I came across these quotes a while ago and thought I’d blog about the topic at some point.
“Comparison is the deadliest thing we can do to ourselves because we will always come up short. All it does is it exaggerate all of our insecurities,”
Simon Sinek
“It’s healthy to grow our own strengths rather than being intimidated by the strengths of others.”
(I think this was also Simon Sinek, but it wasn’t clear in my notes)
I have seen similar advice in tech blogs and this very much links in with the problem of Imposter Syndrome.
However, I think I have the opposite approach. I think it is very difficult to gauge how good you are as a Developer. After a few years of experience as a Junior, I had a one-to-one with my manager before an upcoming performance review. He asked “how do you think you are performing?” and I said something along the lines of “I just do my work and I’m okay at it”. He responded along the lines of “that simply isn’t true. You’re much better than that. Try to answer that again”.
I didn’t know what to say, but then he said “compare yourself to your teammates” (who were mainly developers but there was one other Junior rank, but all had years more experience than I had). When I thought about it, I realised that on average, I was probably just as productive as they were, but had a higher quality record (as in Testers didn’t find bugs in my code). Aside from the Team Leader, I also did the most code reviews, and people appreciated my reviews. When Testers needed help, they often came to me because they thought I was helpful, friendly and knowledgeable than my peers.
I said these things to my manager and he said he had already decided that I was ready to be promoted, so I’d lose my Junior status. I was well surprised because I’d never thought I was that good. I’d never considered I’d be close to a promotion until that very meeting where I just compared myself to my colleagues. I’d left the meeting a bit shocked. I’d finally be a “proper” Developer and maybe I was a lot better than I thought I was.
I still find it difficult to assess myself, but when I think about my team members, it is easy to see my qualities and what I offer to the team. There’s loads of developers that I know are significantly better than me (but they often have higher ranks anyway), but then sometimes that’s a good indication of what I need to work on.
It’s good to think of people who you don’t rate very highly, and think about what aspects justify that opinion. These aspects are traits you value and could be your strengths. If these aspects aren’t currently your strengths, they are what separates the good developers from the bad ones, and gives you aspects to work on.
I always considered what makes Colin and Derek bad developers, and then I pride myself on what I do differently. Mainly it comes down to: my attention to detail, care for the quality of the codebase, being able to debug more effectively, and being able to review other people’s code.
Maybe it depends on your personality type. Comparing yourself to others could lead to confidence issues and Imposter Syndrome. For me, it’s exactly what I need for the opposite feeling; not relating to poor developers such as Colin and Derek justifies that I’m good at my job.
It also raises the point that maybe managers shouldn’t wait until people ask to be promoted. Those that are bad at appraising themselves will be left behind, whereas those that are deluded will get promoted.
Stranger Coding Tings 
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