Feeling lost at your programming job ? You are not alone.

Introduction

Maybe you are let to believe that you are either not doing so well in your programming career or want to excel beyond your colleagues in the market or even have no purpose in your job and want to be motivated. In this article I will be offering some help on that.

First of all, you have to assess the situation, you can be unmotivated by your manager, or you can be falling behind your co-workers and need extra effort to cope with them, or maybe you are not feeling challenged in your work … and so on and so forth. After assessing the situation, it is time to take an action that suites you personally. Remember, there can be more than one solution to any given problem … it differs from one person to another. Let me in the following paragraphs propose some possible solutions to the scenarios I mentioned earlier. 

Scenario #1 to be unmotivated by your manager

We all know how positively or negatively a manager can influence the employees without even noticing. The most important thing is to never let anyone affect your self-confidence or make you question your capabilities. 

In programming obviously, you can write tens or even hundreds of codes to do the same task. It doesn’t mean that you were wrong and your manager was right if you didn’t deliver the results your manager wanted. You can solve that by having 1:1 conversation with your manager explaining how you feel. Maybe you need training on something. Maybe you are burned out solving issues that are of lesser priority and loosing focus on the bigger tasks. These are non-technical management things to focus on. If that doesn’t help, find a senior team member or a mentor to seek advice from. Or raise the issue in your workplace to a higher level.

Scenario #2 falling behind your co-workers in terms of performance

Let it be clear that it is not always a good idea to compare yourself with others because everyone has his own circumstances. However, we are living in a very competitive world that will create comparisons out of nowhere especially in a tech/programming job.

It is possible that you are not actually 100% sure of your interest in your current job. Maybe you as a web developer, find robotics interesting or as an embedded systems engineer is fascinated by web development. Put aside some hours per week to try them out, without forming close opinions. I have been there myself, but I had taught myself how to experiment before settling with what I want to do. It is possible that the new thing you picked up might become stagnant in 5 years, but then you already know how to repeat the cycle. You are older and wiser by now.

You are comparing yourself with much experienced friends. Ambition is a great thing but a negative feedback along the way is demoralizing. Know how to get positive feedback and keep yourself motivated along the way by gaining some perspective by doing freelancing or contributing to open source in your spare time. I’m sure most of the known names in programming have been there at the beginning of their career. You don’t have to be perfect to those, all you need to start is to be able to do things others can’t. One step after another you will improve faster than you can imagine. That way you can also dedicate some time in your week to learn and practice new things. You can do that by taking online courses or attending group workshops. Create dummy projects and try new techniques and tools. Remember, practicing a trade helps you sharpen your skills and a no-pressure hobby project is a great option to achieve that.

Scenario #3 not feeling challenged in your work. 

It is easy to feel bored if you keep doing the same tasks over and over … day after day. You are pretty good at what you do and it doesn’t push your intellectual limits any more – like production support job in a pretty stable environment where the most stressful moments of your job is handhold users to get their password reset. There is no development in repeating your job duties with little to no changes every single day. You can solve that by thinking outside the box, as cliché as it may seem, but this strategy actually works. Let the computer do the boring stuff by automating manual processes as much as you can in your code. By that, you will have time to work on your self-development. Re-visit old tools and try to improve them or even create new tools that will help you and others afterwards. That may provide some edge to eventually grow out of the grunt and maybe offer a distinction in the eyes of your manager. If a promotion doesn’t pan out as a result, you now have something to talk about in your resume for your next job.

Bonus Tips

At the end let me give you some bonus tips. The first and most important tip is to get out of your comfort zone. Keep challenging yourself to do things you never thought you could do. For example, involve yourself in a project written in a new programming language that you are not expert in yet. “Magic happens outside your comfort zone” I believe that if you adopt this saying in your life, you will really witness the magic. The second tip is to review your progress on a monthly basis. Make sure that you are heading towards the right direction, re-visit your goals and reflect on your outcomes. 

Conclusion

Finally, be sure that to set reasonable goals with achievable steps and don’t overload yourself with a lot of things at the same time. Small consistent steps on the right track will lead you to a better future and you all know the famous quote “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”