[unfocused828]

> be yourself

Does the advice "be yourself" mean "do what you would tend by habit to do"? If so, I think that would probably have the same result it's had in 2/3 dev jobs I've held: me getting fired.

I originally thought I had impostor syndrome too, since it was constantly talked about at school. I should have mentioned that I've been fired from 2 dev jobs I've held before this, so apologies for that.

Explicitly asking for feedback is a good idea, though I worry that 2 weeks is too infrequent. Would every 1 week be annoying?

[Spoom]

Why were you fired?

[unfocused828]

I do probably need to spend more time figuring out the root causes, though perhaps that is better done by talking with a friend rather than just thinking things over by myself. My current understanding is this:

* When I'm confused about what a task really entails or what tools I can use and I try to get people to resolve that ambiguity, I sometimes cannot persuade them to do so.

* Sometimes I don't recognize that I lack the knowledge/documentation to do something and instead approach it with an "I'm smart and resourceful; I'll figure it out" attitude. By the time I convince myself that I need to ask for help, I'm embarrassed about not having made progress.

* I've gotten feedback that I "try to understand the universe" when debugging an unfamiliar system. That I should be more focused in my search. The difficulty here is that, when I'm working with an unfamiliar system, I don't know the lay of the land and so I end up spending a long time trying to get a sketch of a mental model of it because, well...how else could I solve problems?

* As my username suggests, I get distracted easily and sometimes find myself losing 5+ hours to distraction. I've been able to fight this to some degree using SelfControl.app and by making sure I get good sleep.

* I don't know how to come up with task estimates that have any relationship with reality. I've said "I don't know how to give software timeline estimates", but often get pushed to give a number anyway. I really really hate lying to a coworker/supervisor's face and wish I could find a way avoid it. I've tried to learn how to do estimation and bought a book on it, but all of the advice seems to focus on projects on a months-long scale rather than things that should take a couple hours.

[dyeje]

If your goal is to not get fired, work on these issues instead of burning yourself out with the intense study techniques you suggest in the OP.

[distracted828]

Well the things I listed in my OP are my concrete ideas for how to approach these working on these things. If you have other concrete suggestions, I would love to hear them.

As an example: The reason why I focus on studying rails is that all of the debugging techniques I know about involve getting a better idea of the system at some layer of abstraction. I suspect that my best shot at getting better at debugging is to know the framework the code is written in very well and thereby be able to understand the codebase more easily.

For a problem like "I can't get clarity around what we are trying to do here.", it seems like there aren't any books on the topic. Thats why I figured that finding a mentor would be good.

[dyeje]

The problems you describe sound like communication issues, not technical issues. Specifically, it sounds like you have a real problem with asking for help when you need it. Your time might be better spent reading a book on effective communication or perhaps taking a course at a local community college.

[unfocused828]

I'm always on the lookout for good books on effective communication. Ones that I've read and found insightful include:

- How to Win Friends and Influence People

- Difficult Conversations

- 5 Dysfunctions of a Team

I also bought Miscommunication by C. David Mortensen, but I haven't been able to get through more than a few pages because of how dry it is.

I suspect I need something more specifically focused on how to build mentorship relationships. Anything come to mind?