I'm useless, mostly

Dated: 13/02/2024

I was working with someone recently, and we both sort of knew from the start it's not going to work out. In the end, it cost both of us some time that could've easily been avoided if we were honest with each other. Obviously, I ended up quitting because it felt like sunk cost and nothing else, but why did it happen?

In most of the scenarios, you don't need an engineer like me (if I can call myself that).

If you're making the NEXT BIG GOOGLE, don't work with me. If you're making enterprise product that will ship in 6 months and needs to have perfect systems working all the new flashy tech, don't work with me. If you, by any stretch of the imagination, consider anything other than the customer and their experience valuable, do not work with me.

I don't have good architecture, I will never have good architecture. I fail, cry, learn, morph, and move on. And if that error margin does not exist I slow down teams to a snail's pace.

"Please stop villainizing good programmers and git gud"

This is a good argument against my personality. Most techies I will meet will just assume I'm a bad programmer and want to stay this way and hence I speak out of fear of being called a "junior". To be honest with you I've never worked in a "real" tech job and knowing me I don't think I ever will fit, it just isn't meant to be, which means I will forever be a junior.

Now let's talk about the good programmers:

Is probably employed at FAANG or similar place; or at least belongs there because they know how to code big scalable systems and work with teams.
Writes code that's beautiful and elegant and knows what they're doing most of the time.
Obsess over good (good is subjective) technology and once they find it they never leave it. (Think NeoVim today, TypeScript, Next.js, etc etc.)

I've tried my best to not write any points that villianify because I don't meant to, these are GOOD programmers and I'm not one of them, because I couldn't care less about all of this.

Because it does not grind my gears, it does not fascinate me.

You know what does? I'm writing this blogpost on an online markdown editor before having markdown support on my own site because I have to start a new side side side project and I'd like to get my thoughts out before doing 30 other things to make sure I have the right environment.

Speed to me, is everything.

I don't even belong here

I think about this everyday, it's been 4-5 years of programming and if tomorrow I had enough money I would be making websites like ncase.me, or making algorithms that are utter garbage but were fun to make, or videos like TheCodingTrain on YouTube.

I don't come from tech, my dreams do not include making a billion dollar tech company, I do not want to live in SF other than making a dramatic tech documentary (watch Devs). I don't belong here.

I've been to meetups where people talk redux and react and nuxt and vue, and while it's fun because oh wow react so stupid useEffect ran twice, and haha redux is garbage because, wait why is it garbage again? My point is it's not that interesting to me after the first drink.

So why don't you quit?

Because I like problem solving. And problem solving does not mean solving leetcode problems.

Here's a problem that fascinates me: "Make a business that is completely automated, does MoM growth and is operated with SEO while being 90% gross profitable"

I'm already excited after making up this problem, but do you see? Tech is the means to the end, not the destination.

I wrote my first getServerSideProps very recently (for my own project I mean), and to be honest with you after using 2 years of Next.js I'm not bothered to learn everything before I need it, I don't see the point.

And that means I will never cover all the cases before needed, I will test in production and double deliver and blow off margins have error rates higher than normal, and most of all, use MongoDB all the time. Because it's the process that matters not the destination.

Conclusion

Don't ever follow my advice on tech, not that anyone is but please don't. If I ever can sustain my life through my own products and tweet (for engagement, ofcourse) people will flock to copy and ask how can they replicate, and how they can make money too.

But it's all a game to me, I don't take it very seriously so I should not be considered "good" by any stretch of the animation.

Sorry for long read but I hope you had fun?