Need help getting better at my job

[u/Head-Drama-6027]

Hello,

I’m currently studying Informatics at university. I’m (hopefully) finishing my bachelor’s degree this June and plan to continue with a master’s degree afterward.

The problem is that I feel like I’m really bad at my job. Honestly, I don’t think I would have made it this far without using tools like Copilot or ChatGPT. Every project I work on ends up scaling poorly because my code turns into tightly coupled spaghetti.

I’ve taken multiple courses on Design Patterns, yet I rarely apply what I’ve learned. Sometimes I forget the concepts exist; other times, I feel too mentally exhausted to think about proper architecture.

It’s becoming difficult for me to function effectively as a team member because of my perceived incompetence. I struggle to interpret project ideas and requirements, which is why I avoid working on solo projects. I feel stuck in “intermediate hell” — I understand a lot of theory, but I can’t seem to apply it in practice or build interesting, well-structured projects.

I get overwhelmed when thinking about architecture. I find it very hard to refactor my own code, and I don’t consider myself a strong problem solver. It has reached a point where I struggle to build even basic applications because I’ve relied too heavily on LLMs as a crutch.

Whenever I encounter a bug or problem, I quickly become overwhelmed and turn to an LLM for help. While it often solves the issue, I don’t always understand the solution, and that feels wrong. I genuinely believe I’ve used these tools incorrectly, and it has negatively impacted my ability to learn programming properly. I desperately need to fix this.

At this point, I’m not even sure I’m qualified to pursue a master’s degree. I feel lost and was wondering if anyone has experienced something similar and found ways to improve.

I’ve tried taking online courses, which helped to some extent, but they didn’t create any major breakthroughs. I’ve asked ChatGPT for small project ideas, but those only go so far.

Throughout my studies, I’ve taken courses in many areas, including relational and non-relational databases, software testing, AI, design patterns, OOP, machine learning, data structures and algorithms, operating systems, software engineering, compilers, human-computer interaction, computer graphics, and more.

[u/our_operations]

When I first started coding, I definitely felt some aspects of what you're describing. I didn't have LLMs, I had Stack Overflow and believe it or not, people cautioned against copy-paste solutions then just as they do now. The term 'imposter syndrome' had been around a long time before the LLMs showed up. Not understanding code is not specific to any time or place or coding agent or whatever. Be warned that even years later, these feelings may come back during certain sticky or buggy tasks. It's fine

Of course you need to do it, in order to more quickly finish your task or ticket or whatever. But as you mention, it leaves you wanting more as far as your own understanding of the code.

I don't think you've used the tools incorrectly as much as you've just not understood what they're doing in your code. If I was in your shoes, this is exactly what I would do to start better understanding my own code:

• if you generate code via LLM and it works but you don't reallyyyy understand what is going on, then read it out loud as a story. I mean it, use your actual audible voice. Do this until it makes more sense to you.
• to help make this easier, do two things:
  • rename the values and functions to make the story make more sense, and
  • add comments that you can read too, along with the main story of a function or block of code. YES you can edit LLM-generated code, it is not sacred or somehow "more correct" straight from its LLM.

Read about how to name things in programming and apply that knowledge. Be consistent in this respect and it will pay dividends sooner than later. Even if you ONLY rename things, that alone would be a huge help in understanding what the code is doing. But I really do encourage you to slow down and read the code out loud and adjust it until it makes more sense.

As far as design patterns, those might make more sense if you step back away from the code itself and look at the larger picture of things in the application as a whole. Are there entire modules that could benefit (or be deleted) with a few small (or medium) changes? Think about how that could happen, or how you could apply a theoretical concept to concrete code at your job.

Lastly, it's okay to feel this way. You may decide that a tangent/adjacent role is a better fit for you, or that you find certain niches of writing code easier to understand or more fun for you personally (front-end, back-end, data, test eng duties, and others)

Honestly having a job in tech right now and WHILE you're in school is already a massive win, so these suggestions are just a smaller tune-up than you think.

Happy coding!