Facing Anxiety Head-On

Last month, I spectacularly bombed an interview at a company I wanted to join due to lack of basic skills. Fortunately, right after the interview I organized all the questions and problems I couldn’t answer or solve on GitHub, so I knew exactly what to study. I spent a month obsessively digging into computer science fundamentals.

I pulled out dust-covered textbooks from college that I hadn’t opened since my student days and started reading them thoroughly, scraping together JavaScript fundamentals through relentless Googling. Actually, just looking at the topics of posts I’ve written reveals what I studied over the past month.

Compared to the month I spent in Prague when I wrote 5 essay posts and 1 technical post, all my posts over the recent month have been technical posts. And all on foundational topics — heaps, JS prototypes, solving algorithm problems with math, recent TCP deep dives…

After spending a month studying computer science fundamentals like crazy, this morning I opened my IDE to build a technical challenge for another company’s interview, and this thought suddenly struck me:

When was the last time I actually built something?

Over the past month, I hadn’t developed any applications. I became a developer because I loved building things so much, yet I’d spent a whole month not building anything.

My past month was a continuous series of studying fundamentals, a review period examining things I’d missed until now. But I don’t think I enjoyed studying. No, actually it’s more accurate to say I had no intention of enjoying the studying.

As my thoughts reached this point, I suddenly felt disillusionment and decided to stop studying briefly and take time to reflect on myself.

I Was Anxious

Over the past month, I was being chased by reality. The mindset I’d resolved in Prague — “live with leisure” — disappeared completely a few weeks after arriving in Seoul.

Actually, the fundamental cause of this uncomfortable emotion is anxiety. This anxiety turned my daily life black and white. When meeting friends, the moments were enjoyable, but whenever there was a gap, thoughts appeared that I should hurry home and immediately open books and laptop to study.

Just looking at it, this isn’t a healthy mental state. Sure, I pretend otherwise on the outside, but inside I’m rotting. So I stopped studying briefly and started thinking about exactly what was making me so anxious and chased.

Of course, a big reason is that after bombing an interview for the first time in a while, I faced my weaknesses raw. But feeling this anxious just because of this seemed a bit strange. Honestly, this wasn’t my first or second time bombing interviews.

After thinking deeply for about a day, several anxiety factors became organized. After that, I listed these factors and started examining them one by one.

The Gap Between Reality and Ideals

When I was young, the saying from parents and adults I understood least was “you can’t live doing only what you want to do.” (Of course, this is always followed by “study”)

As time passed, after returning from military service and returning to college, I gradually came to understand what those adults meant. Since not everything in the world goes my way, it was a teaching to let go of my heart to some degree.

Even on days I desperately didn’t want to study, I had to pull all-nighters studying for scholarships. I didn’t want to go to the military, but due to national defense duty I rolled around for 23 months. After these experiences, I thought “ah, so that’s what they meant.”

Still, I didn’t want to live my whole life forcing myself to do unwanted work just for money, so for my life’s happiness I set “work I want to do” as my highest priority. Fortunately, by becoming a developer, I could live a life of perfect alignment — securing a place as a member of society, stable income as an office worker, and work I could enjoy doing.

But contrary to my thought that working as a developer would only bring happiness, life as a developer was fierce. Competition was no longer for test rankings or scholarships — real competition for survival had begun.

Though problems like gender discrimination and educational discrimination still exist, fundamentally 2019 Korea is a society trying to give everyone equal opportunity. Such opportunities can usually be grabbed through individual ability or skills.

Among these, developers — representative professionals in the IT industry — are particularly skill-focused, truly living by pure ability. To avoid becoming obsolete, you must constantly study, keeping up with rapidly changing tech trends and paradigms. That’s why developers share self-deprecating jokes that they must keep studying until they open a chicken restaurant.

Still, studying programming itself was so fun and good for me. I chose work I wanted to do anyway, and the more I studied, the better structure and performance my applications could have.

But as mentioned earlier, over the recent month studying computer science fundamentals, I wasn’t purely enjoying it.

