Whooooo boy. This is a topic that I am all too familiar with. Luckily this is a shared human experience and thus I do not always have to feel like I am the only one that goes through this (as much as the fear itself gives a false sense of isolation in our problems).
I’m not going to sit here and be an armchair psychologist or pop-psych-blogger that will go into the neuropsychological reasons for fear and dissect why this occurs. If any of my own attempts at self-improvement and reaching out for help have shown, it almost always boils down to childhood experiences and environment. There are tons more resources more qualified than me that can dissect these origins for you. Seek them out! This post will discuss my fears within the context of this new career, and what I am currently processing and starting to realize, with the hopes that it may be relevant to you. Excuse my selfishness.
Fear has long since been a strong influencer for a lot of my actions, and only within the past couple of years have I recognized it, accepted it, and started to make mental and physical moves to overcome it. One thing that has recently helped is understanding that there are two main categories of fear that I tend to circle around and pick up on from others in this program.
The first is existential (i.e. “What is the meaning of all of this?”), nebulous-type questions that understandably come from some undertaking an identity-shifting transition going back to school. Honestly, I have not found a solution to these except to continue to read more philosophically-styled literature and come to terms with this. I can’t even count with the digits on my body the number of times in this program I have gotten stuck on some assignment or abstract topic to the point where I start to question the meaning of life – it’s hilarious to think about when looking back at it. I just mindlessly keep hitting F5 to run the program hoping that it will fix itself. A quick hour or so break later (or even sleeping and tackling it within the next day or so), and it turns out I just misread the specifications. 5-second fix. I consider it cliche at this point because of the number of times I have read this advice when doom-scrolling the internet considering a career as a sherpa, but it is a cliche for a reason – take a break, step away, do something else, clear the brain, come back to it later. It really does work.
The second type of fear is more practical and situational – it crops up in the day-to-day and is usually a result of encountering the bounds of the comfort zone. Since the brain has not seen what is beyond that (usually exactly the growth and experience we are searching) it defaults to the assumption of danger, and voilà, you’re now anxious. Some examples that I have encountered while going through this transition include:
- getting stuck on a problem and subsequently freaking out about being stuck on the problem e.g. “I should have figured this out already, im sure others would have breezed through this….”
- having PRs reviewed that need changes. A capstone group member pointed out my missing “await” keyword in the PR review as the source of my error I was receiving. I was embarrassed.
- think that I am not “good enough”, using others experience/success as a yardstick for where I “should” be
Getting stuck and subsequently unstuck is inherent to the problem-solving aspect of engineering. Those who may be able to solve it quicker possibly have more experience around them with similar problems, or have simply been at this subject for longer than you have and were able to pick up the hints to the solution. Small mistakes and blurbs happen as well, I have read stories on the r/cscareerquestions subreddit of new engineers who have taken down production with a bad commit – missing a small await keyword happens. As a student, sometimes I just don’t know what I don’t know and that’s fine, just learn from it and move on.
As for not feeling good enough as a software engineer, I find myself on a mental seesaw between imposter syndrome or having a legitimate knowledge/skills gap that I am weak in and need to work more at. Both scenarios are possible and it really takes discerning the differences between the two in order to get to the root cause. In either case of not enough knowledge/skill or feeling like a fraud, comparing myself to someone in the program or even the abstract idea of the “perfect engineer” (both people of whom we do not know the context or background for their perceived success) does not improve the situation, it only festers these negative feelings. There is a difference between comparing yourself to emulate their processes and take similar actions to become better, and the former method to rationalize feelings of “worse-than” – and most of the time it is the unhelpful version we fall for.
I’m going to stop this train of thought and call it a post here, there is simply too much to ponder when it comes to this topic, and looking back I may have overstepped my bounds of helpful advice and entered into “diary-entry” territory. Some of what I said may paint an image of cynicism – and I can say that I am human and experience both the positive and the negative! I am grateful for this career change, I have a job lined up and opportunities ahead that, when unencumbered by fear, I am excited to face. This selfish but honest look into someone in perhaps a similar situation as you, being an upcoming software engineer, I hope can give some sort of reference point or normalcy to these insecurities and fear to help you understand that all of this is normal. Best of luck!