Software Engineering Anxiety | Prime Reacts 

Best manager I ever had was a medical dr before becoming a developer. His dedication to learning was incredible, barely a week would go by without him reading a new book or throwing together some code in a new pattern/library. Being able to be wrong is half the puzzle, being willing to dedicate time to practice and learning is the other half.

I started with printing pyramids in Java too (that's why I put it there). 100% valid criticism and I love your takes. Thank you Prime.

came for the jokes and memes, stayed for the life lessons thanks prime

Im pretty sure Tom never looked dumb. Because Tom is a GENIUS!

I read a book called Good luck. In the book it describes the difference between regular luck and good luck. Good luck is when you do everything in your power to prepare yourself to be ready for when something lucky does happen. Regular luck it's just winning the lottery or some random occurrence.

Had this conversation with my wife today. I make 1/4 of what I used to and way less than friends, but I work from home and they don't care about my 2 and 4 year old being with me. Compensation isn't just money.

Great video; just subbed you and bigbox both. I made a career transition to software development at 35 as a father of three small children and having never written a line of code in my life. “Drinking from a fire hose” was an apt description of my situation. I was used to always being an expert and a high-performer; now I was back to square one. I don’t think I ever really considered abandoning the pursuit, but I definitely was plagued by the feeling of not having the innate talent of some other developers as well as the hard truth that others had a massive head-start on me that I would likely never fully compensate for. Then I was driving down the road one day and saw a marquee that said “Comparison is the thief of joy.” First time I had ever seen the quote, and I was struck by how profoundly true that statement is. I didn’t need to compare my progress or even my ultimate destination with that of any other developer. Contentment (not the same as complacency) eventually came with respecting my efforts and the growing results. The other great point raised in this video is that you don’t have to make being a developer your entire identity and the sole focus of all your energy in life. Do your job, strive to always improve, but get on with the rest of your short life. Yes, you are going to lose out on prestigious and lucrative positions compared to more singularly driven developers, but then that means they deserve those positions more than you due to their dedication; you can’t have it all. Social media makes it easy to envy the notoriety and success of others without emphasizing the sacrifices it requires. Learn to accept that those sacrifices just might not be worth it to you. That’s not being a loser or underachiever, it’s understanding which priorities are yours and which are someone else’s.

80 hours a week is hard. And when you managed to do that for years, it's possible you will be in a better place, work or life. But whether you made it or not, there will be burnout...

Luck is a component but the way to get luck to work for you is to be ready to handle luck. Do stuff, make stuff! dont't worry what the product is just make stuff. Prime has his approach but that works for him but what ever works for you in terms of social stuff do it. One of the best things that I have learnt about about people in this field is that in general they are as awkward as you are.

2:06 your character is also luck. By the time you get to make choices, genes and childhood environment already got rid of most of the possible futures. You underestimate how important the cards delt are

9:58 Finding that one thing for your job that you can go "Samurai mode" on is important, but it doesn't have to be software engineering.

Bonuspoint to the "find communtities"-part. Do not join negative communities. Being critical is often wrongfully seen as being smart, so it is easy to find people on the internet that act smart by being super critical and its practically nothing but shitting on people, software, languages and everything else under the sun.

"I don't care if the question is dumb, I care id it's lazy" I relate to this so much, I have so much patience for "dumb questions" that I have lack of patience when I get a lazy question and someone just wants the answer served to him on a silver plate by me. For dumb questions I switch to a patient teacher mode which is great for consulting, I have zero judgement for clients asking about things that are ultra basic knowledge for me, why should they have this knowledge? I actually judge people who judge people for that because it seems that they live in their own world which is way worse than not knowing some basic information in some niche trade :D I remember that in my 20s I sold watermelons at a market and man in his 60s asked in May if the melons were from the country. I said no, they will start to ripe in late June earliest or even July. The woman behind her waited for her turn and said "Is this guy living under a rock??? Wants to buy a watermelon from this country in May??". I did not react at all but I still judge her to this day ;-; I always say something about these people that "they are never right so they desperately try to grab every opportunity to be right"

Really uncomfortable with the idea that people should be putting in 80 hours a week on *work*.

Never stop Primeagen. Your content really inspires me as a junior software engineer. Thank you!

I got into tech industry for half a year. This video accurately describes how I feel in my current job. Thank you so much for the advice man.