Actually, what puzzled me most about not enjoying this studying was that the process of studying fundamentals was an experience I’d already gone through in college, yet the emotions I felt then versus now are so different. Back then, studying the same content felt fascinating and extremely fun.

So why were these topics that were so fun in college not fun anymore now?

The reason is study motivation. As I mentioned once in the How Developers Survive Through Study post, actually, studying requires healthy motivation more than topic difficulty.

But currently I’m not voluntarily studying computer science fundamentals — I’m being pushed by the external situation of job hunting to study. To put it more simply, I’m not studying topics I want according to need — I’m forcing myself to study things I don’t currently want to do because of external circumstances.

Like when mom tells you to study now, you suddenly don't want to even though you'd study later anyway

Actually, when choosing study topics, I should feel excited thinking “how will studying this make me better?” But over the recent month, I chose topics thinking “will they ask this in interviews?” — of course it wouldn’t be fun.

Still, just like adults said you can’t live doing only what you want, it’s also clearly true that I need to fill my gaps to pass interviews.

I chose the developer profession because I wanted to work enjoyably, but I was starting to feel dissonance and discomfort about this situation where I’m studying unenjoyably due to realistic circumstances.

Disappointment in Myself

Actually, until now I’d chosen companies without much thought. I just needed to work enjoyably — where I worked didn’t seem that important.

Choosing workplaces that way naturally led me to mostly work at small-scale startups where I could receive more authority and do more work myself.

But recently, many developer friends advised me to “experience small places and big places too.” Meaning to experience more variety and grow. For that reason, this time I’m targeting places slightly larger than workplaces I’ve worked at until now.

But big companies have hiring processes and desired talent profiles somewhat different from the scale of companies I’ve worked at until now.

Small-scale startups literally need developers who can work right now like one-person armies. With mountains of products to build but always scarce resources, each person has no choice but to play many roles. Plus, with scarce resources, there’s often relatively less leisure for systematically educating someone or self-learning compared to big companies.

In contrast, big companies aren’t urgently seeking developers who can work immediately upon joining. Sure, any company would like more developer resources if possible, so they keep hiring. But compared to small-scale startups, they’re probably not struggling desperately needing people who can work right now.

Plus, since system scale can also increase proportionally to development team scale, systems at companies already holding many developers are often vast in size and complex in structure.

For these reasons, the bigger the scale, the more they focus on “do you really properly understand this?” rather than asking if you’re familiar with a specific framework. That’s why they ask deeply about computer science or language fundamentals.

I naturally knew these facts, but honestly until my first interview after returning to Korea, I wasn’t particularly worried. My mindset was probably just “I’ll work there if I pass, otherwise I’ll go somewhere else.” Actually, right after failing my first interview, my mental state wasn’t impacted — no anxiety or anything.

Still, since I failed the interview, I could know what I currently lack, and naturally I wanted to complement this part. But strangely, the more I studied, the more my heart started feeling unsettled.

I recently saw a meme on SNS about psychological changes in guys after breaking up with girlfriends. Right after breaking up, they feel relieved and free, but as time passes longing grows and they regret. Kind of that feeling.

The more I studied, the more situations where I couldn’t properly answer in the interview kept surfacing, and belated shame and regret rushed in. Simultaneously, disappointment in myself started appearing.

Honestly speaking, I thought I knew about computer science reasonably well. I’d already learned this content once in school, and I’d accumulated knowledge analyzing various things. But reality was different.

Once I entered the interview room and heard questions like “explain GC,” my mind went blank. Whenever hearing such questions, countless concepts and diagrams simultaneously surfaced in my head, but I couldn’t organize them into words and speak. In other words, I didn’t properly understand.

After experiencing this a few times, I realized the knowledge I thought I knew actually wasn’t properly understood. Thoughts crept in that maybe I’d been studying uselessly all along, anxiety that I might be falling behind other developers.

