Let's be fair. The title of this post is confusing at first, but once you read it in full, I hope you will understand why. Do let me know if otherw...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Maybe you're putting too much pressure on yourself. It's great to see that you're not only learning and growing yourself, but also helping others along the way. Good luck on your journey! 👍
Thanks and I appreciate the comment! I am slowly reading everyone's comment and notice there are more than 40+ comments that I need to reply 😭
Also, I sent you an invite to join the DEVenger org a while back if you have not seen it yet!
Wow! Those 40+ messages prove how much you are needed and loved by the community! 😄
Thank you for inviting me to DEVenger! However, I haven't received the invitation yet. 🤔
I sent the invite. It should be in your email!
It gets better, Francis. Don't lose hope. I was in a similar situation during my second year of BE. It'll get better once you find an internship, which I'm p sure you will. Just find what you're really interested in doing and stay consistent with it.
Sending you virtual hugs <3
Thanks Athreya. It's just a depressing week for me. Not really burnt out in a way, but just reflecting too hard lol.
I appreciate the support :D
Hm, I had to read this post a few times because it sounded really sad to me and I hope I understood it correctly.
But maybe you should look at it from a different perspective. You mentioned only two accomplishments in six months, I just checked your profile and it looks like we joined the DEV community around the same time.
Honestly, I was surprised, because I thought you had been part of the community for much longer. From my point of view, you have done a lot. You earned many badges really fast and became a known part of the community in just six months.
Second, don’t tell me that with all the challenges you participate in, you don’t learn a lot. 😄 And you even won one!
Third, I just checked the ClassifierAI project on GitHub and it already has 10 stars in such a short time. That is actually a good achievement. My first 10 stars on GitHub took months, maybe even a year. 😅
So you see two achievements, but I see at least five and I don’t even know everything you have done.
Honestly, if you are still studying, that is a LOT of work in just six months.
Francis .This took courage to post.
The gap between what you give and what comes back is real and it's exhausting. But the person who flagged my essays because he knew me and flagged me anyway .
That's not someone who doesn't care. That's someone with standards. That counts for more than most people's encouragement.
You're not behind. You're just measuring yourself against the wrong timeline.
I think many of us needed this reminder
Wishing you all the best Francis ❤️
I totally understand you, it's like your mind is telling you "Am I missing on something?"
... + Beware of the "Imposter Syndrome",
Francis,
From what I have gathered, if you have found yourself in the pit of despair, it means that the only place left to go is up.
I sympathize with you on your feelings. I know that the barriers to entry are tough, and that it may feel like sometimes you have been 'used'.
Let me reframe this. All of those connections you make, all of those people you help, they are your future references that can speak on your behalf, of the excellent time and work you did - even if it was for free.
Remember that there is value in experience, connections, and even things that feel like failures. We learn, we adjust our stance, and go forward. Keep an open mind and dont give up. ✨️
Francis, I know it's easy for me to say this from the outside, but reading this, I think you're being much harder on yourself than you should be.
You joined DEV at the beginning of the year and when I look at everything you've done since then, I see a lot of progress. Open source contributions, projects, networking, growing your presence in the community, becoming a moderator, collaborating with other people... that's a lot more than "just updating a resume and portfolio."
I can relate to that feeling of looking at what you've done and immediately thinking you should have done it sooner or done more. But progress is still progress, even when it doesn't feel as big as we expected.
For what it's worth, I don't think you're "just another statistic on DEV." You were one of the first people to welcome me when I came back to DEV, and I still remember that. I think you've had a bigger impact on people here than you give yourself credit for.
This hit harder than I expected.
One thing that stood out to me is that every accomplishment you listed immediately got followed by a reason it "doesn't count." Moderator? Just a moderator. Open source? Should've done it earlier. Projects? AI helped. Networking? Should've happened faster.
At some point, it becomes impossible to feel progress because the goalposts keep moving. And to some extent that's part of growth. The more you achieve, the more you realize what's still left to learn. But that doesn't mean the progress you've already made stops being real. Learn to be proud of what you've accomplished while still leaving room to keep growing.
For what it's worth, I probably started being regular on DEV after you did, and from my perspective you've become one of the people most associated with the community in a very short amount of time. That's not something that happens accidentally.
I also don't think people are gatekeeping as much as they're often giving advice from their own blind spots. I've noticed that many people only point out what they happen to notice at that moment, which can make feedback feel incomplete or inconsistent.
The line that stuck with me was "I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess."
Ironically, I think a lot of people who help others end up feeling that way sometimes. They're close enough to see everyone else's progress, but too close to their own journey to recognize it. And that's okay.