I entered a coding course got accepted and have been watching your videos. You are a big help when it comes to navigating a new career and hobby. Just sending positive words! Looks like I’m a subscriber now 😎

Yes, researching your question before you ask is very good advice. Make sure your question shows that you have already looked into it. People like that a lot.

It is luck. If you don't do that much you'll have covariantly lower luck. it's not to trivialize, but to show that within reason, we can make our own luck.

Thanks for sharing stuff like this on your platform. I'm an early career mentor for software engineers and self confidence is such a common issue holding people back, and encouraging people and helping them go out of their comfort zone is a great thing.

I just do my own thing. Experiment with everything I learn. Take my time to understand each concept properly. I'm not falling behind because I'm on a different path.

Prime? Bullied and Nervous? Wow never would have guessed. Good on you man for turning that around and facing your fears. 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽.

I was overemployed last year (2 gigs), now I'm unemployed for over 4 months because SVB bomb, and I'm trying to improve myself, I've been on no less than 60 interviews and rejected all of them. At first I was feeling depressed and now thanks to you @ThePrimeTimeagen I'm pumped to be even better than before, doing courses, using neovim instead of vscode (* spits *) and learning more go and rust and building stuff, to be the best version of myself. Ill get back up again very soon!

This video came at a perfect time for me personally. Thanks Prime.

Not just one of the best content creators in this niche, but we can also see a very very good person here. Keep it up.

Spot on. “Take a moment to research” I love it. Makes for a better conversation when we do ask for help.

"If you use copilot, you create dumb code faster." had a really good laugh, thank you

Thank you both Prime and BigBox. After several years in the field I think I'm dealing with anxiety myself. Hope I can do better.

7:25 i also wasnt social at all too, mostly shy, but online i learned how to be social, how to talk, make jokes mostly then i applied and converted it being social in real life and it really changed me

I know for a fact that Tom (a genius) doesn't need luck

There's nothing more anxiety inducing in software development than posting a question on stack overflow

I needed to see this man. Glad I discovered you on Tiktok!

Preach! Best video I’ve seen you do

hilarious takes. Thanks for the chuckles

Yeah, I know you work hard but you were also lucky. I changed jobs and always boiled down to the same thing (webforms and old malformed stuff with no senior to guide me). And I work since 2007.

"opportunity meets preparation, that's what luck is" well said king, no such thing as luck

I code just as much outside of work as I do at work most of the time. I do it because I absolutely love creating things and I love making software. I am 100% still going to write code every day even if AI replaced every job available. I've been doing it for 13 years professionally and love it even more. I could never just 9-5 it.

Two more things about "dumb" questions... (1.) You're self-conscious over your lack of experience but the people you're asking understand it's lack of experience and they don't think you're an idiot, (2.) Ask a question and you may find out 10 other people are struggling with the same thing. Then you go from feeling dumb to realizing the code base is just that difficult.

you are my favorite creator just to listen to while working

I fell in love with programming when I first started coding. I used to code 7 days a week besides my non-coding dayjob. But now I'm a year into my developer career and I can't wait to clock out. I don't know what it is. I'm having a hard time understanding the architecture necessary to complete my tasks, I'm constantly short of necessary information and all I seem to do is pass data around in one way or another. That's fine I guess, but now I can barely raise my interest to code anything besides work. What's wrong with me?

I don't seek comfort. I seek the ability to put my efforts towards the struggle I choose.

"the way to be better programmer is being bad programmer " i like it

1:50 whenever somebody tells me that something only happened because a person was lucky and it couldn't happen for me, I reply with "luck only finds the people who seek it."

Perfectionism made me a non-starter for many years... I kept putting things off until I thought maybe I'd do them perfectly right off the bat, but that's an unrealistic expectation to have. I only recently started contributing to open source projects and building my own personal projects in my spare time because I finally accepted the fact that first time I do anything it's gonna be difficult and the result is probably gonna suck. It's just a fact. But the only way to get better is by doing, so there you go. Do not focus so much on the end result and learn to enjoy the process and go build, create, and do stuff.

I'm super stupid. If I stare at my code for to long and just dont see what I missed. I ask someone. That action in itself usually elevate me to super sight and instantly seeing what I did. So I am stupid, then look stupid and then act stupid. In that order.

A lot of wisdom in this video. Thanks Prime.

I lurk and learn quietly... Being social in literally any medium is my greatest weakness.

