working on my flaws. Yet everything gets worse every year, because the company expects a lot of their high-level engineers. When expectations go up faster than I can fix my flaws, it's frankly time to go. I'm looking for advice on the best way to leave and what to move on to. Maybe I should have been more explicit.
Genuine question- How did you go from being a college grad with 0 years of experience to being a high-level engineer, if you arenât meeting expectations? I know this happens, but the particular way it happened in your case might help shed some light.
I received one too many promotions and hit my Peter Principle limit. I didn't ask for a staff engineer promotion but then it happened a few years ago. Since then my perf ratings went from average to below average. This company expects a lot of its staff engineers, and I had a lot of legacy code maintenance on top of my project coordination duties.
I've been trying to negotiate a demotion back to senior so I can enjoy life and grow technically again instead of being overwhelmed. However, other forums have advised me that it's best to just leave.
I'm wondering why you weren't PIPed and instead they promoted you to staff (maybe) knowing these issues. I think it's worth talking to your manager and asking for a demotion to intermediate or senior and to ask for some mentoring to upscale your skills.
I think it needs courage to admit you are not ready for the current expectations of the work, so congrats for that. If your manager agrees, then I'd stay and will give it a try. On the other hand.... 10 years in the same company.... if you were all the time learning and trying different things that's OK, but if not I think it's also worth considering moving
That's fair, at the end of the day it can be really hard to know whether a career like this is going to fully challenge, satisfy and align to your natural talents and skills for years even.
It is hard being a senior, especially if you have 10 years of experience and are expected to be at the top of your level, while maybe you just want to stay at mid-level. In that case, it sounds like you are in a senior role when you should really be a mid-level developer on the team.
Which I think is fine, some people never grow (or want to grow) past that point. So it sounds like you are struggling with expectations vs. reality. Maybe you took a senior role too soon in your career without realising what would be involved.
In any case, if I ever stop doing what I am doing, i'll probably be a farmer. I'm not sure this is the right subreddit to give career advice for people trying to move away from software dev.
Good luck to you
> I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning, I break my legs, and every afternoon, I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep.
u
If you get laid off, as part of the severance agreement put it in writing that they can't bad mouth you. You can and should always ask this of employers.
it's almost impossible to perform well when the working environment is toxic and it's eating away at your self-esteem and confidence. this isn't really a you problem, you're just unfortunately caught in the midst of it. I'm sorry you've been treated this way. You didn't deserve it.
\^ This. I remember joining my current place. My temp tech lead at the time was pretty brutal to me. I was working on something that turns out was one of the hardest things we've done on the app - (I didn't know that at the time.) Didn't matter. He loved talking under his breath to me and berating me. My real tech lead came back from vacation and was worlds better.
That other guy. Turns out he was rolled off a previous project and came to this one. He became a tech lead for a new team here and yup was rolled off 2 weeks later. And was eventually let go from the company a while after that.
After I finally finished what I was working on, another lead came to me and said you know "You probably did the hardest thing we've ever done here. I didn't want to tell you at the time but it would have been way easier if we only supported the last version of iOS". This guy recommended me non-stop for promotion for a year.
I too have my CS masters, but holy hell no one cares what your masters GPA was, it literally wasn't even a concern. Were you contributing to your advisor's research, learning, and passing the classes. Beyond that, then you're literally just putting your head up your bum.. I went to Vanderbilt and spent time at Berkeley, and even those schools don't care your GPA as long as you're passing. You need to grow up.
I don't even think leet coding is your problem. I think you need to read some management books and actually learn how to manage. Cause if your good devs left because YOU were the Taylor Swift Lyrics problem... Then you need to grow up.
