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by jniedrauer 2618 days ago
> Especially early on when you aren't necessarily confident that you are a "coder" yet.

When I was lacking experience, I actually really just wanted negative feedback. The absence of feedback, to me, was synonymous with "your work is correct." But no one would ever tell me what I was doing wrong. Even now, half a decade later, I have yet to get that negative feedback. I hope that means I'm just a good coder, but I always have this nagging feeling that it's because no one has actually reviewed my code before.

3 comments

I’m actually in your position, and I agree, sometimes what you really want is to know what you did wrong.

That said, imposter syndrome is a very real thing, and it’s felt disproportionately by women and minorities in tech — I think we should be cognizant that a lot of our colleagues have been told throughout their lives, implicitly or explicitly, that their work isn’t good enough, and so that positive affirmation can do a huge amount of good.

Same; I wish I got more feedback on my patches. I tend to just get 'LGTM'. But I know there's always something that could be better, even if just a little bit. I'll see it in a month, maybe, when I come back to something I wrote/changed, but I wish my teammates would tell me now.
I'm guessing that you really wanted _constructive_ feedback, correct? I have received lots of that.