I'm hitting a new wall

You always hear about this wall. Tutorial hell is the most common example. Then framework hell, then platform hell, then tooling hell. But I'm hitting a new wall. I think I've explored enough of the development space to decide on a realistic specialization.

I thought I wanted infrastructure/platform engineering. I thought I wanted that endless yaml reading and writing. But the last month at this new internship has changed that for me. I'm being mentored by someone who REALLY knows their stuff. A proper senior. Someone who ships quality software quickly.

Until now I've been a get-it-done-and-move-on kind of developer. I'd get the minimum viable product done, then move on and revisit later only if needed. Evan (my mentor) has shown me the other side of that: studying design patterns, clean code, DDD best practices, CQRS.

All of this modelling solved so many problem spaces for me on the backend side — there's always some trap to fall into (too much clean code, dont-repeat-yourselfing into a mess, linting to a fault, chasing 100% test coverage for reliability), and I'd never found a groove to develop in, which is probably why devops felt more consistent to me: declarative, and without opinion.

devops? SRE? SWE?

Now I'm not so sure what I want. I feel like I need to be modelling problems more often. I need to design things I use, and I need to be more organized and considerate of responsibility and long-term patterns. I'm setting my head on fire every day at work in some new way of thinking. I feel entrenched in this new way of thinking, almost unable to go back to breathing in my old one — it's just so much better.

It feels like no matter what I do, I'm learning and growing every day at the office. I want to be a better backend engineer. I think I might consider more backendy positions going forward.

Also I really like working with nerdy people. I liked construction shop talk, I miss that crude humor. But nerding out is als pretty sweet.

The new direction

I think I might just want to be a backend engineer with a bit of specialization in infrastructure/platform engineering. I want to deploy more applications, not just design the pipelines for them. I think I'd miss out on half the deliciousness of the pie that is being a software engineer if I settled after the first appealing career I stumbled across.

Backend engineering is significantly more well-rounded than I'd thought. I like the idea that I can differentiate myself as a backend engineer by the decisions and designs I make.

I'd like to let go of the clever=bad instinct I somehow picked up along the way. I want to design fast, and I want to design well, and I want to develop that sense of better judgement, not just good judgement.

Today I'm finally an imposter

My code is shit. More importantly, I been whiping my ass all my life, so I know how to clean a pair of butt cheeks when necessary. My assless chaps have the means to become assfull chaps. I have the means to improve the code.

I found my career starting line.

Realistically I do still really enjoy devops/infrastructure engineering. But I feel like an imposter for the first time in a long time. So much to learn, so much to improve on, so many new ways to grow. It's awesome.