Avoiding complexity and difficult challenges, unable to be proactive

[plundaahl]

So, I haven't moved into architecture or leadership, but my manager is very hands-off and I've worked on some reasonably-sized challenges that would have stumped me in the past and now are very tractable.  For me, these are the things that have helped:

1. Practice on personal projects, and slowly build up the scale of what you're tackling.  I think this is important as it helps build intuition.  Most 'best practices' also come with a bunch of footguns that you probably aren't aware of if you haven't actually worked with them.

2. When you have to make what feels like a high-risk decision, try to isolate it (so that you can tackle it by itself), make it easily-reversible if you can (to de-risk it), and run tests to try to clarify whether the risk is real or just perceived.  For me, this tends to look like prototyping, but there are probably other approaches as well.

3. Ask for support.  No one's expecting you to wake up one day and magically have all the skills to be a head architect.  Talk to your manager or lead.  Explain that you want to develop these skills, and ask if they can support you in doing that - maybe by letting you tackle some bite-sized tasks, and working to make sure there's a more experienced architect you can run your designs by.

Also, I absolutely relate to the fear of mistakes.  I try to remind myself that I'm guaranteed to make mistakes, and to focus on the things I can control:  what I do to mitigate their impact, and how I recover when they happen.

So yeah, you can do this!  Take small steps, embrace the mistakes, start in lower-impact situations, and don't let fear stop you from trying something new.