I don't know if that fixes the feeling, but I don't think you're nearly as far behind as your reflection is telling you.
Quote:
"It made me realized that I have been helping others more than myself. I have been giving advice to people that is helpful on dev.to"
I would call that an achievement (or a "quality"), and an important one - so let that be your strength and your unique skill, maybe? One that you could even advertise to potential employers:
"I'm a team player, and I am able to make the whole team function better through my actions and my attitude"
I could suggest a lot of things, especially since you're a developer/IT professional, but I'd rather suggest something different. Please, keep your mind open and know I'm really trying help: Consider seeing a psychiatrist and asking for a neuropsychological evaluation. I recently (less than one month) went through one myself, and the results were nothing like I expected.
I will not share the result here, because I don't want making this about me, but that assessment helped me understand years of struggles, behaviors, patterns, and even impostor syndrome in ways I never could before. I'm not a psychologist, so take this only as a personal suggestion. But before trying to change yourself, try to understand yourself first. A proper evaluation by specialists can explain a lot. I really also believe everyone should do it, at least on early teenager life (Imagine how beneficial it would be for children and adolescents to get to know themselves and then understand behaviors).
And please, don't self-diagnose based on LinkedIn or TikTok posts. If something is going on, qualified professionals will help you figure it out. I understand myself much better after going through this process. Trying help with a very little experience. Good luck!!
PS. Continue help others, never give up. We need more people like you.
Brother, your post isn't just a thought—it’s a bleeding heart. When you wrote, 'I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess,' it felt like someone reached straight into my soul. The truth is, the very lamp that lights up everyone else's home always sits in its own deep shadow. You are not a fraud. You are the shield that is breaking itself just so others can stay safe. But right now, it’s not your time to guide others anymore; it is time to step into your own darkness and find that lost savior within yourself. You are not just a statistic on DEV.to—you are the backbone of this community. Pause if you must, but do not give up.😔
Francis — I wouldn't be here without that Q&A thread you did a few weeks ago. When my account was flagged and nobody told me why, you were the one who actually answered. That's not "just another statistic" — that's someone who made a difference for at least one person on this platform.
Do you believe in fate? Where I'm from, we believe that every person you meet — in real life or online, past, present, future — crosses your path for a reason. Connections form, and they can also fade. It's the nature of things.
Desire brings suffering. Let go, and you become unshakable.
Keep going. 👊
halfway through the year and somehow the list of things done is longer than ever but the feeling of being behind doesn't move. I think it's because progress and expectation run on completely different clocks.
This resonated with me.
I'm not a maintainer or moderator, but I've felt something similar with open source. On paper I've had merged PRs, contributed to projects, and spent a lot of time understanding large codebases.
The strange part is that every achievement immediately gets discounted in my own head:
I've realized the goalpost keeps moving. What looked difficult six months ago starts feeling "normal" once you've done it.
One thing I disagree with is the idea that helping others means you're falling behind. Some of the most useful things I've learned came from reviewing issues, discussing designs, and helping contributors understand a codebase. The growth is less visible, but it's still real.
Thanks for sharing this. It was a good reminder that progress and the feeling of progress are often two different things.
As someone whose been working their ass off, building incredible things, only to get 35 views and comments on my documentation, rather than anyone actually use it. Someone who literally fixed the biggest issue with C# for web. Someone who built a better browser agent by scales of magnitude. Built a company on the back of AI orchestration to create a software foundry that pumps out fully tested apps in minutes, not weeks. Someone who built a data-transfer protocol that's faster and more secure than anything on the planet...
You did more than I did.
Life isnt about fame, fortune, or even friends, it's about impact and you left an impact on every community member you interacted with. I wouldnt have took on the anti-bot project if you werent chatting about it in the comments of your post. Who knows, maybe it gets used and makes a difference? If it does, who gets the credit, me for creating it, Ben for integrating it, or you for acknowledging that it was a problem? Nobody does, because the people who use it, wont care who made it, who integrated it, or who suggested it. They just care that it works.
Life as a software engineer, is a life of doing the incredible and never getting recognized for it, that's a job for marketing... Steve Wozniak built what became Apple, yet he gets an engineer's salary, while being the father of modern computing. While Steve Jobs is halo'd as the saint who gave us the computer. You dont need recognition to make an impact, but recognition without impact is hollow.
Feel proud of your accomplishments, I know it's disheartening when it goes unrecognized, but it leaves an impact. And this isnt a pick-me-up, this is the life you choose as a software engineer. Nobody cares that an automated ERP system took you 6 years and over 600k LOC, they just care that they click a button and it works. You will go unnoticed and that's a good thing. Because your professional life is separate from your private life. We all struggle with finding the balance, managing life + work, especially if you're dedicated to 1 or the other. But that's part of life, finding your groove.