Being Recognized Feels Burdensome

Ironically, this very blog I’m writing on now is also one factor in my anxiety. More precisely, it’s a factor that lit fire to my unstable psychological state and amplified anxiety.

Until now, I’ve shared posts through some promotion to share my knowledge and thoughts with others. As a result, people who enjoyed reading my posts started saying things like “I enjoyed reading your post” or “thanks for sharing good information.” Until then, I just felt good that my knowledge could help others.

But recently, after experiencing people recognizing me offline a few times, some burden started creeping in. (I really never imagined this would happen)

This emotion amplifies most when interviewers say “I regularly read your blog” — the embarrassment and burden then are indescribable. It’s a magic phrase that makes me suddenly tense even when I wasn’t tense before.

I don’t mean being recognized itself feels burdensome. The problem is that as people started recognizing me, I gradually started caring about others’ gazes.

Actually, I write blog posts to share my knowledge with others, but fundamentally the bigger purpose is organizing what I studied. Through the process of organizing my knowledge in writing, I expect effects of increasing study efficiency and lasting longer in memory.

But unless I have tremendous memory, no matter how many times I study content, if I don’t actually use that knowledge and long time passes, it naturally gets forgotten from memory. Ultimately, regardless of what, study’s basics are repetitive learning. Just writing one post doesn’t make that knowledge wholly mine.

For that reason, I keep reading posts I wrote in the past, ruminating.

But from the reader’s perspective, they might think the person who wrote the post completely understands this knowledge. Even I, when reading other developers’ blog posts, vaguely equated people who write good blog posts with people with good skills. Because I thought they write so well precisely because they know this content inside-out.

But writing well and organizing well doesn’t mean my programming skills are good. My actual ability might not be as satisfying as what readers think and expect.

The burden I feel originated from these situations. The moment someone says “Evan, about that content you organized back then~,” I think “what if I can’t answer this?” Especially if that person is an interviewer.

Also, occasionally people say excessive things like “master” or “respect.” But I’m neither a master nor someone worthy of respect — just a tiny 4-year developer. So while grateful, I felt some burden.

So whenever experiencing these situations, these thoughts started appearing:

• My actual skill is only about 3, but what if people think my skill is 6 or 7?
• What if I can’t properly answer questions about posts I wrote?
• I’m not someone worthy of respect or a master… do I deserve hearing these words…?

For that reason, at some point, obsessive thinking that I must create a shell of “me as people think” started creeping in. Amidst all this, bombing the interview amplified this anxiety together.

Ultimately It’s a Mindset Problem

Actually, these anxious feelings are feelings that can naturally arise in people. But since these emotions are vague feelings like “I’m anxious,” we don’t usually think clearly to the point of “I’m anxious because of what exactly.”

But if you can’t clearly identify why you’re anxious, you can’t solve that problem. So I listed out anxiety’s causes and faced these problems head-on.

While organizing and listing anxiety factors’ causes, I naturally went through a process of asking and answering myself about these problems, defining my own solutions.

Get Clear Motivation

As mentioned, the reason I felt studying computer science fundamentals was unenjoyable is the mindset of having to do it even if I don’t want to. Of course, realistically speaking, that’s not wrong. I need to complement my weaknesses to pass interviews.

But if I’m not studying just this once, this kind of motivation is no good. Motivation by external pressure can drive yourself and grow quickly for a moment, but it actually becomes an obstacle to continuous growth.

Actually, thinking fundamentally, the content I studied as a college student versus now isn’t hugely different. But the reason why fundamental study was fun then but not now lies exactly here.

Back then, the fact that I could grow by studying this became motivation. But now, the fact that I must pass interviews became motivation. So even studying the same thing, I couldn’t help receiving quite different feelings.

So I’m trying to return to my initial mindset and focus on growth itself. Though the start of intense fundamental study might have been because of interviews, ultimately it’s also a good opportunity for me to grow.

Interviews Are Just Interviews

Actually, grasping a person’s capabilities wholly during just one or two hours of short interview time is itself extremely difficult.

