How did you get through your quarter life crisis and in hindsight what would you do differently?

I graduated from university last year and am currently working as an engineer at a large privately owned company. I don’t come from a computer science background nor is coding my hobby, so I’m quite unfit for my role. I can see a significant skill and knowledge gap between me and my teammates.

I entered this career because tech projects exite me and I like to brainstorm, sketch, and (hopefully) build and lead my own ideas. I found myself very unhappy working for non-technical managers, so I decided I would spend my early career getting my hands dirty first before I try to lead projects.

1 year of fulltime and 1 year of internships later and I feel like I don’t belong here because I can’t do my job effectively without lots of handholding. For 3 years, I’ve been putting off studying computer science topics so today I cannot pass a coding interview. I don’t even know the basic concepts of computer/ internet/ networks. I haven’t been motivated enough to learn this even though my daily work depends on it.

I dread going to work because the only way I can get work done is by slowing down my teammates and the projects to get their help. I find my attitude getting worse the longer I am pretending to be fine at work and struggling in reality. Everyone says its okay to ask questions, but it’s really not, when i can’t comprehend every other word.

Lastly, I don’t like this company because it’s too corporate. I want to join a smaller project where I can make a difference doing anything I can to help. But at this point I don’t think I have any skills that would be valuable to solving any problems and I don’t have the right attitude either.

I want to believe this is a fairly normal quarter life crisis that other’s have encountered too.