The year is half way in, if you want to feel productive, then be productive. Be active in the community as you are, contribute where you can, learn everything that you can, have fun while doing it and experiment, find out what works for you. Dont feel discouraged using AI 'too much', you dont learn how to butter bread by using your fingers, you use a knife, AI is your knife, now you need to learn how to butter the edges without making a mess, or leaving dry spots. The age of hardcore coding is over, when I was studying, we didnt have AI, we studied from stackoverflow and tried our best to filter out the nonsense. I am a better coder today with AI, than I was back then without it. Not just faster, but smarter, because when you review how the AI does things, you learn the more robust patterns. And if it's too slow, you ask 'cant we make it faster' and it gives you suggestion after suggestion and you learn in time that you spotted a bottleneck without knowing it, you just didnt know how to remedy it, which is why AI helps. Dont shy away from it, because in 2 years, if you arent a master of AI, you're out of a job.
I'd honestly suggest, you need projects. I work an 8-5 everyday, but I hate it. Doing the same thing as I do all day at my job, but on my own projects from 5-12 and weekends, energizes me, because it's something I made, for me, I choose what happens to it. Take V.A.L.I.D. for instance, I made it because I was sick and tired of CSLA, my boss loved CSLA, then hated it, in the meantime I made a better solution not for the sake of the job, but out of sheer frustration at the fact that I dont like CSLA and I needed something better, just for the sake of knowing a better way exists. I dont use V.A.L.I.D. in my job, I dont even think they know about it, but I dont need them to, I just made it for me. Same reason I started UnitBuilds, because I got tired of being locked in to doing it a certain way for my day-job. So I made my way, on my time. I learned so much and it has honestly been the most productive 2 months of my life. Not because I magically made a million dollars, but because I made things that took my frustration away.
So here's a project for you. I made MCP-Lite, same how Ben made Forem. Take MCP-Lite and a local tiny model (eg. Gemma nano) and turn it into a standalone browser agent. So you can ask it a question and it can just go and find it. You'll learn more from doing these kind of little side-projects than you ever would studying, or working a day-job. Because it forces you into the unknown, no scope, no briefing, just pure creativity. And I deeply encourage you to use AI to write ALL OF IT! Projects are meant to be fun and a learning experience, so sit back and let AI do the heavy lifting, your job is to not get frustrated and when you do, find a solution. Having a little chat-ai that can actually find you prices for flights directly from airliners, or notify you about events on any site, is something truly useful, that anyone can use. And you'll likely find that you can use it too.
This isnt just a fun and games project, this is something you'll put on your Git and it'll become part of your legacy, you'll look back over time and see the projects build up, yet that's a good thing, because each was a learning experience, that drove you to being a better programmer and trying out new things. (Like me trying out blocking bots, instead of bypassing the traps) It might not seem relevant in the moment, but the skills you learn today, pay dividends in 10 and you wont regret learning a single thing, because it made you grow and accomplish the incredible over time. Look at your friends group, how many of them have built an app? Like an actually useful app? Likely none, so what are you stressing about not accomplishing much? You have time, you have patience, have at it, cuz you wont regret it.
So chin up and good luck!
I really hope I didnt come across as pretentious, or up my own ... What I meant to say is, the definition of accomplishment is what you make of it. My goal at the start of the year was to be able to quit my day-job, spend more time with my fiance, sleep better and stress less. I havent achieved anything, infact, I'm deeper in the red than ever, working 108h a week, not earning a penny for anything past 40 (day job), I made things, but they're pointless to me, because they dont bring me any closer to my goals. Hell I even tried to get a different job, I even wrote a custom app for them, showing I can do the job better, yet not even a 'sorry we chose someone else'. As long as you fixate on a goal, you'll miss every other achievement you make along the way. Nobody has time or patience to stayed focused on becoming a millionaire as their goal? That's silly, instead that's the purpose, to which you set your goals, eg. finishing the app you're working on, launching a website, asking for feedback, all things that expand what you've done in life and maybe with time, you cross the threshold and realize you overshot the market by a mile in a good way? Motivation is a bittt, but you only need a little bit to make a difference. And every little bit counts (else you'd hit floating point errors).
