The Clockwork Mind
...armed with the knowledge you get by simply paying attention...

Just one of those days

Some days you attend a meeting that shakes your faith in understanding the problem space in which you work, enough so it calls into question grander plans you’ve been scheming about to improve everyone’s experiences. I’ve had it happen more often in places where everyone’s got a higher degree than I do in a domain that’s orthogonal to what I think about every day.

Breathe, and remember you’ve been around for a while. Even if you’re in a little over your head right now, you’ve been doing this successfully and you’ll figure out what you need.

Also, for any kind of developer working with domain experts, there’s always going to be a certain code monkey aspect to the work. At its most basic level, a lot of this work is “What fields do you need?” Start small, and work up.

Finally, remember everything else you’ve been doing, because one thing we’re really good at is discounting the kinds of things we do successfully every day.