Biggest dev insecurity?

Probably http://
It’s not secure at all, never feeling very confident when browsing that protocol.

Insecure... My laptop disk is encrypted, but I'm using a fairly weak password. 🤔

Oh, you mean psychological.

Working at a startup in crisis time. Might lose my job if the company goes under.

I'm a Tech lead, Senior Backender, DB admin, Debugger, Solutions Architect, PR reviewer.

In practice, that means zero portfolio. Truth be told, I can sniff out issues with your code, but can't code features for shit. I really just don't have the patience to actually BUILD things.

I'm pretty much the town fool who angrily yells at managers for being dumb, rolls his eyes when he finds hacky code, then disappears into his cave to repair and refactor the mess other people made.

I totally suck at interviews, unless the interviewer really loves comparing Haskell's & Rust's type systems, or something equally useless.

I'm grumpy, hedonistic and brutally straight forward. Some coworkers call me "refreshing" and "direct but reasonable", others "barely tolerable" or even "fundamentally unlikable".

I'm not sure if they actually mean it, or are just messing with me, but by noon I'm either too deep into code, or too much under influence of cognac & LSD, wearing too little clothing, having interesting conversations WITH instead of AT the coffee machine, to still care about what other humans think.

There have been moments where I coded for 72 hours straight to fix a severe issue, and I would take a bullet to save this company from going under... But there have also been days where I called my boss a "A malicious tumor, slowly infecting all departments and draining the life out of the company with his cancerous ideas" — to his face.

I count myself lucky to still have a very well paying job, where many others are struggling to pay bills or have lost their income completely.

But I realize I'm really not that easy to work with... Over time, I've recruited a team of compatible psychopaths and misfits, from a Ukranian ex-military explosives expert & brilliant DB admin to a Nigerian crossfitting gay autist devops weeb, to a tiny alcoholic French machine learning fanatic, to the paranoid "how much keef is there in my beard" architecture lead who is convinced covid-19 is linked to the disappearance of MH370 and looks like he bathes in pig manure.

So... I would really hate to ever have to look for a new employer.

I would really hate to ever lose my protective human meat shield... I mean, my "team".

I feel like, despite having worked to get my Karma deep into the red by calling people all kinds of rude things, things are really quite sweet for me.

I'm fucking terrified that this peak could be temporary, that there's a giant ravine waiting for me, to remind me that life is a ruthless bitch and that all the good things were totally undeserved.

Ah well, might as well stay in character...

*taunts fate with a raised middlefinger*

You know that feeling, when you code, compile, run. It just works ?

That’s the moment I get insecure

Ppl will find out how fucking stupid I actually am

My biggest insecurity?

That I'm fascinated by a lot of domains and rather than mastering one I'm just intermediate in all of them, making me a jack of all trades but a master of none.

Feeling like anyone who knows how to google and has a month of free time can take over my job.

Math.
The thing i am fucking bad in.
Even basic math shit is hell for me.

Not sure if you'd call this an insecurity but regardless; frontend.

Much of the stuff I develop is meant to be user/privacy friendly.
Like, at the moment I'm developing an end-to-end encrypted notes web application. The backend is a fucking breeze, the frontend is hell for me. I'm managing mostly but for example, I need to implement a specific thing/feature right now and while the backend would take me about 15-30 minutes, I've been only just thinking about how I'm going to do this frontend wise for the past few fucking hours.

My JavaScript skills are quite alright, html is manageable, css only the basics.

And before people tell me to just learn it; I. Fucking. Hate. Frontend. Development. My motivation for this is below zero.

But, most of the shit I write depends on frontend regardless!

That I am not good enough for this shit.

Recently left my job because anxiety, a lot of it.

Tbh, I should not burntout myself, because:
- salary was a shit
- the scrum was a lie, there was no end of the sprint, so no retrospective meeting ever done.
- They change the """sprint""" task pile at any moment, usually adding more tasks for the same sprint.
- previous project manager was an idiot who said "yes" at EVERYTHING the client asked, even if the request was outside tje scope of the project.

The project was heavily delayed, and I was the only developer left on the most hideous backend you can imagine (the code was just tje very definition of "what not to do"). NO UNIT TESTING at all.