You did more than I did, because where I made cool stuff nobody uses, you gave advice that pushed hundreds just like us forward. So do you want to ride on the carriage, or pull the cart? Because it may feel like you're pulling everyone's carts, but you're sitting in the carriage, giving direction, which has greater impact. You've found your niche in the community, by being the friendly mod that's always willing to answer. That's amazing! So why not lean into it? You could always make an 'ask a friend' app, where people just write their problems and people answer them? And you'll probably be the first to answer for the first month, but after that, someone else just like you will show up and beat you to it. That's the point you do for someone, what dev.to did for you. Inspiration to be helpful.
Hi Francis. I’m new here, but your post really resonated with me.
It’s easy to look at progress in terms of visible milestones and miss everything that’s actually been built underneath.
One step at a time still counts as movement, even when it doesn’t feel like it. You’ve planted seeds , sometimes growth just isn’t visible yet.
Francis, thank you for being honest enough to write this — it takes a lot to put something this raw out there publicly. 😊
The line "I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess" really stayed with me. But I'd gently push back on the framing: the fact that you can guide others means the knowledge is already there. Applying it to yourself is just harder emotionally — that's not fraud, that's being human.
The comparison trap is real too. You're not measuring what you did against what you actually started with — you're measuring it against an imaginary version of yourself that had everything figured out from day one. That person doesn't exist for anyone.
From the outside, someone who joined DEV at the start of the year, became a moderator, contributed to open source, collaborated on projects, and built a presence in the community in six months — that's not "just networking and a resume update." That's a lot. The progress just doesn't always feel proportional to the effort when you're living inside it.
You're not behind. You're just in the hard middle part where the work is real but the results haven't shown up yet. That gap is temporary. 🌸
We all have different pacing in life. I’m going to be honest, I also often feel that I’m left behind and that feeling sucks. Regrets of the past keeps me awake at night. I’m still haunted by it but I learned to just keep living one step at a time.
That will be the same for you, I know it. Everything will be fine. The fact that you are reflecting on this only means you care about your future. Take a breather, find things that you are grateful for and start from there. (I know it’s hard, but you got to get past that and only you stands in your way)
You're giving yourself far less credit than you deserve. Growth often feels invisible when you're living through it. Becoming a moderator, contributing to open source, networking, and helping others are meaningful achievements. You're not behind—you've been building foundations. Don't measure progress only by outcomes; effort and consistency matter too.
Francis, I can understand your pain, especially because people like you who help others a lot often end up feeling unseen themselves. I don’t mean this in a harsh way, but I want to share something that might help you in the long run.
Happiness and self-worth cannot come from outside. External recognition feels good, but it is unstable. If your value depends on who replies, who praises you, who notices your work, or who validates your progress, then your emotional state becomes fragile.
Attention is inconsistent. Recognition is inconsistent. People are inconsistent. So the happiness that comes from outside is always temporary.
Real stability comes from internal validation - from knowing your own worth first. Your life is yours, not others. You should be proud of your progress before anyone else is. Your value is not dependent on applause. Feeling this way is not arrogance; it is emotional maturity.
From what I see, you are not lacking achievements. You are lacking self-acceptance. And that is something you can build, slowly and gently, from within.
Thank you Sujala
If you're cooked, then I'm burnt worse than charcoal 😂
b ru h
I've never felt more relevant and irrelevant. Hang in there.
Just keep going....
Honestly this resonated deeply I felt the same until I realized most of the time people endeavor into their careers theres a blueprint to follow that allows you to see the progress an gauge how far you’ve came but in this new space where the abnormal has become normal there is no blueprint to measure against, you’re doing great I’ve enjoyed every article I’ve read from you. Thank you for sharing!
Reflecting on the last bit of the article here, and I guarantee a lot of folks, have felt the exact same feeling.
While it is easy to just give the answer away, I promise the only way, is to just associate yourself and or let people with the same interests come to you.
In the few years I’ve been an engineer, I found that it’s rare friends and family have the same understanding, even if they seem interested.
And would it been wrong to assume, that’s what’s causing it, the interest yet lack of understanding, cutting the conversation short?
You mean a lot to us - and your modesty is just empty words!! 💖💖💚
I appreciate it Ember!
One thing that jumped out at me is that you're measuring progress almost entirely by outcomes, not by leverage.
Becoming a moderator, contributing to open source, building projects, networking, helping people, growing a presence in the community... none of these directly get you a job offer. But they all increase the probability of future opportunities.
The hard part is that leverage compounds quietly.
A recruiter doesn't see the dozens of conversations that improved your communication skills.
A future referral doesn't show up the day you help someone.
A collaboration opportunity might come from a relationship you built months ago.
