Why I Suck as a Software Engineer
And what I am Doing About It
I had a realization. I suck as a software engineer. I try hard and I love it, but I am not particularly skilled at it. My skill set just doesn’t quite line up.
I am skilled at learning though, and I used this to offset me sucking at it. That’s how I have lasted as one for a decade, making slow progress up various corporate ladders.
I have been doing a lot of introspection lately.
It has become necessary for me to reflect on things in my life and determine where the true value lies. For me, it is not in software engineering. Because that is not where my passion is. I thought it was. But not quite.
I have often described the reason that I went into software engineering because I love to learn new things. Software engineering requires you to learn constantly as things are constantly evolving. That part of it was a perfect fit for me.
How did I figure out that I suck as a software engineer when I have been “successful” as one?
This was tough.
It is hard when you are successful (for some value of successful) to acknowledge your flaws. I have been fighting against rules in a system that doesn’t quite play to my strengths. I am a creative person. I just didn’t quite realize it due to an obsession with technology.
It hit me young.
I built my own computer at age 12 after my dad wouldn’t buy me one. I saved up money and bought it a component at a time. Then I built it. I thought this was technical for a long time. But really, that is a creative solution to a problem.
I am actually an artist at heart. I am just an artist that paints with words and technology. I paint system designs with my knowledge of models and how systems are organized. I paint with math and science. Until recently, I thought I just really liked technology.
As I reflect on my life, I see that I was drawn into Computer Science as a way to make money off my art. Money has really skewed our views of life. I am just now seeing how it shaped mine.
This isn’t always terrible.
I have had a pretty good life so far. I found a way to make ok money doing what I loved. I just didn’t make enough to experience the world around me. So I learned about it. I experienced the world through the lenses available on the internet. I tried to see the world through everyone else’s eyes. I traded experiences and relationships for knowledge. I limited my relationships to family.
I suck at saving money for the future.
I have tried so long to live for the moment. The problem is our relationship with technology. It has skewed our ideas of time and money. I know this because I come from a privileged background. I didn’t have any issues with mental health until I started my family and my career.
Mostly, this was because I didn’t worry much about money. I knew I had a safety net I could fall back on. Even now, I think it is a dumb idea to save. Why limit yourself now? I couldn’t afford the things I wanted to buy so I figured out things I could buy to try to fill the gaps in my life.
Let’s take a look at the things I bought: cigarettes, liquor, books (lots of books), food, energy drinks, technology.
Do you know what all of those have in common? Their addictive natures. And potential for harm.
When I enjoy something, I jump into it fully.
Unfortunately, this occasionally causes me pain. I tend to over indulge. When you do this with addictive substances, you enter a danger zone.
I am an addict. I have been addicted many times to each of those things. I have a tendency to relapse. For example, after I graduated college, I quit smoking. Then, stress at one of my jobs caused me to pick it back up again. Then I spent another couple years quitting again. I don’t plan to start again.
I used to drink heavily. I never called myself an alcoholic, not exactly. But I would drink heavily when I did drink. Mostly, I just would start and not know where to stop. Over indulgence again. Now I understand that I was struggling with depression more than I thought. I assumed my medications were doing what I needed them to.
Because of course I was on medication. I was fighting against my own artistic nature to try to thrive in a corporate environment. And I was lucky. Out of the three companies I have worked at, only one was a hostile sort of environment. That is where I picked up smoking again. But they still didn’t quite give me the fulfillment I was craving.
In my current role, my employer has helped me grow.
That is a big part of things working out well for me. But it still isn’t fulfilling work for me right now. I have tried to jump levels, but that isn’t typically how corporations work. You have to put in the time. That is what they like to look at.
I also love when I get told I have to demonstrate skills before I go into a specific role. So I have to learn to be an architect? I have been learning. I want a chance to try out the things I have learned and I want an opportunity to spend my time at work doing things I love. I kept telling myself I loved programming.
I didn’t. I just loved a certain aspect of it. I loved solving the problem. I loved designing the system in my head. Implementing it, on the other hand, not so much. It requires an attention to detail that I don’t have. So I would work hard to learn everything I needed to design a system around the specific feature I was implementing.
I became known as a guy who would freely innovate at work.
I have a tendency to bring in a new technology without hesitation if I think it will solve the problem better. I learned DevOps, I learned security, I learned everything. I wanted to know how programs worked in detail. Now I have a pretty good idea. I have the puzzle pieces designed the way I want. Then I put them together to form a system.
You know what I am really bad at? Delivering features on time.
I have no clue how long something will take me to build. It depends on how much I have to learn. Then it depends on how long it takes me to get focused on building it.
Trying to get focused on building it. This is where I realized something. If I can’t focus on something easily, I don’t truly love it. I might love some part of it. But not the whole thing.
The whole pursuit of money thing really messes up our focus.
I realized this over the summer. That is why I started writing. I had an idea. Now I have a system built for my life.
Once I built a system for my life, I realized that not all others had a system like this. They had a bunch of little systems, typically, but not one overall system that helped them navigate their whole life.
Technology should make it easy to build a system that supports your life as you want to live it. It does sometimes. But it is also attached to our brains. Advertising used a bunch of psychology to get inside people’s heads. Computers let them get really deep into lots of people’s heads.
We need to change our relationship with technology.
In Psychology terms, we are currently codependent. We need to set clearer boundaries with technology.
That is the focus of my project that I call the Human API. I want to provide a way for technology to plug in to users’ lives in order to enhance their life. It shouldn’t replace it. The problem is that money has blurred these lines.
Poor people are the hardest hit.
Because they are the ones who can’t afford to make the ads go away. So they get bombarded with ads for things they can’t afford. Then they go on social media and see others posting about the good things in life that they enjoy. And they can’t afford to get it. They also can’t afford to play in the system that we have built.
So they do things like get payday loans. That puts them into cycles that make it impossible to get out of. Payday lenders are leeches that attach to your income. They latch on and it takes a miracle to get them off. You know how I know? I have had them attached to me over the years.
That’s what happens when you want or need something (or at least you think you do because of advertising) and can’t afford it. You make poor choices. The poor choices are the easy ones.
We are living in a technologically advanced world with all of human knowledge at our fingertips now.
There shouldn’t be any poor choices. We should all have the options to experience the best of human knowledge whenever we want.
Do you know how to make people healthy and happy? Give them the ability to improve their lives however they want. We need to get off our obsession with money. Only then can we figure out what it means to be happy as a human race again.
So that is my plan now.
I just launched a startup and am in the process of getting funded. Eventually, I will show the world how to be happy. I will teach the world that money isn’t the key to happiness. An easier life that you get to shape according to your wants and needs it.