My task: clean the mess so we have a """stable""" release (with the tests), add the new features and re-do the backend again, but this time properly.

8 months of develop for this shit and they wanted the stable-shit-backend in a month and the new backend in other month "because everithing was already done in the shitty one". Do not forget the new features too.

So, I was doing the imposible to try to do tje task, overdoing hours and reading the docs of the project (because I was new in it), but it take me.a lot of effort to simply correct bugs because of complexity of the code and not understanding fully some parts of the project.

Then the comments like "why this is not finished yet?" Or "I do not understand why this is taking so long"

So, I had poor sleep, I was anxious because my inhability to do the imposible and in the end, a feeling kind of defeated because I quit.

So... that.

Sorry if something is wrong typed or so, english is not my native language.

My biggest insecurity? CSS, of course. God knows how that shit works. I just keep on trying until it works.

that i'm actualy stupid, as in, intellectually insufficient to solve the task.

I'd make a better product manager than developer. My code sucks, but I really understand what the customers want.

I'm kinda insecure about my main focus being web stuff. I'm pretty good at it and it comes naturally - and more importantly, there are tons of web jobs. But I've always wanted to do something more unique and interesting, you know? I don't wanna introduce myself as web developer.

The fear that I'm too thorough, and out of that, the fear that I'm too slow and "others might find out at some point".

I still use win defender.

Struggling with a bug for hours and junior fixing it in an instant in front of me

I prefer three spaces indentation but nobody understands me. They just laugh at me.

I would say my biggest insecurity is not getting (enough) useful straightforward feedback from my boss about how I work.
I have a tendency to take a bit longer than others, but deliver code that rarely has to be fixed.
Some of it may appear overengineered but it really isn't... I just like it clean and not hacky.
There are times my boss seems like telling me subconciously that I take too long for my stuff, but then again, he is really happy when we deliver a big thing to a customer and it just works, without any bugs or negative feedback.
It sometimes drives me nuts. 😅

When learning new tech, it takes me forever to get the environment/dependencies setup because of the million different errors I get.

Am I just too dumb to follow installation instructions?

I think bugs are always my fault..
Still after so many years on this project I alwaaaaays go debug/recheck what I coded first before checking the old code and data...usually turns out it's something long before me that's still fucked up & buggy, but still.. I always think I managed to fuck up something.. :/ I need an egotrip/egoboost or sth.. but I doubt even this'd help.. I know my code is not pictureperfect, but still.. I never think it's good enough..and that it has bugs.. o.O I also have a bit sex daily so I dread to write/fix anything in js..

The list is long... Very long.

*Anxiety is seen smirking in the background*

The speed of getting things done. Afraid I'm taking to long to finish tasks.

Nope,

Far too in love with myself to have any sort of insecurities.

Not that there is anything wrong with having them, we are all different. I just believe that insecurities come from giving other people far too much power over ourselves. And I just couldn't care less what people say about me, as long as it IS about me. See?

The more confidence you project the more attention you will get, be it good or bad, it doesn't matter since it is the only way to go up in your workplace. Having a personality besides "ZOmG cOde Is LiFE" really goes a long way also.

So yall cheer the fuck up, its just code.

How do you guys deal with the feeling/insecurity that you're too slow, especially when working from home?

I never know if my progress is enough, or if the rest of my team thinks I'm watching Netflix half the time.

Am I a hack? Like yeah I complain about technology left right and center, this sucks, that sucks, what fucking moron wrote this?! These days I do write my own alternatives (which usually work surprisingly well). But for what? And was I really in a position to complain about those other things? Impostor syndrome, it's so annoying...

Oh and also, is it really all worth it? I like retro tech and so I do have a fair interest in the history of technology. Say between VHS and Beta, sure VHS was superior in practice and won the video cassette war, but Beta machines were seemingly better constructed. VHS won because it did just enough. Perhaps the same is true for software? Overengineering, is it poor engineering?

Anyone can build a bridge if the budget is unlimited and it can take a lifetime to construct. But part of engineering is making a bridge that'll just barely stand and be finished in a few years. I've been working on my own Linux distro since August last year and am not even close to finishing it. Chances are that it'll take several years. Perhaps I've been looking at the problem the wrong way all along?

