The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 1639

I feel way out of my depth at work.

I'm "technical leader" on that project, ie. responsible for everything on the tech choices, setting up environments, estimating task length, etc.
I've worked ~5 years in the field when everything adds up and I'd never done some of these things, so it's an opportunity to learn more and get up to snuff, but when at look at that mostly empty github repo and ask myself where to start and how, I just... block. Never been good at the big picture thing, so I have my little bullet points list for what I figure I have to do, and it never feels detailed enough.
We started a bit late on the "set up environment thing" as the guy supposed to show me their own project with stuff in common (company doesn't have a skeleton app for projects from scratch yet) had priority stuff to handle, and now I'm still not done having this basis to work with despite it being supposedly done by the end of last week. "Big picture" and all I can't figure exactly how far I am from it so maybe it's simple and can be done in one hour, or maybe I'm still super far and late, and that feeling of ineptitude is paralysing me, my mind turning blank when I try to concentrate on the task.
I feel that I'm not up to par with what I expect is expected of me and it's making me stressed and uneasy and depressed, not helped by how easily I can get discouraged at things or want to give up. I've been so pampered and led by the hand all my life, including in a lot of these previous 5 years of work, that I'm not autonomous at all ; and now that I've got these responsibilities and am supposed to know whatever the heck I'm doing without a more competent person to report to and check with that I'm doing stuff right, it's like a great unknown and I'm scared of fucking up and even more so of it being found out because then it's related with keeping my job (and actually deserving it, ie being unable to land one because it turns out I don't have the skills for it) and the whole "parasitic, non-autonomous person" thing ties up with much more than on a job.
Obviously it's not enough to only be able to mimic stuff you've already been shown in great detail, and only once you've got a foot on the ladder, and you can't be held by the hand with a beginner's leniency all your life. But I'm not sure I've ever been otherwise and whenever the necessity to be more than that looms and I doubt I can bee, it's fucking terrifying.

And in a way it gets worse when you go and entertain yourself from it over work because you mull over how the slightest distraction turns you all carefree again despite how hard the reality's been hitting you. That it's truly childish and deluding yourself hoping the issue's resolve itself somehow and you can play and laugh and ignore it.
It's not that you can smile sheepishly and say you're not cut out to be an adult. You don't really get a say in the matter and you don't get an excuse either and you're just not taking it seriously.

Have you tried asking for guidance or just a sounding board? Often I find it's hard to really grasp the picture on your own but as soon as I have someone just to bounce the idea off or talk through things out loud it starts to become far more clearer.

The secret when it comes to being "big picture" is that everyone who knows how to do that stuff was terrified when they first tried. Try just take it one small step at a time, set a goal for the session (No matter how big or small that goal is) and work towards that goal. It can be as simple as "what should I name this thing". When you're working under someone you tend to get these goals or objectives given to you. Then when forced to "lead" we just forget about this nature and go about trying to tackle everything at once then wonder why it's so terrifyingly hard.

Lastly take breaks, sometimes taking a breather leads to more work being done then sitting there stuck endlessly. Don't beat yourself up constantly and just try your best. You may think it's not good enough or you aren't capable but that's just another distraction. Majority of people have no idea what they are capable of, they just use that as an easy excuse.

You got this alaric!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There's one guy below me on the project, but he's pretty carefree (despite it being pretty obvious we're late... from even before the dev part started), and although it's certainly hypocrite and a bit mean to say it, he isn't the most competent and efficient either.
I know I'd rely a ton on a more knowledgeable coworker, to the point that I'd probably defer tech choices and stuff to his opinion—not that it's a bad thing, obviously, but that I as the "expert" chosen am not able to hold my own is problematic.

Well, he's primarily an iPhone dev, and I'm a "web" dev that hasn't brushed up on some more recent techs... and my understanding when some new techs were suggested for the project were that we had some people who'd already worked on it that could have helped the start.
In the end we're both working on what's tl;dr a website with capabilities that resemble a phone app, including some offline capabilities and it's mostly javascript. The project that we're drawing inspiration from for that "front-office offline-compatible app" looks incredibly complex to me in terms of how you do stuff in javascript and all the utilities involved... and yet it appears to be pretty standard stuff now.
There's no way I learn all that fast enough to keep the planning in line, let alone catch up to the fact that we're already late. And that's without taking into account all the new stuff that's going to pop up as the project (or the planning... ) goes forward, and all the other things I've probably not done right... like the database schema that's only not an issue because we're not coding right now.

It's just... it feels like a recipe for disaster, and that despite being at the start of the first sprint, there's already enough backlog that we won't be able to make it in time.

And that has to reflect on my work ethic too, or at least my shortcomings.