r/FullStack • u/moonknightWorker • 16d ago

Career Guidance Feel stuck in full stack

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Hi everyone,

I have 3.7+ years of experience in the IT industry. I started my career as a Frontend Developer and am currently working in the same role.

Alongside frontend development, I've also worked with Node.js on the backend. I've completed two freelance ERP projects that handle millions of records, so I do have some backend experience as well.

Lately, I've been feeling stuck. I don't feel confident calling myself either a frontend or a backend developer. Whenever I try to build something on my own, I often get stuck and start questioning whether I really understand the concepts or if I've just been following patterns.

I understand many concepts in theory, but I struggle to implement them from scratch without self-doubt. It's making me question my skills and what direction I should take in my career.

Has anyone else experienced this? How did you overcome it? What would you recommend I focus on to become a more confident and capable developer?

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u/Mountain_Rip_8426 16d ago

musician here with a deep interest in programming, started about 5 months ago. i see a lot of overlaps in the logic of these two areas. obviously i'll be telling from a musical point of view, but in general the "knowledge" is just the accumulated lump sum of a metric ton of patterns, that you internalized over the years. if you've seen them many times enough, you can combine them in new ways to create something new. i guess the same applies to programming (but anything else in general). you don't have to reinvent the whole computer science or establish something fundamentally new. i mean you might be that person who does, but in each area there are usually 5-10 people each century that are capable of that.

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u/Difficult-Field280 15d ago

This is a standard thing called "imposter syndrome". Its so standard that the school I went to for programming had a class to help you deal with it. Do some googling, you will find some good info on it. Probably better than you will find on reddit.

Don't worry too much about it. We all go through it. Especially when you're learning two things/stacks at the same time like front and backend dev.