What developers are afraid of?

Fear is one of the basic emotions that a person experiences to one degree or another throughout life. Thanks to fear, we are aware of the presence of real or perceived danger and, as a rule, avoid phenomena and events that carry a threat. As a child, almost every one of us was afraid of getting lost in the supermarket, a physics test, etc. The inherent fear of youth is to say “hello” to someone you really like, to look stupid or funny. We are all afraid of something – spiders, heights, darkness, loneliness, crowds, life or death.

In addition to household fears, there is also a separate category of fears – professional fears. We can call them many different things – work pains, victim tasks, work nightmares. These can be thoughts, words, events, or tasks that make you shiver. Today, we will focus on what developers are afraid of.

Here comes the deadline

If the answer to the question “When should a task be finished?” is “Yesterday”, it often leads to panic. Many programmers are unnerved by tasks marked “urgent” that appear at the end of the working day. An incorrect estimate of the time spent on the task, bugs that began to crawl out of all the cracks, although it seemed that you were already there, irritating words like “urgent!”, “deadlines are here”, “is everything ready?”, “is it ready now?” lead to a strong fear and lack of concentration.

What will help?

It is essential to always estimate the time with a margin, direct the main power and energy flow to the task immediately, as soon as it is set, and not when you have no other options except to start doing it. Well, if a deadline hit on the vanity is inevitable, we analyze the reasons, add negative experiences to the piggy bank so as not to step on the same rake in the future.

Do no harm

As it turned out, the fear of causing serious consequences is experienced not only by junior developers but also by IT professionals. Making a mistake that will lead to the loss of the customer’s money and, as a consequence, the customer himself, making the code vulnerable, not finding a solution in stackoverflow, causing the anger of descendants with low-quality code – these are excellent plots for a programmer’s nightmares.

What will help?

The answer is fear itself. If you are afraid to screw up, strengthen the verification, build a defense in the form of tests to combat bugs, seek advice from more experienced colleagues, look for solutions to similar problems in thematic chats and communities, and then check, check and check again.

Vow of silence

The stereotype that all programmers are gloomy people who avoid communication and lose consciousness at the word “communication” is long gone. However, in the new era of team development, daily meetings, joint decision-making, team building, and training, there are still those who are much more comfortable communicating with a PC than with colleagues and customers.

What will help?

The advice is not to expect an introvert to change “his faith” and suddenly become a party star, but also not to remove him from the life of the team. It’s better to select events without taking our silent people out of their comfort zone. One person will like completing a team quest or composing unusual puzzles, another one will enjoy decorating an office for Halloween.

Juniors’ attack

Project managers are familiar with the fear of getting a project with only Junior developers responsible for it. It is most likely a “shift” in timelines and a “missed budget.” But Juniors are the future of the company, they need to be taught and developed, nurtured, and cherished, but this thought does not make it easier.

What will help?

A competent manager correctly plans the composition of the team and distributes tasks by complexity among specialists of different levels. If the threat from the participation of overly inexperienced developers on the project is real, do not go with the flow, but try to convey this idea to the management. And Juniors are so different – someone needs to be led by the hand, and someone may well cope with the tasks set.

Crazy about Legacy

When you come across old code, which is scary to touch, you involuntarily ask yourself the questions “What kind of Peter Pan did this?” and “Where to start treatment?” But do not forget that working with legacy code opens up great prospects. Yes, learning the system will certainly take you a lot of time, but changing the current architectural solutions will allow you to avoid such mistakes in future projects, thereby increasing their efficiency and reliability.

What will help?

It’s better to walk this path with courage because the experience with the Legacy is an excellent skill leveling and a good way to increase demand from potential employers.

Come back, I will forgive you

A nightmare for HR, company management, and the team as a whole is the dismissal of a valuable employee because a person wants it. If this is a senior, on whose participation the life of the project depends, then his departure acquires the scale of a global disaster. In addition, dismissal on their own is a wake-up call for the company’s management that it is not an attractive employer.

What will help?

It is essential to keep a finger on the pulse of the mood in the team, track the level of employee satisfaction, working conditions and promptly respond to staff pains. In any case, it is better to be ready for anything and not jeopardize the project by entrusting it to the hands of one irreplaceable employee.

As you can see, it is possible to cope with any fear.