I got a feedback saying that I am good at solving problems which are obvious and have obvious steps. But I have to improve a lot where problems are complex or solution is not known.
People, I have 3.5 years of experience in industry and still I am a junior. I am continuously thinking about it. I was a smart person till my school, I never had to work hard I think it is impacting me till now. I sleep so late and work only in the night, get up so late and feel bad about it :( Everyone is doing so good as compared to me.

@rutee07 I was recalling some of my childhood memories. My brother, who's very talented, he used to solve complex problems for example solving the Rubik's cube not all but I remember he was always trying to make some strategy to solve it. I always failed to do it. He was good in chess. I believe that there is this knowledge of solving the problems that I am missing. I am going to something about it. Yes. I know.

Try focusing on the business need. Yes, sometimes the business need requires a unique *technical* solution. But this industry is plagued by “clever” solutions that are decoupled from the needs of the business.

90% of the work is “obvious” solutions. For another 9% there’s Google. 1% of the time you are screwed and have to think.

@UnicornPoo Thanks.
And about the Rubik's cube, you gave a nice solution :) Although fron the cube, I just wanted to point out the problem solving of my brother who is very good at solving problems he's doing PhD after all.
I am very lazy and the thing is I know where I need to improve and I google all day "How to solve complex problems" I need to know where I am lacking. I cannot improve in a month or two but gradually I have to moce towards a strategic way of solving the complex problems.

@UnicornPoo or s screwdriver to pop out a few pieces so it falls apart and you just rebuild it :)

I get your pain. I was a "smart kid" who grasped almost all analytical problems instantly or not at all. This affects my adult thinking as well, I'm somewhat impatient to get answers. And I'm not that smart anymore.

@rutee07 i was looking for impostor syndrome and was ready to unleash hell on OP.

@aviophile Glad you didn't do it. Because I. literally think this is a shortcoming that I have to improve upon.

@iiii Thanks :)

Learn by practicing, making mistakes and being bold.

Don't let someone judge you though. If one says you are a junior, find out why and practice scenarios with these things. But don't take it personally. It's just a message.

Something that may be relevant - can you give us an example of the problems you're talking about here?

If we're talking debugging issues in code or diagnosing why something isn't behaving the way it should, then yeah, that's a necessary skill to develop. But as others pointed out, the most important thing is that you're aware of it and can spend time developing that skill. 3.5 years isn't that long really, don't stress about it.

If you're at a company that's expecting you to solve complex algorithmic style problems with great time and space complexity however, the problem is likely not with you but with your employer.

@AlmondSauce hey Thanks :)
I am completely fine with solving debugging, code issues etc.
The problem I am talking about it more around getting a new project, given a lot of unknowns in it, coming up with various solutions of it. Coming up with the existing architecture by reading the internal documentation (which sucks for most of the projects). Going through the code written by other teams and try to find your way to develop your feature inside it.
I don't know how does it sound. I will like to hear back.

@true-dev001 Ok, so I'm 50-50 on this. A certain amount of self discovery is needed on those things at some point in your career. I'm routinely shoved into undocumented codebases and have to figure out what's going on, sometimes in legacy languages I've never seen before.

...but I'm at a level where that's expected of me, I've been in this industry a darn site longer than 3.5 years, it's kinda in the job spec, and even then people are sometimes amazed if I pull it off (I don't always,this stuff is hard.) For mids or juniors, I'd expect to do at least a little hand holding to get them up to speed on this kind of stuff. Leaving you to it is a tall ask imho, I wouldn't feel too bad about it.

That being said - pick a random open source project, pick an issue or two, then start trying to solve it. You'll need to get up to speed with the codebase, the conventions etc. - which is all good practice for this sort of thing. Then when you've done it, pick another one, do it again 🙂

@puradawid Yeah, I take care of myself when I receive feedbacks. I try to think if something is right and then just make an action item out of it of something is true. Work on that action item.
Thanks for your comment :)

@AlmondSauce Yeah, the idea I get from your answer is not to be hard on myself if I am not able to solve something. Thanks :) I am looking for a direction. Sometimes yes, I am hard on myself.
Also, great advice on the open source project, sadly in my corporation policies are against it. That's something I don't like about my current company. I am working mostly on the internal frameworks which are not very up to date and requires a good grasp on each, it is expected that as we will work on each of them we'll learn them but I am not excited about learning those as I think this will give me a good position in the current company but I don't intend to stay here for long. Internal frameworks are one of the reasons.

@true-dev001 I didn't necessarily mean do it in work time - more as a home project if you want to spend a bit of time skilling up on these things. If your work prevents you contributing to OS outside of work hours then that's ridiculous, I'd be looking to get out there ASAP.

Also not a fan of internal frameworks - they're not good ways to build your career and they can have some... questionable design decisions that make little sense. That'd be a pretty big reason not to take a job for me, unless the money was particularly good or I was downright desperate.

@AlmondSauce Yeah OS is not allowed. Yeah pay is good. :)
And yeah you are right, I should get out of here. :)
I have started preparing again and looking out for job, I hope this time I'll get something good.

@true-dev001 That's nuts. I'd never work anywhere where the company had that sort of grip on what I did in my free time.

@AlmondSauce I am surprised that you didn't hear. It's one of the FAANGS.

@true-dev001 Doesn't stop it being nuts - there's good reason I've said I have no interest in FAANG unless they overhaul their hiring practices and culture 🙃

It does look great on a CV though, so you really shouldn't have too much hassle moving on if and when you decide to.

@AlmondSauce Yeah, I'm hoping I will be able to switch to a better company from here.