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Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by djoldman on Friday June 21, 2024 @11:45AM (#40750763)
Those are the times one gets the opposite of imposter syndrome.
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by ASalazarMX on Friday June 21, 2024 @01:07PM (#40751553)
Fortunately it's a temporal state, otherwise there's risk of entering the Dunning-Kruger effect.

"You did awesome, but don't let it go to your head."

Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by dylan604 on Friday June 21, 2024 @02:44PM (#40752406)
F-that! That's one of those times where I re-enact the scene from the Bond Golden Eye film where the guy jumps up extending both arms yelling "Yes! I am invincible!" Of course I totally expect the hubris to be short lived, just maybe not with liquid nitrogen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW02XmBGQw

Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by squigz on Friday June 21, 2024 @03:12PM (#40752674)
I alternate between "I am the best programmer to ever exist" and "I am completely incompetent at this and I should quit" while debugging.
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by dylan604 on Friday June 21, 2024 @03:35PM (#40752870)
I've been known to inform people that the person that wrote the incredibly horrendous code that caused whatever problems to occur should be fired immediately knowing good and well that I was the only dev to write any of the code.
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by dmd on Saturday June 22, 2024 @08:56AM (#40758813)
me, yesterday: What absolute piece of shit asshole wrote this shell script? my wife: Was it you? me: Well obviously
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by dctoedt on Saturday June 22, 2024 @09:37AM (#40759054)
> my wife: Was it you? me: Well obviously

"Research shows" (I read long ago) that the happiest men are those take their wives' advice — that's certainly been true for my own N=1, for coming up on four decades now. I'd imagine we could replace "wives" with "spouses" and get comparable results.

Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by Angostura on Saturday June 22, 2024 @12:21PM (#40760136)
> I'd imagine we could replace "wives" with "spouses" and get comparable results.

Haven’t you just risked an infinite loop in your code?

Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by dctoedt on Saturday June 22, 2024 @02:32PM (#40761095)
Hah! I was referring to some men having husbands these days, but I take your point!
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by saagarjha on Friday June 21, 2024 @07:58PM (#40755056)
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by 9659 on Saturday June 22, 2024 @02:18PM (#40760993)
If you are honest, it may not even alternate. Both feelings can exist at the same time.
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by Aerbil313 on Sunday June 23, 2024 @05:31PM (#40770741)
I prefer "Why did I need to see this subtlest detail to resolve the bug, modern software sucks" and "Why do we not have better tools that would have prevented me from writing this bug in the first place, modern software sucks".
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by brailsafe on Friday June 21, 2024 @07:37PM (#40754962)
This is very true, and we need these moments. Lately I've been struggling to figure out where my place is, how to maybe get back into freelancing, what I'm technically good at etc... lots of ruminating since I've been out of work for a year.

But.. I met someone at the gym who's been struggling with an esoteric problem on an ancient piece of software for over a decade, and they approached me to ask if I could solve it. I said "maybe", sat on it for a few days, and then replicated the issue on my machine and solved their problem in about an hour. I asked for $50 and they gave me double, which was wildly more rewarding than being paid $100k to write react all year, not that that salary is on the table any longer.

Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by manmal on Saturday June 22, 2024 @10:34AM (#40759406)
> not that that salary is on the table any longer

Is the job market so bad right now? I‘m in a privileged position (and not in the US), so have no clue of the state of things.

Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by brailsafe on Saturday June 22, 2024 @04:30PM (#40761935)
I'm in Canada, but yes it's that bad.
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by 9659 on Saturday June 22, 2024 @02:17PM (#40760984)
$50 for a one off thing, for a gym buddy is fine. in the blue collar world, that would be a 'case of beer' for helping me out.

But in business, you need to charge an honest / fair amount. (sure, sometimes that 1 hour bug fix had $100K of 'value', but we could argue about honest / fair).

You mention being an employee at $100K a year. Double that, gives you a contractor rate of $100 an hour. That is the floor of what you should be asking floor; as in the absolute lowest. Another $50 or $100 an hour is still fair and honest in todays economy.

Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by justinclift on Saturday June 22, 2024 @08:01AM (#40758417)
There's an opposite to imposter syndrome?
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by Jcowell on Saturday June 22, 2024 @04:04PM (#40761728)
Yes the kids these days call it being “Him” (or whatever third person singular pronoun you may refer to)
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by sn9 on Saturday June 22, 2024 @07:11PM (#40763099)
The term that came to mind was being "cracked".
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by justinclift on Sunday June 23, 2024 @02:02PM (#40769295)
Not sure how being crazy is supposed to be the opposite of imposter syndrome?
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by sn9 on Friday June 28, 2024 @07:08PM (#40826299)
Re:Spending 3 months investigating a 7-year old bug and fixi... by aodonnell2536 on Sunday June 23, 2024 @01:08PM (#40768894)
Not really a new phenomenon, though. People have been been calling others “The Man” for ages