I just started as a professional developer in March this year ( 😢 angular and spring boot) , I think the people who work very hard to get into fang and be the best deserve it 100% and there is nothing wrong with it. The problem arises when a small percentage of them show elitism and act like they are the cavalry among foot soldiers , thats where the negativity starts and I feel dumb

Luck is opportunity meets preparation. Totally agree

You are the best prime I have found after 2

I remember staying up till midnight and falling asleep day after day night after night watching kudvenkat on youtube learning aspx web dev and then finally landed a dev job at back ground checks. They hired me at sr and it was a shit show bc I knew so little. But it started me off on the best career there is. Anxiety.... no. Imposter syndrome maybe. I don't understand why people think there is so finish line to learning. It's endless.

"If you're the smartest guy in the room you're propably in wrong room"

Good call. Was T. Roosevelt that said Comparison is the thief of joy

The problem with 'It's just a job' approach is that corporations aer too busy chopping wood to sharpen the axe. They won't train you in your 9-5 on the skills and technology that you need to even stay relevant in that corporation. Six years go by, they might just hire some other dude who is hip and cool and you won't know the new technology in the industry. The solution is, of course, to learn COBOL or FORTRAN

I got caught on your little tangent about one-page resumes. That has been my philosophy for a *long* time, but I feel like that advice has aged out in the past couple years. I and a bunch of my cohort are in the market for new positions, and they're all throwing around three or four page resumes. Like, half a page of 'skills and languages' type stuff, keywords and trendy topics. Very clearly SEO for resumes. One of them even wrote, on their resume, "This is to get around filters, humans don't need to read this part," and they got an interview, and they were *thanked for including that line*. Has anyone else been seeing this in the industry?

7:50 i wore a jacket all thorough middleschool and highschool because of this fear. I was still very social, but just a bit self conscious

It's not just luck, but it's a big part of it. I would say 60/40, even maybe 50/50. It's good to know this, because sometimes even when you try your hardest, things won't go as planned. If hard work pays off, show me a rich donkey.

The "blog on medium" reaction SENT me 😂😂😂

Is it worth reading THE great programming books? Like clean code, design patterns ECT?

What a nice turn from LSD to LSP, crazy drugs

"There are no dumb questions, but there are obvious ones" - Me

I used to know the javascript prototype model so well, now there is not much reason to know it any more.While I dont remember much, dont regret learning it tho

Lots of Devs just really struggle with the difference between the work and the job. If you love coding and geek out about techy stuff and how abstract little things about a language or system works - you're doing the work right. The job, is different, that's managing the balances/tradeoffs between systems, clients, teams and business - you can learn to be good at that too. Rarely people love both. I often feel like the job is getting in the way of the work but there is no work without the job unfortunately. Just make sure you're doing *your* job.

So great to hear this...Lazy question vs dumb question

They say "know when to speak, and when to stay silent". This is also true for listening, know when to be deaf/ignorant.

you're a good father and father figure, mike.

The balance between being technically independent and going as far as you can on your own but still knowing when it's time to ask for help is a tough one. Ask for help too quick and you look lazy, get too stubborn about it and you just waste time.

Hey man, my 13 page resume has not failed me in nearly two decades. Though, I have often utilized recruiters and networking rather than cold submittals. I did recently, finally, give the darn thing some attention and paired it down to 3 pages. Not because I had to. But because I wanted to. 😂

Hey prime newish sub been binge watching your content and I had a question if you see this. Im pursuing a field in cybersecurity and learning C as my first language because I like the fact it’s so close to the system as a lower level language. Im pursuing a two year in cybersecurity and wondering if I should go to a 4 year for CS or just learn C self taught. I kind of want to find a job that sits inbetween the two. Cybersecurity and develop if that makes any sense. Love the content !

7:35 prime's been WFH for so long he's forgotten to tell people to wear underwear and pants! WEAR PANTS PEOPLE!

While I agree with the general idea that hard work and discipline is a good life goal, there is absolutely a cap. You can’t dump 80 hours a week into a pursuit without significant sacrifice in other areas. Expecting this sort of workload from others is unrealistic, even harmful.

I also write sweaty software in a hoodie - great video sir

This Padre is so funny 😄. I love your contents ThePrimagen, straight from Africa 😁

When should i stop going downwards in the abstraction study? Like, i understand the basics of programming, data structures, algorithms and all, but now i want to understand why every concept of the programming languages i use exist. What was the necessity in C that created Javascript, and what necessity in Js that created React. My goal is just to be capable of programming usefull things, but i feel like i have a big knowledge gap and i dont know the size of this gap

I just got laid off, and your videos comfort me.

