It has been another long hiatus of writing and in the meantime I started a new job somewhere much better than my previous environment and still I felt like I was stagnating and not moving ahead much.

I think most of us software engineers or maybe even creative people in general have the feeling of stagnating happen quite often and quite early. This is because most of the time the tasks we do from day to day tend to be the same and so progression feels non-existent.

Incessant need for challenges

I have this feverish drive to constantly challenge myself and if I do not do that then I feel like I am not doing anything, whereas of course just producing output is also part of the job and a very valuable one as well where the business is considered. Maybe we all suffer from the ever growing need of technical complexity and ways to challenge ourselves. Whether by learning new programming languages, frameworks, technologies or domains or what have you. It still is a good thing to just stop and take a breath and see what it is you can already do and have accomplished.

Taking stock

Taking stock of my current proficiencies I have acquired I have quite a considerable amount. I am well versed in technologies and protocols across the board in the likes of HTTP, FTP, DNS, TLS and many more. I can write proficiently in a number of programming languages of which Python, Golang, Javascript and Java are a part. I know about databases, schema and data migrations, infrastructures, event driven architecture and many more concepts that I can list here.

All in all I can consider myself quite competent and still I feel the need to challenge myself because I feel like I do not know enough yet.

Looking back

I have conquered quite a few problems successfully and therefore I think I can say I have grown quite a lot. Even in the years it seemed to lull a bit I still accrued some valuable skills in other areas like communication, building a team and most importantly how to take care of myself properly. Not in the sense of just eating healthy and that sort of things but more on the emotional and mental health side of things.

Reevaluation

Taking a second look at my current situation, I felt like I was light years behind the rest of the company in this new domain. Part of this is of course I have to build new bonds to existing team members and they have to adapt to learn to deal with my whole being. Another is that I miss actual information and experience because of the domain specifically. Taking all that in though I was productive from day 2 onward because I could assess the codebase effectively and wrote code immediately. I was immediately able to productively and actively contribute to discussions in a meaningful way because of the information I carry along. All in all I can say I am okay now and all I have to look out for is that I do not fall back into my evading/procrastinating behaviour that arises from my mental state and gives me a potential downward spiral again.