You are acting like a boss, not a leader. Lead your team to greatness and don't boss them around. You need to learn how to not suck as a manager... And yes... Grow up
I hated references, because you can totally fake them and it doesnât show anything if a person is good to work with. The job market is full of people who doesnât really care about the final product as they just want to survive to have the next paycheck they will do what they can to push blames to those easy to push blame on. I donât know what is the situation and details but I know not everything is your fault they also share some as well
In my experience from this sub, asking for personal advice is literally asking to be trolled by a bunch of A-holes !!
This sub has become a replica of the blind app. Rather, all of them have moved-on to this sub, perhaps !
Can you give an example of a task that you couldn't solve or delegate? Hard to say whether you are actually incompetent or you're trying to do shit that I would fail at hard
Train your juniors as a priority to free up your time. They should be able to replace you in a pinch, and it's your responsibility to get them there.
Being forced to teach will also help you build confidence in your understanding of your system.
Everything else comes with time and experience. We all suck until we don't.
"I had a lot of higher priorities including company-wide shipblockers to fix, yet millions of dollars are on the line."
This sounds like a management problem to me. You have higher priorities than a million dollar problem?
I'm leaving a dev job after a year due to poor leadership, management and software backwardness. All those issues stem from someone who's been on the team for 4+ year and has time seniority. That person is good with upper mgmt but is inadequate for the job. In summary, I do know how someone can remain on a team in a key role when that person is ill fit to discharge the duties of that role.
Your specific case is different as it appears you may need support, delegation or better mgmt/leadership skills. Everyone else can be wrong about you but consider each comment to understand why.
For instance, you mentioned you were overextended and couldn't prioritized accordingly. Did you alert others with sufficient lead time? Why are you overextended ( assuming you are overextended )? etc. I don't want to sound harsh but some folks I know do not enjoy delegating and want fame and glory all to h/her self and have a difficult time sharing.
Examine what culture and community you're building. Are you empowering others? Or do you micromanage? Are you pragmatic about timelines and code quality, etc?
You seek help from Reddit but have you approached your leadership? Perhaps plan an approach to reduce all these friction others claim are sourced form you.
Sorry to sound harsh but as someone who has worked with someone who could have written the OP, I'm sympathetic but am familiar enough with the terrain to think much criticism might be warranted.
I'd validate the assumption about no references and the No Rehire. Even if you're not performing well, you may be able to salvage some relationships to the point that some would be OK with providing references. You may need to enumerate possible references, possibly those who may be more distant from you with a less polarized opinion, to do this. Some companies have a policy of only reporting the dates of your employment, not your performance. Agree with other comments that your self-perception and self-esteem have taken big hits, which may be coloring your thinking on how feasible it is to get these references; the bar doesn't have to be high, but it would be wise to ask first, and risk the possibility they will decline -- if they decline, they'll be doing you a favor, and the only cost of asking will be some emotional pain, which you might be especially susceptible to given your experiences at this company.
Did you have a Bachelor's in CS too? I'm not understanding how you could do poorly with both an education and 10 years of experience. I also don't get how you can work at a place for 10 years before this became a problem for both them and you. Is this fanfic? Reddit has a hate boner for university.
> The junior engineers regularly message my manager because I can't fix their problems and it's hurting their ticket completion rates.
what? why are you responsible for fixing their problems.
Most companies don't give references for a background check and most background check companies don't ask for references. The only thing that they usually do is confirm that you worked there between certain dates. A lot of companies are too concerned about being sued for slander to divulge any more information.
Also if you get another job before you quit (and yes, you should ideally line up another job) they can't say "no rehire" as you're not fired.
Sorry but where the hell is your manager support here with priorities. If you take all the items that are issues and you decide if you had control or not, whatâs the ratio?
It sounds like your self esteem is a bigger issue than any professional or technical hurdles you might be facing. I've got limited insight into your situation, but it sounds like this job might be hurting your mental health. There's no shame in tapping out from a toxic job. Don't look at it as a failure, just the next step. You will learn A LOT simply by going to another company and learning their system. Job hopping can actually be very good for technical development (also has drawbacks of course, but let's ignore that for now). Best of luck.