The resume story you shared is interesting too. I don't think people were necessarily gatekeeping. Most feedback is limited by the reviewer's knowledge and attention. That's why collecting feedback from multiple sources is often more valuable than looking for a single perfect mentor.
From the outside, it looks less like you're behind and more like you're in the accumulation phase. The frustrating thing about that phase is that the effort is visible every day, but the results often arrive much later.
Keep building. Some of the work you're discounting today may end up being the reason an opportunity appears tomorrow.
Francis, allow me to give my two cents to the discussion. Many of the comments here already expressed how we feel about your accomplishments. You've done a lot already.
I should not be the one giving the "diagnostic" but it looks like you're living to satisfy other people's perspective. Is so much common with social moradia nowadays that we feel that we've done a lot if people commend us on what we did. But that's not true. Many people are too busy trying to please other people that they forget to encourage others that are earlier in the process.
My recommendation is... document your small victories more, and read them from time to time. Maybe call it your happiness box. Also, always store proof of compliments you received, and also the context arround it.
We tend to forget the small things along the way, that we wouldn't be able to accomplish greater things were it not because of them.
Also, remember that accomplishments are more like those squared equations... they start slow and compound over time. Also, knowledge is more like "stairs" than a linear function. Some day it clicks and you can do so much more. Until some day it clicks again and you can do so much more than that.
Yep.... be happy where you are. The grass is greener on the other side, specially when its fake.
That "I guide others to a treasure I cannot possess" line hit different.
Honest take: the people closest to the struggle give the best advice. Not despite it because of it.
6 months, open source, moderator, real projects. From the outside that's not nothing. Keep going.
Hey, I read this fully and I want to be honest with you: what you're describing is something I've felt too, and I don't think you're as behind as you think you are.
Here's the thing about the "I should have done this faster" feeling. It's a trap. You're comparing your timeline to an imaginary version of yourself that had everything figured out from day 1. That person doesn't exist. Nobody ships a great portfolio, networks effectively, contributes to open source, AND lands a job in 6 months from scratch. That's just not how it works, and nobody tells you that upfront.
I'm a 2nd year CS student at EPITECH Nancy. At my school, we have no traditional classes at all. Everything is project-based, you learn by doing. And you'd think that environment would push everyone to build things, contribute to open source, engage with the community... but honestly? Most of my classmates just do the school projects and stop there, that's it. They're not on dev.to, they're not contributing to repos, they're not reading articles at midnight about problems they want to solve. And EPITECH is already a school that selects for motivated people. So if that's the baseline even there, imagine what the average CS student looks like.
The real growth doesn't come from the curriculum. It comes from exactly what you're doing: reading, building personal projects, networking, contributing. That's where you actually become a developer. And you're already doing all of that. Which means, even on the days where it feels like you're going nowhere, you're ahead of probably 90% of students at your level. Not because you're perfect, but because most people simply aren't putting in this kind of effort outside of what's required.
The resume feedback thing you mentioned actually made me a little frustrated reading it, because I've seen this pattern too. People give you surface-level feedback not because they're gatekeeping on purpose, but because giving genuinely deep feedback to a stranger is hard work and most people aren't willing to do it. It's not personal. It's just shallow. The bar for "being helpful" in most communities is really low. A typo fix counts as feedback apparently 😅
Now about the "helping others more than yourself" part. I think you're framing this wrong. The fact that you can give good advice means you actually know things. The problem isn't that the knowledge isn't there, it's that applying it to yourself is 10x harder emotionally. Everyone who gives good advice struggles to follow it themselves. And that's not fraud, that's just being human as you and me.
And the AI thing... look, using AI on projects doesn't mean you're not growing. The question is whether you understand what you're building. If you do, you're growing, if you're just copy-pasting without thinking, that's worth fixing, but I doubt that's the full picture.
The loneliness part is the one that actually hit me the most reading this. Sharing something you worked hard on and getting "👍 nice" and then silence... it's genuinely demoralizing. But here's what I'd push back on: you're measuring the wrong things, 6 months of networking, a real portfolio update, open source contributions, and a moderator role on a platform? For someone graduating next year, that's actually a solid base (im not a senior, just a student like you, im giving you my opinion ^^) The job hunt is going to feel slow and random no matter what you built. That part is just brutal for everyone right now.
You're not a sacrifice at all, otherwise everyone would actually be like you and me :) You're just in the hard middle part where the work is done but the results haven't shown up yet. That gap is real and it's awful, but it's not permanent 💙
I now relate 🤔
How about having virtual coffee to talk about work possibility?
Hey Joanna. I am a contributor to Virtual Coffee and also a Writer there. It's a volunteer thing, but it's something I enjoy!