I’ve tried to think about it and all I can come up with is that I think my biggest insecurities are my procrastination and lack of faith in my abilities to get and keep a job as a dev.

My biggest insecurity is that I missed out on new technology. I've been stuck on my last job working and maintaining a Magento store and doing only boring stuff, fixing bugs in php, etc. I it's been like that for 3 years but before 6 months I've switched jobs and now I'm learning new stuff, feals good :D

...is that someone who finds some, let's say, questionable quality code that I've written in previous roles, finds me again and calls me out on it...

That whatever I do will get automated soon..

I am insecure about using graphical user interfaces. E.g. IDEs, COTS systems, cloud tools, and ERPs. If I don't know what is happening inside the box I don't feel like I know what I'm doing.

I can write pretty much no algorithm
but bubblesort without googling.

I write articles where I teach other developers how to design architecture.

I am not good at git

Me *looking at the project* : it won't be difficult, it's going to be piece of cake.
Me *really reads more about it* : maybe it's not what I thought
Me *now doubting myself* : Google has all the answers
Me : runs to Google for something as simple as a while loop😩.

All the procrastinating in my schooltime.
All times i was in rage and hurt people.
They haunt me till today among other things.

Unstableness of core technology stack. The more developers are there, the more complicated architecture they create that often doesn’t give any significant value besides what if something goes wrong ?

What if you make mistake ?
What if power goes down ?

I feel I am last optimistic thinking software developer on this planet.

I feel that those tools just try to give some sort of power to the management over developer free mind.

Creatures like multicloud, cloud, k8s I feel that it’s just beginning not the end of road. And this beginning is a wrong turn.

It’s just another vendor lock in.

But I might be wrong.

My biggest insecurity is not being able to understand the problem or figure out how to solve it.
Also seeing that we aren't finding a common ground to agree to about the problem and/or solution thinking if I was just talking gibberish to them all along and I can't just carry the message across.

My biggest insecurity as a developer:

A tester calling me stupid and I cannot make up a convincing argument in my defense.

I avoid dealing with testers 😋

because i am self taught, everything i know is what most of the community knows. rendering me completely not possessing any rare needed expensive skillset

Time management. Maybe it's not really dev related, but I think it's very important. Trying to get better every day.

I am this shitty ass frontend dev that knows one language and one framework, I only do light logic and I can't even do a quick sort algorithm.

Honestly, nothing. I'm just a human. I know I will fail multiple times, over and over. I allow myself to do that, learning and taking precautions for each new failure.

My biggest insecurity is that people will one day find out that I am not good enough!
I write clean code and do all the shit around it but I don't feel good enough.
Imposter syndrome is for real, sometimes!

my biggest insecurity... I don't know, I have some problems with people who only stay with one idea, technology, pattern and cannot change, I am afraid of becoming that

One of Biggest dev insecurity i think poor quality of user passwords. Users have not yet understood how to create secure passwords.

Am I actually a good developer it just the best of the worst?

Basic imposter syndrome and fear of getting called out on something and losing my job.

Or in my current situation where I have a terrible bastard of a manager, fear of not getting my resume updated and start calling people about jobs.

If I got fired right now, I honestly wouldn't care that much. This world is going to shit.

That I will always be average at my job.
I will never be good at it. Simply because I am not passionate about it. But then I also don't know what else is there which I like that can pay my bills.

At the moment? There are a bunch of classes that someone wrotes back in 2017 to make a connection to a legacy software in the company and every single integration since then strongly depends on that hard to read code. I live with the constant fear of that code suddenly stop working, I don't think I will be skilled enough to fix it.

Of lifetime? Taking decisions on colors in the front end.

I am in no way a senior dev, in skill or compensation. I have completely inherited all rank and responsibility from all the folks who came before me and got canned.

For the last year, I have led and managed a team of juniors working on the only application making my company any money, while everyone else has been building new shit from scratch; every day my only two goals are to impart my team with as much knowledge as I possibly can give them, and to keep production from blowing up.

Until now, I've apparently kept everyone in the dark about the fact that I'm just skating by by "going with it" and able to google the answers just before they can ask the question. But now that the pandemic has hit, all future projects are put on hold indefinitely, and the company is pivoting all other devs under me. Now we have "true" seniors ripping the app apart and injecting code without thinking once to actually read the code base and analyze how the application was designed to work, because they are under orders from our serial entrepreneur of a CEO to "get it done, quick and dirty" and meanwhile as the app further destabilizes, the c-suite team looks to me.

