[gregjor]

No one "is a bad programmer." Programmers have a wide range of skills, talent, and experience. You can only think of yourself as "bad" by comparing yourself to other programmers, or honestly assessing that you repeatedly fail to deliver.

I suggest reframing how you think of yourself and your career so far.

From what you wrote I gather you have a few years of work experience mostly limited to front-end web development, a large cohort of programmers (well, it was for a while) but a narrow niche in terms of skills and exposure to solving actual business problems. Try focusing on some more transferable and durable skills: relational databases and SQL, system administration (cloud infrastructure and Linux), security, and back-end architecture. And start thinking of the business value you offer rather than what languages or frameworks you have used. Companies and customers don't pay for more lines of code, they pay people who can solve business problems. So concentrate on business domain expertise.

Programming and code usually don't have much value unless they serve to solve business problems. Almost every post about the bad job market and difficulty getting a job starts with "I have worked with X language and Y framework" (the "stack") when employers really want to know how you will add value to their business, how you can solve a business problem. By analogy, when I hire a plumber I assume they have learned their trade and tools, but I hire them to fix a problem like a broken drain or low water pressure, not because they have a specific brand of wrench. When looking for a plumber I will first ask people I know and go by their recommendations. You should cultivate your professional network for the same reason, so you get in the door from referrals rather than by filling out hundreds of applications online.

[yousuke86]

Thank you for the well thought answer. I can certain pivot my image to highlight what business problems I can solve. This could also be beneficial since sooner or later some AI tool will replace most of what I do day to day. I think it will make most "bad programmers" obsolete.

[nasmorn]

Bad programmers are already pretty obsolete. My team had a very motivated but also pretty bad programmer that I always wished I could fire. When he finally left our velocity went up a lot. He was delivering negative value to the project but management liked him because he was like a model obedient student, doing allergen agile shit to the T. He unfortunately had zero feel for code and didn’t learn anything from code reviews. I always likened it to a cook with no sense of taste. You can follow a recipe but if you need to improvise anything by yourself you would be pretty lost with no value function to apply