I love this framing. Own your impact. The best software engineers are relentless in their problem solving approach independent of outside judgement, and have some intrinsic drive to find good solutions (ie. even if it's just a day job, they still care about the quality of the work). Sure, mentorship is nice if you have it, but you also need to make your own mistakes and develop first-principles thinking so you don't just cargo-cult whatever you are hearing from "seniors" (there are plenty of bozos with big titles).
I feel like young software engineers are way more tentative and fearful of mistakes than earlier generations. My hypothesis is that this is a result of the massive amount of information available on the internet today and so many self-proclaimed experts ready to pass judgement. But all that's a lot of noise that can feed imposter syndrome and lead to analysis paralysis. The most important person to judge your path and your abilities is you yourself. What will you make today?
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I love this framing. Own your impact. The best software engineers are relentless in their problem solving approach independent of outside judgement, and have some intrinsic drive to find good solutions (ie. even if it's just a day job, they still care about the quality of the work). Sure, mentorship is nice if you have it, but you also need to make your own mistakes and develop first-principles thinking so you don't just cargo-cult whatever you are hearing from "seniors" (there are plenty of bozos with big titles).
I feel like young software engineers are way more tentative and fearful of mistakes than earlier generations. My hypothesis is that this is a result of the massive amount of information available on the internet today and so many self-proclaimed experts ready to pass judgement. But all that's a lot of noise that can feed imposter syndrome and lead to analysis paralysis. The most important person to judge your path and your abilities is you yourself. What will you make today?