So half the time I have no clue what I'm doing, but I can't let them know that. I mean at least I'm still gainfully employed, I still make way more than I ever did before in my life. I'm *reasonably* happy with what I do for a living. And if they can me, the company will be dead in the water, because I'm the only dev who understands intimately how to change the system and add new features without completely bricking it.

Am I doing it right, or nah?

I feel like I mostly know programming. I wasn't fed HTML and bash commands mixed in with my mother's milk as a child. In fact I didn't know very much at all about computers before my computer science degree, other than what's to be expected from someone in his 20's.

On the endless journey of knowledge most of the road is ahed of me.

That I'll either have to deal with noobs being on my team or I will be the noob on the team. Rare to find a team with similar levels of dexterity.

That I don’t communicate well enough in English.

I’ve been working with teams that only speak English for a couple of years now, but I don’t feel that my conversation level is quite there yet. I’ve been getting better at it by, chatting with teammates, making notes before meetings and organizing my thoughts, but I’d like to get even better to improve myself and be more useful to my team when the time comes to deal with a complex bug that involves many people to solve.

I'm scared I will assert something is a certain way when actually it isn't. It's not that I hate being wrong, I'm wrong all the damn time, I just don't want to be seen as someone with a big ego who can't take the time to learn what's actually going on.

This results in my constantly saying "I think" and "maybe", which makes me sound less confident and likely results in being taken less seriously. But I think I prefer that to sending someone down the wrong path if I'm not sure I know what I'm saying is correct.

Not being sure about if the way I did or implemented a feature/functionality was the best practice and if not, is it worth it to try to come with a better way of doing it? I get paranoid about having problems showing up now because I did something not thinking ahead in the past

Whenever I have to use anything new, I just follow the requirements - Googling through the whole way, rather than doing a course first. I get really insecure if someone asks whether 'Best Practices' has been used. Sometimes I wonder where would I be without Google and SO. I don't even wanna talk about Maths. I suck at that.

Can you imagine this scary moment while resolving conflict after a pull request that might break your code ?

That's the scariest moment

I still have no idea how bit shifting and masking work. I don't have to use it in my day-to-day anymore but I briefly worked as a game developer and still occasionally do side gigs and personal game projects. When I was working on games as my day job I had to do a fair amount of masking for a bunch of different reasons. But I've never gotten the hang of it. Everytime I have to create a mask I have to Google it and then I'm like "oh yeah of course that's simple enough". But inevitably the next time I have to do it I end up back at square one.

The fact that i'm not even able to use a library (jQuery Form builder) correctly and that i'm very impatient 😢

I do not feel insecure in my competency as software/Firmware engineer but i started feeling really insecure about being an engineer , mostly because the way Society in general place us
usually it's like

surgeon > physician > Scientist (or any basic science person) > engineer

i didn't realise this before but recently i noticed and i stopped introducing myself as engineer to the people i meet either from my family or from dating apps. Here is the conversation that usually happens

Person: what do you do ?
Me: I build things
Person: so what do build ?
Me: My work involves building lot of things related to smart phone's wireless capabilities.
Person: oh so you manufacture phones ?
Me: No i work in connectivity part of it like bluetooth , wifi
Person: I don't understand, does it involve staring at computers all day (makes a face )
Me: yes 90% of it , I like building things making something new HW or SW and most of them do require a use of computer , even if I was a mechanical engineer computers would be necessary
Person: Hmm if i was not a surgeon i would be hair dresser , because i can't do anything that involves staring at computers all day.

same conversation happened multiple times.
no matter how good you are at writing code or how important task that code is performing , society consider's Software Engineering as a mundane task of " staring at screen "
if that song Remember the name is written for software engineers it will go like

This is ten percent luck
Twenty percent skill
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will
Five percent pleasure
Fifty percent pain
And a hundred percent reason to live in disdain

When I am involved in a conversation where people dig deep into a language and then turn to me for opinion and I don't know what to answer

I get the feeling that wk207 is a veiled "WTF is wrong with you?"