What I want out of a position:
–
The times I’m most motivated as a programmer:
–
What makes me anxious:
I’ve not worked as long as you in this field, but thoughts like this come up all the time considering I’ve only been with one company for almost about 3 years. What I notice though from threads, forums, or blogs is when you get a new position there is always that learning curve. You’ll need 6 months to even a year to get things really clicking. You can be afraid of applying to new positions, but do realize if you feel you’re getting thrown in the deep end you should communicate (which your last boss was trying to do).
On relating to environments. I work with business oriented CRUD stuff. I go to the likes of reddit and hacker news, but leave only to feel inadequate in CS field. I’m trying to reteach myself fundamentals (algorithms, database structures, and best coding practices). It’s a bit overwhelming considering my motivation and focus has dwindled being at this job. To me there really isn’t anything that catches my eye as interesting, which makes it that much harder to stay on top of things. I’ve also been told 3-4 times from my boss that I need to finish tickets sooner. I want to believe the issue is overthinking the problems I’ve been assigned to. Sometimes when I look at what I need to get done I’ll just stare into nothing. It’s only when I start actually typing is when I get things done.
What I hope for is by the time my third year is nearly complete I’ll look at applying elsewhere and understand what I really want to do. 2016 is going to be a big reflection year for me. Not only for career choices, but life choices (need to get better at finances). Just know you’re not alone in this.