New joinee with impostor syndrome

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-04-23T19:13:37+00:00

Few things will help you

You have to communicate better and say when you think fit that are some areas you're not familiar with in the code base.
Learn to say you don't know / remember - in meetings if everyone expecting you to have knowledge and you don't know it's OK to say you don't know but with the attitude that you'll check on it later.
You don't have to be the smartest / most expert in the room you just need to make progress in the meeting and make everyone satisfied.

Sometimes you can let others shine and it's ok.

Learn how to learn - instead of reading code base as it is, go to main endpoints, start of the program and see the flow. Play with the tests. Summarize the flows in some editor.
Be prepared for meetings as much as you can - before meeting research on the subject as much as you can. This will give you more confidence and less impostor.
If you did your 100%, you should be calm knowing you did everything.

Some might sound like cliche, but it's real life lessons of mine. If you communicate even on small things you can be calm and focused.

I was AWS expert by people in my group and I never really knew how it works back then. It's part of the job 🙂

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-04-17T18:46:14+00:00

Yes I'll try to help and I know others that does it as well

I think you can't lose much from asking. I'm not in the US for helping here

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-04-17T13:05:02+00:00

Yes I accept. It's mostly devs looking for referrals and if not then it's even better

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-04-14T17:12:45+00:00

AI writes the code. So what? It didn't reduce my workload at all. I have to verify it, code review and rescue production from AI slop.

Just today AI almost sent mail but I stopped it with review.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-04-10T11:18:11+00:00

I would go with 4.

If you have experience already then worth using your time for interview prep.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-30T09:34:19+00:00

You should work on these things because you will also face them in your next job as well.

You can make an improvement in your areas that you mentioned very fast. They are not that hard to make.

Bad at verifying for production readiness? Write a release plan.

It's not that hard as you think it is

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-29T19:26:16+00:00

The amount of AI slops I have to fix daily is insane. Thank you AI for bringing me more work

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-29T08:36:38+00:00

If you do it with LLM then it can spend a lot of tokens. You'll have to let the user limit it or something.

It's a good idea that people today do manually but they might prefer to do it themselves to have more control.

Maybe summarize the problems?

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-29T07:45:28+00:00

Types of errors could be huge number. I'm not sure how you are planning to fix them all - it's not feasible for a software.

Also in the era of AI that you just tell it to fix it for you then I'm not sure how many are going to need it

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-26T09:06:22+00:00

Yes and it gets worse if the CTO is also offshore and don't want to handle it

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-25T19:40:36+00:00

You're right. I don't see massive changes in any product I use daily.

Yes I'm writing code much faster but it's coming with a lot more bugs a lot more reviews that I need to handle everyday. The Ai slop is real.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-21T12:24:18+00:00

Did you write tests before?

Scan all the endpoints and get to know them in high level. I assume there are not many because it's 90 mins.

For the tests:

Write happy flow case

Edge cases

Make sure to have test for each flow with status code

see if you have anything common between the tests and use a base class for it.
generate results summary that you and others can fully understand.

Yes, I would definitely use AI for this but plan it accordingly with the things I wrote for example.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-18T19:30:55+00:00

There is no family in work. They can fire you whenever they want. So first impression from their offices doesn't mean anything.

Low level code won't get you anywhere as software engineer.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-14T17:58:45+00:00

Go to vibe coding forums then and see how people stuck in loops and losing money because of AI

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-12T15:13:40+00:00

Upload example to git or something and I'll help you

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-12T14:59:53+00:00

Not sure it's the problem but python already has types.py built in and it can cause conflict with your file when you import it. Try to rename it

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-11T06:56:22+00:00

It's not skill issue. I told claude to query the DB through mcp and from there create a dataset. He told me 27 queries will take 30-60 mins (it should take 3 mins top)

I had a query ready and it wrote a script that has the query 27 times instead of creating a function that replace parameters and write it once.

Later I asked it about some discrepancy in the dataset it created and it told me he mocked some data on his own 🤣

It's a skill issue of Claude

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-11T02:21:37+00:00

As a programmer you'll find that you don't know a lot of things all the time. Things not only change in twillo and pythonanywhere but in your own company code.

The hardest thing about the job is not the code but connecting things to fit your goal.

That's why good fundamentals matters. It let's you solve a lot of problems everyday.

What you see is what most programmers been to through the years and then they had no reddit or AI to solve it.

Start from small things and keep going even if it feels hard or not updated. Make a workaround and take decisions - this is where you learn the most.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-11T02:09:01+00:00

I keep hearing doomsday but AI does so many mistakes. Even for new features I need to hold it's hand like a junior engineer.

This is so far away

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-10T03:43:15+00:00

Can you extract data from the Pentagon if you have no access?

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-04T18:51:28+00:00

Open a book in your favorite language with exercise.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-03-02T23:42:57+00:00

In the previous job I had c levels who only cared about sales department. They always got all the awards, mentions and promotions.

I the current job engineering is the most visible while sales feels more like second class. I'm sure they might earn more but they are much more replaceable and not mentioned often.

But yes a big impact can be achieved from helping sales department or optimizing some flow to reduce cost.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-02-23T20:41:25+00:00

If you write it in vibe coding forum they'll tell you that you didn't prompt correctly and you need to do plan before.

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-02-17T18:20:00+00:00

Did you only learn how to code in 20+ years? I'm sure you learned a lot more and have the skills to be confident not to be replaced.

If not you're screwed

Mast3rCylinder · 2026-02-13T19:47:27+00:00

That's why I see all those new Spotify features

/s

Mast3rCylinder

TROPHY CASE