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Reflecting On My Programming Career

James Robert Lund III on April 23, 2024

It's been a long 5 years. 5 years of stand-ups, posture issues, fixing staging and production sites, and code, so much code. It's hard to imagine ...
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Paulo Henrique

I was eager to prove myself and fearful of letting people down. I wouldn't turn someone down because it was an opportunity for me to learn and get more experience. It was easy for me to feel like this was progressing my career but it lead to sooner burnout.

You have put in words a thing that I have felt for years. This was my downfall, struggling to prove myself to people that didn't even care and in the end all I got was physical pain and a huge burnout.

Mental health is overlooked in IT, something that needs to change, and fast. I hope that more and more people start voicing out their problems and learning the most important word in this area : "no"

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Nicholasbalette

Got to be assertive when necessary.

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Raul Navarro

Things I didn't need:
thanks for what you wrote. At My 66 years old and in the process of retirement, today I define myself as SeniorAsJunior, but wanting to continue working in technology, it helps me a lot to read your experiences, since my career as an ICT Project Manager mostly with legacy. I am faced with the challenge of reinventing myself and defining what to study and what to practice to become employable again or to be able to create value with more technical skills such as those of developers. So it was open to suggestions of where to travel on a short and practical path.

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Scott Reno

Never be a yes man. They pay you for your expertise and not to just blindly go along with things. If you know a better way, speak up!

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Murtaza Khan

Putting that much effort to make clients happy and to be always a “yes man” and sacrificing your time that should be given to family and to physical health impacts you alot in longer run.
I used to play soccer on regular basis and my body was much better. Now setting on the chair for hours for many years have impacted my body a lot and I saw a lot of folks with same outcome i.e Pains everywhere neck and upper/lower back.

Happy clients are good but the cost should not be your body.

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Cesar Aguirre

I share the same view about certifications. It's better just-in-time learning in the context of projects that a certification just to skip the line during interviews

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Tyler Buell

Great article @lundjrl. I often struggle with some of these myself. Mental health is something that should be discussed more often in this industry for sure!

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Eag

Thanks, @lundjrl. 🌟 As a beginner in web development, your insights have been super helpful. They've given me a clearer sense of priorities while I'm working on becoming a better developer. 💻

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tobiaslanzic

Thanks for sharing with us your history!

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Anderson Oliveira Bezerra • Edited

Saying yes and trying to prove my worth at all costs is what frustrates me the most, always chasing something unattainable and always exhausted, but I keep learning. 😅

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Sergiy Yevtushenko

Actually, Rust is quite good in webdev. And it's one of very few languages which actually significantly influences coding, even in other languages.

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James Robert Lund III

Sure! It just hasn't shown through in my specific sector. The companies I've worked for have older php sites or C# backends or Typescript everything. The teams I've worked with prefer those languages instead and it would be hard to convince leadership for us to pivot to something else.

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Christian GO

Thanks for sharing and the advice!

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Happily.ai

really nice

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Sujit Kumar Singh

The biggest problem with "Saying Yes" all the time is that it increases the expectations from others. You become a go to person for them for any tough/extra work. And that becomes a expected bar for them.
When you start overburdening yourself and start saying "No", people start thinking that you are a slacker who declines doing work. They may also complain about you behind your back. They will forget all additional work that you have done to help others/team and have been already doing extra works.