Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
It does sound like burnout, and also like not being in the right environment (which contributes to burn out). I had one job where there was a lot of technical debt, but my manager did not respect me and my colleagues had what was basically a "learned helplessness" attitude. So I'd go around trying really hard to make things better, but everyone responded to me like I was just crazy or naive or didn't know what I was talking about. Thankfully my previous job had been one where I had earned a lot of respect from my colleagues and managers, so I knew that I wasn't the problem, but even knowing that I found the doubt starting to creep in.<p>I left. My new job has lots of tech debt, lots of processes that are broken, but  when I propose changes people listen. When I put in the work I can see progress. It's hard work and frustrating, but I know that it's because the problems I'm tackling are hard, not because I'm a failure or lacking. That's a very different environment.<p>I can only give a very broad bit of advice here -- having a positive, open environment is very important. Gaslighting will bring down even the most secure, confident person over time. If you can't change the environment, leaving to find a better one is the right thing to do. What that looks like will differ on one's situation -- might be a long break from coding, might be changing teams, might be changing companies. But we absolutely need people around us who believe in us to work sustainably.