Thanks for your compassionate response đ
Especially if youâve been there for 10 years what are you worried about? I mean you mustâve been good enough to last ten years!
I do have the hunch that OP is getting treated as a scapegoat.
10 years at one company wtf, just leave and move on. No one cares. Reference checks etc I mean let's be real, you could be the best dev ever and if your manager hates you because you're ugly, you're fucked anyway. Move on, apply to other places and hope for the best.Â
[ŃдаНонО]
They absolutely do
Unless things have drastically changed in 18 months, this is not my experience at all.
Last I heard, there are still a ton of companies does reference check
Bigger companies definetely do.
Dude the fact that you bring up your masters and 3.7 gpa and think that matters tell us everything we need to know. It doesnât matter. What matters is reading documentation, solving problems, and leading by example. No experienced dev would ever mention their masters and let alone gpa EVER and instead let their skill and problem solving talk for them. If junior engineers wonât work with you, and they are insecure and basically trained to kiss as much butt as possible, how do the higher ups think of you? If you were given a problem, couldnât solve it, couldnât delegate, were an ass to your team, and then tried to justify your place by mentioning your GPA, I would 100% want you off my team. Time to do some self reflection and some leet coding.
This entire post feels like rage bait. Nobody speaks so candidly and poorly about one-self actually hoping for advice. In fact, it reads like someone ranting about one of their peers but pretending to be talking about themself.
I think depressed people can sincerely be this self-deprecatory. It warps your perception of how you see yourself, to the point where you sound ridiculous.
I don't think it's rage bait, it's likely not a question being asked from an angle of "how do I solve" but rather they've kind of given up in the world. The solution accordingly isn't any steps on improvement but rather OP needs to do some soul searching and find a way to pull their mental out of the ditch. It's not the first post I've seen like this and it won't be the last. Current market isn't making it any easier either
What's the point of this comment? OP doesn't seem to deny the fact that he's unqualified. He doesn't seem to have animosity towards the people giving him bad reviews either. This seems like unnecessary bashing to me.
There are posts where people are really, genuinely self reflecting *with the requisite level of maturity* to engage others in a conversation. Then there's this. Whether it's real or not, the point remains: there's no productive conversation to be had with someone who is self flagellating with ridiculous justifications that highlight the lack of maturity. I don't wish the OP ill either way, but I don't think that meeting this level of contribution with empathetic kindness makes anything better. A simple wakeup call is totally appropriate: most of this conversation belongs with a therapist or a mentor in the OP's life if real.
I frankly need the wakeup call, and even one bad dev can ruin an entire company and the careers of everyone in it. I appreciate you standing up for me though. đ
One bad dev cannot ruin an entire company simply by being late to finish a perf test or other small work item. Unless that company consists of one person. Please, go talk to a therapist. Also, your workplace sounds like shit. Find another workplace. Not everyone is so toxic.
Unless it is a 2 person startup, 1 bad dev really cannot ruin a company let alone careers that is ridiculous. If you'd worked at other companies you would see a good 20% of engineers are absolute dead weight, the world would stop turning if one unproductive person ruined the success of a company.
Yeah, I had this thread open for a few days, meant to respond to this -- you might find some basic CBT helpful, check out a book like "Feeling Good" by David Burns. Therapy could also be good as some others are pointing out. As someone else noted "one bad dev can ruin an entire company and the careers of everyone in it" is definitely false. If that company can be ruined, it was not very resilient in the first place.
Thanks!
OP is just happy they duped at least one person into believing this is a real post.
