The 3 Rites of Passage Every Developer Goes Through (And Nobody Warned Me About)

I wrote a triple nested for loop that took down a grocery chain's ordering system. I broke buttons across multiple sites as a senior engineering manager at Clorox. And I've sat in rooms feeling like the dumbest engineer there — more than once.

In this episode, I break down the three uncomfortable milestones every developer hits: wanting to stop being "the junior guy," shipping code that breaks production in spectacular fashion, and being the weakest engineer in the room. No fluff, no motivational poster garbage — just honest stories from 12+ years in the industry.

AI won't save you from any of these. You just have to go through them.

If you're in one of those moments right now, this one's for you.

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