[AnotherMarc]

Reading through your responses, I'm not sure I can give you great advice because the two large software companies I've worked at welcomed moves out of what you call sustaining engineering. It was a pretty natural and repeatable process of fixing small bugs to fixing larger bugs to fixing bugs that impacted multiple areas of code. People would get assigned other people's regressions to fix. At that point, even if a sustaining dev manager doesn't want to let you go, the new dev team will damn sure want to have you.

If you really are terrible at programming, or maybe you just don't enjoy it very much, then explore something else. But if you do enjoy it, you have to figure out what's going wrong before you can make a plan or get good advice to fix it. You say people were dissatisfied with you as an engineer. Why? If you ask a more senior engineer or a manager what you can do to improve, you'll get a better answer than HN will be able to give you. But you have to be willing to hear some things that might not make you feel good. In the long run, though, it will be worth it.

[hoboon]

> Reading through your responses, I'm not sure I can give you great advice because the two large software companies I've worked at welcomed moves out of what you call sustaining engineering

I've heard this is what they do at MS, possibly others. It sounds great. My first job was like this but we got acquired by cisco.

I really do like programming even if I'm terrible at it and other engineers think I'm terrible. If I try to work on my own stuff I feel like less of a loser even if it's shit. Other engineers just said that I took too long to understand stuff, asked too many questions. I do panic when I can't figure stuff out and google doesn't produce results.

Thanks for the advice.

[AnotherMarc]

Couple things. You identified one thing to work on, which is not to panic.

The other thing is that if that's all the feedback you got, it's pretty subjective. If you have a good relationship with an engineer or architect you admire, you might run some of your questions by them, along with the steps you took to figure them out on your own. I would ask them whether they thought the questions were reasonable ones, and whether the steps you took to resolve them made sense.

If they say yes and yes, then take heart and keep at it. If they say no, you can ask them their advice for speeding up your understanding or better ways to search for answers. Once you open up your thought process to them, they will be able to better help you, if they care to.

To that point, whatever you do, avoid getting defensive or arguing back. Only further questions you should ask are ones where you need more clarification. It may be tough, especially if you don't agree, so be ready for that. Good luck!