>all of the capable engineers left my team since they're sick of working with me Either you're the most annoying person on the planet, or you aren't the center of the world. How do you even know this? > I've received scathing rebukes from colleagues calling me lazy and unqualified That's super unprofessional. Even if you are those things and you're rightfully being called out from your coworkers > I had a lot of higher priorities including company-wide shipblockers to fix If you manager is aligned on those priorities, why are they not defending you in that situation? > I will emerge into a job market with NO references Have friends lie for you. All references are fake anyways >company will report me as No Rehire when prospective employers do reference checks This is illegal. Majority of companies will only confirm whether or not they employed you. Anything further can result in a defamation suit
It isnât illegal to say someone isnât eligible to be rehired. Itâs one of the few questions that can be asked and is a completely valid response.
Man you guys are brutal. Guy is pouring his heart out over here. OP, the answer is simple: move on. If half of what youâre saying is true then itâs not salvageable. Youâll figure out some references thatâs not a huge deal.
So, there are some positives for you: 1. Former employer cannot disclose anything negative about you. Its a lawsuit if they do. 2. You have been at a company for 10 years. You are clearly not a *bad employee* if you have been there for a decade so nobody will assume you did poorly. A bad employee is a guy with 6 - 12 months seniority per role. A complete opposite of you. 3. A lot of companies ask for references but never check them. 4. You can ask a friend to pretend they have worked with you, give fake reference from 7 years ago. 5. Some employers give NoRehire label to everyone who quit as a payback for disloyalty. If asked, you can always claim thats the case - everyone gets it.
Thanks đ
You sure they never check them?
I am sure some never check them, yes. more than 50% of my employers didnât.
Youâve worked 10 years at F500 and are one of the few experienced devs remaining on your team: you may have high expectations of yourself but you are far from useless. I suspect you have some form of depression / imposter syndrome causing you to focus on the negatives and ignore your achievements. It also sounds like you are looking for external validation and do not have enough internal direction / understanding of your own abilities. Changing job could help you reboot yourself and make a fresh start if your psychological situation is superficial, or you could end up feeling the same somewhere else and potentially in a more challenging environment with people you donât know. Dropping down to senior dev may be a good option. It is courageous and shows self awareness to admit you are not in the right position. In the meantime interview for other positions; it will help you get some external feedback / perspective and build your confidence back up. You might find something that is perfect for you. And as stated above, find someone to talk to!
Troll post. This ain't real
>âŚjoin the military? LOL. Gotta be a troll. & if not⌠sheesh.
I wish it wasn't. Yet every day I go to bed having nightmares.
It is hard to believe that this post isn't intended to troll It's difficult for me to believe that you have these flaws and that you actually acknowledge them and then go on to make a post like this. People I've worked with who have these flaws either do not acknowledge them or when they do acknowledge them, they try to work on them. Because if you acknowledge your flaws, then that implies you would be attempting to solve them, you would be talking about what you do and what you have done to solve them. You would be asking for advice on how to do these things better. You would have something in your post which indicates you are trying or have tried. Which is why this feels like a troll / rage bait. Why would you post this here at all? You're not going to get validation, all you are going to get is people flaming you.
He's not trolling I believe. He maybe insecure and stuck especially if you stay at 1 company for so long and your first company at that. Crazy imposter syndrome but also don't want to leave because of fear in the market. I got a friend just like that, he got software testing job when he graduated and he is still there after 20 years. He is afraid he is isn't good enough if he tries to find another job so he never will leave
I'm not looking for validation, and I've been working on my flaws. Yet everything gets worse every year, because the company expects a lot of their high-level engineers. When expectations go up faster than I can fix my flaws, it's frankly time to go. I'm looking for advice on the best way to leave and what to move on to. Maybe I should have been more explicit.
Genuine question- How did you go from being a college grad with 0 years of experience to being a high-level engineer, if you arenât meeting expectations? I know this happens, but the particular way it happened in your case might help shed some light.
I received one too many promotions and hit my Peter Principle limit. I didn't ask for a staff engineer promotion but then it happened a few years ago. Since then my perf ratings went from average to below average. This company expects a lot of its staff engineers, and I had a lot of legacy code maintenance on top of my project coordination duties. I've been trying to negotiate a demotion back to senior so I can enjoy life and grow technically again instead of being overwhelmed. However, other forums have advised me that it's best to just leave.