That’s why most companies divide interview stages like 1st technical, 2nd executive to evaluate. But even doing this, since computer science as a field is too broad, truly grasping all that person’s strengths and weaknesses is nearly impossible.

But neither companies nor job seekers can stick together for days just for one interview, so they try to evaluate job seekers through methods or questions that can objectively and efficiently assess skills in the shortest time possible.

Naturally companies also know this fact, so interviewers prepare somewhat objective questions either on their own or according to company guidelines. But how much these questions can extract job seekers’ strengths or weaknesses — nobody knows.

In other words, interview evaluation results inevitably carry some one-sidedness.

But during the interview process, when job seekers can’t answer questions interviewers asked, the fact that those questions did pierce job seekers’ weaknesses is of course true. That’s why I organized and studied content I couldn’t answer.

But having weaknesses doesn’t mean being incompetent and terrible. Weaknesses can be complemented. Interviews aren’t like college entrance exams taken only once per year, so just try again at the next opportunity.

Borrowing my vocal teacher’s words, rather you should be grateful you can discover your weaknesses through such opportunities. Without even these opportunities, it would actually be harder to grow.

Some might think this is just mental victory, but only by maintaining healthy mindset can you make continuous attempts. So I think this kind of mental care helps personal growth and development.

What’s important isn’t failing interviews, but discovering your weaknesses through interviews and securing driving force for continuous study through proper motivation.

Just Keep Writing Blog Consistently

I’m not someone who gives myself generous evaluations to begin with. This is just my inherent personality, so even as a human being, not just as a developer. So I couldn’t accept well the words people who read my posts gave as praise and encouragement. (I’m the type who doesn’t accept compliments well)

Actually, I reached conclusions thinking alone about the two previous cases, but I haven’t reached a clear conclusion just for this problem yet. I did hear advice to just listen and let it pass since everyone means well with no big meaning, but given my personality that’s not easy either.

But will I stop writing blogs then? That’s not it either. Blog post writing has study and sharing purposes, but before that it’s also my hobby. So at first I thought about writing posts consistently but not promoting them. But I concluded it’s better to just keep doing what I’ve been doing until a clear conclusion emerges.

Actually, this is burden I feel myself. Besides this, blog post writing has been beneficial for me if anything — there’s nothing that would be harmful. So rather than various thoughts, I’m trying to focus just on the act of writing itself. That’s why even now I’m writing without thinking much.

And I think anxious feelings arising from these reasons will naturally blur once I study consistently, gradually grow, and gain much confidence. This process is also me growing and a good opportunity to leave my comfort zone, so I think I should face it head-on and overcome it.

For now, I think the best I can do is just be grateful that people are interested in and watching over me while consistently scribbling writing.

Wrapping Up

This post was, in a sense, writing for myself rather than others — something I haven’t done in truly a long while. Organizing thoughts while writing seems to somewhat subside my anxious heart.

I think not just me, but others in similar situations probably feel similar emotions. Sure, unemployed life doing what you want without working is certainly comfortable, but accompanying burden and anxiety naturally follow.

Plus, anxiety arising in this state easily amplifies with just trivial daily frustrations, making such mental management even more important.

Still, through this process of organizing thoughts in writing, I could clearly know why I feel anxious and define my own solutions accordingly. Isn’t this exactly writing’s charm?

Of course, I won’t completely shake it off. As a human, worrying about uncertain futures and feeling anxious emotions is natural.

But compared to vaguely trembling in anxiety, being chased while forcing unwanted study or writing posts with burden, it’s self-evident that having a much healthier mindset means clearly recognizing what direction I can grow toward through this study, and having faith that my written posts can positively influence others.

Failing interviews is disappointing, but lacking skills can be filled through study. Since I’m unemployed anyway, I have plenty of time to study. Actually, this time will also become missed time once I become an office worker again someday, so I’m trying to enjoy it as comfortably as possible.

Having the hobby of writing that can calm anxious feelings might be happiness itself in a way.