Title: After four years, I left my first team in March to join a new team at the same company. Now it&#x27;s performance review season, so my old manager forwarded some notes to my current manager about my prior work. Basically it said that I had solid results, wrote some really stable code, &quot;championed&quot; testing and testability for the team, and that people liked working with me. I haven&#x27;t seen it yet, but apparently it was a lengthy essay.<p>But he also added that the one thing that had been keeping me from moving from SDE I to SDE II was my velocity at turning out deliverables. I&#x27;m basically the last one of my peers who hasn&#x27;t made the jump, and that was the ongoing reason from my old manager. I&#x27;m getting passed by newer engineers pretty regularly now, and I&#x27;ve been at my current level for about three years.<p>In the last couple weeks since my new manager got that letter, she&#x27;s seemed really concerned about my velocity. It wasn&#x27;t until this Friday that she had read anything about it.
Yet in the same time span, the new-guy-on-a-new-team feeling was pretty much gone, and productivity was up. I got put on a pretty high-visibility, high-impact feature for this month. Before, I think my manager saw me as ready. Now I think she sees me as a liability.<p>I was starting to get worried that I&#x27;d never meet this speed expectation at my old job; but now I&#x27;m extra nervous that if I slip on any deadline even a little bit, I&#x27;ll seal this reputation with my new team and make it my label from here on out. The Slow Guy. Sure he&#x27;s nice, and he writes maintainable, reliable code... but if we need it done soon, might as well give it to an intern!<p>Q: Did anyone else shake a reputation for being slow? Is there any hope I can do to put this velocity thing to rest and catch up with my peers? Or am I just a B engineer who peaked right out of college?<p>PS: I&#x27;m getting married next month. Will I have to choose between my marriage and permanent 12 hour days?
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