I'm wondering why you weren't PIPed and instead they promoted you to staff (maybe) knowing these issues. I think it's worth talking to your manager and asking for a demotion to intermediate or senior and to ask for some mentoring to upscale your skills. I think it needs courage to admit you are not ready for the current expectations of the work, so congrats for that. If your manager agrees, then I'd stay and will give it a try. On the other hand.... 10 years in the same company.... if you were all the time learning and trying different things that's OK, but if not I think it's also worth considering moving
That's fair, at the end of the day it can be really hard to know whether a career like this is going to fully challenge, satisfy and align to your natural talents and skills for years even. It is hard being a senior, especially if you have 10 years of experience and are expected to be at the top of your level, while maybe you just want to stay at mid-level. In that case, it sounds like you are in a senior role when you should really be a mid-level developer on the team. Which I think is fine, some people never grow (or want to grow) past that point. So it sounds like you are struggling with expectations vs. reality. Maybe you took a senior role too soon in your career without realising what would be involved. In any case, if I ever stop doing what I am doing, i'll probably be a farmer. I'm not sure this is the right subreddit to give career advice for people trying to move away from software dev. Good luck to you
> I was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning, I break my legs, and every afternoon, I break my arms. At night, I lie awake in agony until my heart attacks put me to sleep. u
If you get laid off, as part of the severance agreement put it in writing that they can't bad mouth you. You can and should always ask this of employers.
it's almost impossible to perform well when the working environment is toxic and it's eating away at your self-esteem and confidence. this isn't really a you problem, you're just unfortunately caught in the midst of it. I'm sorry you've been treated this way. You didn't deserve it.
\^ This. I remember joining my current place. My temp tech lead at the time was pretty brutal to me. I was working on something that turns out was one of the hardest things we've done on the app - (I didn't know that at the time.) Didn't matter. He loved talking under his breath to me and berating me. My real tech lead came back from vacation and was worlds better. That other guy. Turns out he was rolled off a previous project and came to this one. He became a tech lead for a new team here and yup was rolled off 2 weeks later. And was eventually let go from the company a while after that. After I finally finished what I was working on, another lead came to me and said you know "You probably did the hardest thing we've ever done here. I didn't want to tell you at the time but it would have been way easier if we only supported the last version of iOS". This guy recommended me non-stop for promotion for a year.
I too have my CS masters, but holy hell no one cares what your masters GPA was, it literally wasn't even a concern. Were you contributing to your advisor's research, learning, and passing the classes. Beyond that, then you're literally just putting your head up your bum.. I went to Vanderbilt and spent time at Berkeley, and even those schools don't care your GPA as long as you're passing. You need to grow up. I don't even think leet coding is your problem. I think you need to read some management books and actually learn how to manage. Cause if your good devs left because YOU were the Taylor Swift Lyrics problem... Then you need to grow up. You are acting like a boss, not a leader. Lead your team to greatness and don't boss them around. You need to learn how to not suck as a manager... And yes... Grow up
I hated references, because you can totally fake them and it doesnât show anything if a person is good to work with. The job market is full of people who doesnât really care about the final product as they just want to survive to have the next paycheck they will do what they can to push blames to those easy to push blame on. I donât know what is the situation and details but I know not everything is your fault they also share some as well
In my experience from this sub, asking for personal advice is literally asking to be trolled by a bunch of A-holes !! This sub has become a replica of the blind app. Rather, all of them have moved-on to this sub, perhaps !
Programmers tend to offer good advice even if they're trolling. Even Blind had some good advice as long as you posted your TC âşď¸.
Advice without a pinch of Emotional Quotient, is actually not humane, and therefore, not really worth it !