Luck is absolutely a huge factor - in both directions. However, it doesn't serve you to see yourself as a victim or not to be willing to put in whatever work it takes to get where you want. So, for your own sake and your own mentality it is better to not to think too much about it. When viewing other's however, I think it is unfair not to acknowledge that some people had a lot of bad luck (and others were lucky) and don't necessarily deserve to be where they are.

Any tips on how to keep up a relationship when hustling and honing your skills 80hrs/week ?

shees I also started with pyramid in java, It is the assigment in the CS106A by standford

Hmm, I feel as though it is definitely 80% luck, 20% skill. These numbers are arbitrary regardless but, of course it will take skill to get somewhere so that is required. But it’s not a full split because you can work your ass off for years and still not get anywhere, the luck comes when you are pushed in the right direction to do a specific thing and the skill comes from the journey of basically pain LOL that allowed you to easily get pushed into that direction, then fully see it through. The 80/20 split also isn’t inverse because you need more luck and available opportunity than skill. Certain opportunities are mostly coincidental but when I see people who think they just out worked everyone or they are just extremely inherently exceptional it’s kind of cringe because yes you worked hard. But, what led you to the opportunity that you moved forward with and blew out of the park? Because yes your tenacity and everything else allowed you to effectively ace that interview process, initial work assignment, etc. But, that whole I just worked harder notion plays into survivorship bias and is in reality kind of fictitious.

Mental health is soooo important, and even more I think if you work in technology

10:24 looking at Jungian psychology I saw that attitude described as Warrior archetype constellation and it has little to do with software development, it is more of a mindset tied to business in general that you can learn to master but that can also crush you with burdens of insane ambition that can break your enjoyment of life

Damn it Prime, every time you pause a video you trick me!

Well now I feel old. When I started programming Java, JavaScript and web browsers didn't exit yet.

Good takes!!

I worked for some of the big companies before, mostly I was a contractor consultant for 20 plus years. I worked for Google, Microsoft, id software, CERN, the government etc. I still get impostor syndrome now and again despite having these credentials.

Yes, that is luck. Luck is where time in place, time inverted in skill meet serendipity. Like you have no control if a CEO starts a project, all you can do is have the skills that may be called upon. That is luck, that is, serendipity. The EGO will see it differently, but know luck is part of any journey.

A good rule of thumb - Whenever you see somebody living their best life on social media, it is literally always a facade. Would you share your hard moments with the world? Hell no. So always think, whatever they're showing you, it's a blissful needle in a haystack of their problems.

Thank you for being our psychologist lol

I'd much rather work with someone who asks lots of questions than someone who pretends to know everything when they don't.

Oftentimes a good programmer will look at an issue from lots of angles and still be stuck. Then they'll get a second set of eyes on the issue and they'll discover that the issue was actually quite simple to solve. It's not that they were lazy or stupid. It's just that they got nearsightedness and thus missed the obvious issue.

7:32 It's hard to believe you were nervous or anxious.

I literally failed to implement a depth first search at a coding interview AND STILL GOT AN INTERNSHIP because I was the only candidate why actually demonstrated knowledge of C++

14:40 i really feel it! I really try to not look dum and then everything is good and it is time for a merge request. Later when the merge request is up i see de dum mistake i made. I feel i want to chamge it all again.

"No one enjoys pain. But whom can judge the man that willingy endure pain for the greater pleassures?" Lorem Ipsum, every developer know this line..

3:31 oh no, oh no not that guy

Luck usually amounts to getting opportunities, but it takes your own will and effort to take advantage of those opportunities. And the more you develop yourself and achieve financial freedom the more opportunities will generally come your way.

the positive only updates is why i love i following peoples private instagrams because i get to see them just be a fucking mess and it makes me feel better because hey at least i’m not posting that on instagram

luck is it's own thing, but yeah people relate to it wrong, like you laid it out. we do take chances!

When I was young, PRG was popular :( Thanks for this one, Mr Time. I made the mistake of making my hobby into my job, and forgot to add a new hobby. And btw: the dumbest programmer I ever encountered was the one that only ever asked where we were going for lunch

I don't Miss 80 hours a week (tbf it was closer to 74) But you're right, it's not just luck, sometimes yes it is. But a lot of the "lucky" people work hard in silence, hone in their skillset and when it comes down to it, they're just the better person in their field.