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How To Handle the Stress of Becoming an Obsolete Software Developer
Being Jack of all and master of none, software development can get overwhelming
When I was new in my programming career, I was struggling to learn how to code. There wasn’t enough internet, and things obviously didn’t work as written in the greatest of all programming books.
I used to spend sleepless nights in the office.
When I felt burned out, my team lead would say: “It will get better.”
“How exactly?”
“You will get a team to lead, like me. Not that I have it easy anyway.” He bragged. “But here is the thing: In my day, I used to work on the factory floor. Your life is so easy. Computers. Magic! You get to play God all the time. We were peasants.”
So it was more envy and less empathy.
“But I do not want to lead teams as you do.” I wanted to see how far he would last in the conversation.
“Then it’s much better! This thing you call programming — it’s a skill. You will master it in no time! One language, two languages, ten languages — they are all same!”
“Wow!” I faked admiration.
“It’s leadership that’s hard, you know. Only a few people (myself included) can embrace it, you see. ”
“And what’s leadership?” I was amused.
“Getting things done! It’s harder than anything else. Skills can be learned and mastered in no time— you will do great! Look at those tech billionaires. They coded just one language in their garage, and look where they ended up.”
I was amazed at his vision of my career. So far, I thought of him as nothing more than a bragging monkey on the managerial ladder who didn’t even know how to jump.
At least he knew what was the pinnacle of tech success.
He left me with more work and an even bigger feeling of hope:
I am the programmer God, and someday, I will get to roll the dice.
20 years later, I am still searching for him — to let him know that despite mastering 10x more than I could’ve imagined, I am nowhere near mastery, let alone billions.
