I hate people who think they are always right.

A coworker who seemed to be a friend turns out to be an emotionally needy narcissist who seems to think that he is a perfect human being and is the best example of how to live.

Long story short is that we did some bonding via alcohol and smoking cigarettes. Especially when I was in a bad period in my life where I had little self confidence, was in a bad financial situation and overshared many details abound my personal life.

And yeah we also work as software devs in the same team but I started avoiding working with him directly, because due to his seniority he overcomplicates things a lot to the point where stuff gets postponed for months. Meanwhile I am a simple guy, I do my tasks and if they are not up to the standard I just work on the feedback until Im up to the standard, thats it. Its just a job for me, for him its a way of life and he considers himself to be basically an artist.

Hes always trying to prove me something, showing that the "long way" is the best way and so on. In reality I dont give a fuck about him. I live my own life and I have my own priorities. I work fulltime in one job, also I work part time as a freelancer and in total I make about 20 percent more than he does. Previously before this job I owned my own company where for 2 years I ran my own projects which generated a decent revenue. I know what is hard work and how to sacrifice myself in order to achieve results. I am more pragmatic and I have some limitations of what I can be good at (since I have a shitty working memory due to my ADHD). So I have systems in place and bottom line is that I earn a decent living and my skillset is different. Yeah I agree that in some ways he is better than me, but dude has such a massive inflated ego that now he thinks that he unlocked some sort of universal wisdom and now hes suddenly experienced in every field of life and his opinion is the right one.

This guy takes a massive pride in how good software engineer he is and in every topic or interaction he tries to one up me. Which most of the time is just his preference or in order to gain a 0.0001 percent performance increase. Dude is basically a big walking ego and since "we are close now" his ego started bleeding into personal relationship.

In my personal life, Im in a stable relationship, thinking of proposing soon and getting married. I already co-own an apartment with my current girlfriend. Everything is serious and planned, Im soon to be 30 years old. He is the same age but he still thinks hes young hot shit and all he cares about is getting shitfaced a couple times a week after work and he doesnt really have any other hobbies. He has a girlfriend but I dont see any future in there TBH.

So what I did now is I started putting some distance between us. No more drinking every week with him, maybe maximum once in 2 or 3 weeks. I started working from home more. Also I stopped sharing my personal life with him. Each time when he thinks he is right I just go along with it and dont even pay attention to his emotional manipulations. I just hope one day he fucks off completely and I wont give in to his gaslighting. Maybe in a few months I will be leaving this job, so I will never have to deal with him again.

Lesson learned: dont be vulnerable to coworkers who you bond together only via alcohol.

Need advice guys

Where I'm working now I'm the tech lead, but I'm not happy. I want to get deeper into infrastructure and DevOps but I have no scope for that.

I have an offer from another company. A very small raise. Supposedly will lead to tech lead in 6 months after I help them recruit a team. Offered mid. I went back and said because of uncertainty about where the role would head, and coming from where I am, I would accept the offer with the title so I have more confidence about the future of the role.

They came back with a senior role, not tech lead, saying there's no scope for that yet. They also said they envision giving me architecture control and letting me train and drive the cloud process.

But this is all heresay. I could take the role, the project is postponed, there is no team to be a tech lead for, and so no pay increase or opportunity to learn.

Opinions?

I get anxious when I try to learn new things.

I'm not even sure how to describe it. Low self esteem? Low confidence? I dunno.

It feels like stage freight, but there's no audience or stage, it's just me and my computer.

No one really ever watches me, or judges me or anything.

I guess I'm a bit self emasculating because I don't really have a reason for feeling ashamed for trying out something in private.

But I feel that the fear, the stress is very distracting and it's limiting my progress.

Now, there's this project I'm rewriting in my company that I'm taking pride in and think that it has the potential to actually increase profits.

The stack is way better, it's visually better, the load times are better, the product is easier to access and try out, bla bla bla.

I guess I never felt truly proud of anything I've ever done in any company, most of what I did felt like grunt work.

But this one is actually a very well designed improvement.

So I'm hoping that this will be the excuse for not needing to prove myself anymore so that my mindset will be something like:

so what if I abandon another side project?
so what if I publish a game that looks like shit?

I may fail at newer projects, but I did win at that project I did in my company, and it wasn't a victory just because I say so, but also because my coworkers and bosses do too.

I don't know what else could help at this point.

Hello node.js
i hope to have some fun with each other
But if you want to fight with me, I'm ready to defeat you