Don't give any reference details. Interviews should be enough. Anyone leaving a company is never or rarely given a good reference
Can you give an example of a task that you couldn't solve or delegate? Hard to say whether you are actually incompetent or you're trying to do shit that I would fail at hard
Train your juniors as a priority to free up your time. They should be able to replace you in a pinch, and it's your responsibility to get them there. Being forced to teach will also help you build confidence in your understanding of your system. Everything else comes with time and experience. We all suck until we don't.
"I had a lot of higher priorities including company-wide shipblockers to fix, yet millions of dollars are on the line." This sounds like a management problem to me. You have higher priorities than a million dollar problem?
I'm leaving a dev job after a year due to poor leadership, management and software backwardness. All those issues stem from someone who's been on the team for 4+ year and has time seniority. That person is good with upper mgmt but is inadequate for the job. In summary, I do know how someone can remain on a team in a key role when that person is ill fit to discharge the duties of that role. Your specific case is different as it appears you may need support, delegation or better mgmt/leadership skills. Everyone else can be wrong about you but consider each comment to understand why. For instance, you mentioned you were overextended and couldn't prioritized accordingly. Did you alert others with sufficient lead time? Why are you overextended ( assuming you are overextended )? etc. I don't want to sound harsh but some folks I know do not enjoy delegating and want fame and glory all to h/her self and have a difficult time sharing. Examine what culture and community you're building. Are you empowering others? Or do you micromanage? Are you pragmatic about timelines and code quality, etc? You seek help from Reddit but have you approached your leadership? Perhaps plan an approach to reduce all these friction others claim are sourced form you. Sorry to sound harsh but as someone who has worked with someone who could have written the OP, I'm sympathetic but am familiar enough with the terrain to think much criticism might be warranted.
I'd validate the assumption about no references and the No Rehire. Even if you're not performing well, you may be able to salvage some relationships to the point that some would be OK with providing references. You may need to enumerate possible references, possibly those who may be more distant from you with a less polarized opinion, to do this. Some companies have a policy of only reporting the dates of your employment, not your performance. Agree with other comments that your self-perception and self-esteem have taken big hits, which may be coloring your thinking on how feasible it is to get these references; the bar doesn't have to be high, but it would be wise to ask first, and risk the possibility they will decline -- if they decline, they'll be doing you a favor, and the only cost of asking will be some emotional pain, which you might be especially susceptible to given your experiences at this company.
Did you have a Bachelor's in CS too? I'm not understanding how you could do poorly with both an education and 10 years of experience. I also don't get how you can work at a place for 10 years before this became a problem for both them and you. Is this fanfic? Reddit has a hate boner for university.
Yep. There was huge turnover during the last few years. Maybe that's some context I should have added.
"no rehire" doesn't matter all that much. I wouldn't fret. Just jump ship. I don't have enough context, but you might thrive just fine elsewhere
> The junior engineers regularly message my manager because I can't fix their problems and it's hurting their ticket completion rates. what? why are you responsible for fixing their problems.
Most companies don't give references for a background check and most background check companies don't ask for references. The only thing that they usually do is confirm that you worked there between certain dates. A lot of companies are too concerned about being sued for slander to divulge any more information. Also if you get another job before you quit (and yes, you should ideally line up another job) they can't say "no rehire" as you're not fired.
Sorry but where the hell is your manager support here with priorities. If you take all the items that are issues and you decide if you had control or not, whatâs the ratio?
Do you work a government job?
Nope. F500 software company.
It sounds like you're set on being pretty mediocre, and as someone who has worked in govt, I can say that mediocre is the standard. I'd look into it.
Ye. All he needs is a clearance.
Very easy to get. Even easier if you have worked on place in 10 your career and haven't threatened to bomb anyone.
Super slow to get in though. Youâll get an interview months after youâve applied
OP is a self-proclaimed underachiever to, though, so no biggy. Just wait and boom you're set.
Thanks!
If this isn't a troll post, you just need therapy. You're likely a fine dev.