Highlights Key mistakes I have made in my career

<aside> 💡 “Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.” ~ Salvador Dali

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Mistakes as a Leader

As a Leader/Manager, I have made the following mistakes:

• Assuming that if I didn't share feedback on a regular basis, people will assume that everything is fine. They didn't. I made the mistake of thinking that feedback is to be given only when things go wrong
• Assuming that people can see through my decisions and the rationale behind them. They couldn't
• Assuming that if I sugarcoat what I didn't like about their way of working, they will feel less hurt. They were left confused. I mistook being nice as being helpful. Being clear and direct is more important than being nice
• I assumed just because someone is good at their work, they will become good managers. They necessarily don't

Mistakes as a Developer

As a software engineer, I have made the following mistakes:

• Abstracting too much to remove duplication without understanding that it is to better than the wrong abstraction
• To impress seniors I was giving hurried estimations without thinking about edge cases, Bad Estimation destroys Quality even before a single line of code is written
• Using shiny, untested technology without understanding that any technology that has withstood the test of time has to be given weightage
• Accidentally committed all changes to the master branch (Git is damn hard for a fresher!)