Dear anita,

You are right. Everything seems to be strictly measured – what you are worth is proportional to what you are able to produce – money and results. It is black and white and my hangout is the dark grey area.

I felt out of place, thank you for helping me see why. Now i know that it is alright and it just reflects who i really am and what i truly want – and that happens to be different from most of the people around me.

I had actually written a draft some 20 hours ago and decided to re read it before posting because i had written yesterday at work when i was feeling really horrible. I will give a summary of that later but what i have realized since that time is my manager and seniors both act like having a different pace at work is horrendous.I am really starting to see that it is like a factory and we are all machines. We are all expected to work the same way.I would never expect to get paid without doing work and i know the system is brutal enough to kick me out and would not have kept me around if i was truly horrible. In fact my manager said i was a strong performer but i need to think about how i would get to outstanding ( outstanding is the best rating and strong is one below that) – it is very rare for him to admit i actually do a good job. He is very manipulative and i came in as a hot mess with low confidence, which gave him the perfect oppurtunity to make me feel miserable and worthless.

What i want to get into is how i see work vs how other people see work – because i think this is the main reason for a difference in productivity. Being a developer is straight forward – you think about the best way to solve a problem ( usually done by senior developers but in our company anybody can do it) , think about the best way to write code and deliver. And at any stage, if you are stuck you naturally would ask for help. The difference with me is as i told you earlier acknowledging i don’t know or that i am stuck makes me feel like i am incompetent. What i am realizing is that in my career it is very easy to develop skills if you find the time. I am proof of that because my senior had zero knowledge and i delivered anyways – but since i was petrified, i had to drag myself to complete it and it took longer. I would give up on some days and feel useless. When truth is if my senior knew nothing and therefore could not do her job, i actually did more than my job required and that took me more time –  thanks to my way of dealing with things – which is very emotional.

And another difference is my need for approval as you have pointed out. It started with my mother at home and then people at work. And it deeply affects me when they find my flaws. I feel worthless and as you had told me earlier helplessness – the learned helplessness kicks in. Instead of seeing myself as the strong performer who could improve her speed, i thought i was not good enough for my job and i was hopeless and unethical.

I have enough proof to not think of myself negatively yet yesterday in that draft I wrote paragraphs on how i was unethical for being lazy and how i may never improve and will never compare to my peers. This is also because no one at work again cares about what another person is feeling. Like you said, they have all adjusted very well. The way they go about things is –  like this machine is not meeting all our standards, lets put it through these demeaning things. I was ashamed for being put through a discussion about how i should be precise on exactly what day i could deliver something – which means my senior is again refusing to do his job and making me do it. Instead of seeing it for what it was, which was the worst possible way for my senior to move things faster – completely foregoing responsibility and putting pressure without having a clue about what will go into this new task – i saw it as – oh i am being put through this that no other peer has had to do, i really am not good enough. After 20 hours I see that this is because they have worked on projects with more stakeholders so the same senior had to up his game. Now since it is an internal project he gets to act all high and mighty about how i need to know how long it will take. No one knows this, especially when you are starting and haven’t yet pieced everything together. The right way to do it would have been to ask me to break into smaller tasks and update on how they are going – that is what the other teams do but here everything should be done by me but all of them get to look down on it.

All this time i failed to realize one thing – they can do it whatever they want, be hyper critical and horrible – but it is on me to decide how to process that, not define myself by it and realize that people that determine my worth by what i can deliver for them and who do not care about the back story should not be allowed to define my worth or affect how i feel about myself.