How To Give Yourself Honest Feedback As a Developer

Holding yourself accountable is the best way to learn

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

We’re all creatures influenced by external validation or feedback. Ever since we were kids, our parents gave us feedback by praising or reprimanding us for the work we did. Our teachers rated us on exams and asked us questions. Now, our society rates us by the work that we do, the positions we hold, and the salary we make. In this world, there’s even now a happiness index to rate countries based on the happiness of their citizens.

Are we going overboard with external validation? I would say yes. The best judge of yourself is your “objective” self. The problem occurs when you can’t be your “objective” self. This is why most people depend on external validation for feedback of their work and their life.

“Be honest with yourself. The world is not honest with you. The world loves hypocrisy. When you are honest with yourself you find the road to inner peace.” — Paramahansa Yogananda

I didn’t realize the necessity of having my “objective” self critiquing my work until an incident happened at work. For three years, I’d had stellar performance reviews. I always had only two points of improvement. This allowed me to progress through the ranks of the team until promotion time came around. Then, suddenly, there were many points of improvement in my performance review.

You see, my managers wanted me to take on more work, and so they gave me a good performance review to give me validation and motivation. Then, when they had to make good on their promise of promotion, they didn’t want to promote me that early in my career since I was still too young. They measured me against a taller yardstick, and I came up short.

This is how the world can be dishonest with you. The world is full of people with many agendas. Every person’s agenda may not align with yours. If their agenda doesn’t align with yours, they’ll measure you against their yardstick.

Depending on the yardstick that they measure you against, you’ll either come out short or tall.

Everyone will react to the feedback with different emotions. We want to improve ourselves daily. We want to live our best lives.

Why allow others to tamper with your emotions?

People teach mindfulness as if you can suddenly hold yourself back from reacting to other people’s feedbacks if you just breathe.

The truth is that most of us can’t just breath our way out of negative criticism.

You need more.

You need a system of giving yourself honest feedback so that you can improve on yourself in your own time and in your way.

You can incorporate other people’s feedback. But, that’s your choice. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

You’re the best judge of your situation, what’s important to you, and where you want to go.