Something that I was mulling on just the other day. As I grow in my career, on a day to day basis I feel like I'm failing or doing things badly. Maybe because I have no comparison frame for it, because of the growth. Maybe because it's never possible, while you're in the thick of a project, to provide that post-hoc history. The open-endedness feels weird compared with clear causality.
Or maybe because I'm growing beyond my limit of capability. Time will tell.
> Or maybe because I'm growing beyond my limit of capability.
That boundary tends to become more and more fuzzy as you grow in your career. I think that’s where the feeling comes from. When you’re a software engineer it’s easy to know if you’ve failed or not. When you’re a CTO it’s often a matter of perspective and depends on what will happen in the future.
How do you learn if not by making mistakes? If you weren't ever failing, wouldn't that mean you also were not learning?
As tough as it is, I think it's best for your development to be in a space where you're screwing up regularly.
> As I grow in my career, on a day to day basis I feel like I'm failing or doing things badly.
This is one thing that we should lament about AI generating all the code. You never get to look back at your own "hand crafted" work with the distance of time. Progress or perspective, it does not matter, one would probably find something they could have done better.
I think I'm actually going to miss that feeling.
I can relate to this. I can still recall and feel "pride" in what I shipped from 2006 to 2024/2025.