Edit : I appreciate all the PoVs and I will reply to everyone. This is important to me. Just going to go rest a bit and I'll be back.
Edit : Leaving the self-insulting language in, but yeah.. Point taken, I should stop being so mean to myself. And to add another FYI, I've been on this codebase for about 3 months, which I probably should have mentioned.
I have no idea what is wrong with me. I get tasks, I work on them, they NEVER seem to close. Meanwhile everyone around me is left and right solving their issues. I reach out for a second opinion because I must just be stupid, and every time I reach out the person is never able to assist in any meaningful way.
It's like my tasks always have blockers that everyone around me seems perplexed by, I get a lot of, "Wow, that's crazy," or, "Yeah your job does seem to have a lot of unusual blockers."
I'm at the point where I'm in a daily meeting where I explain what I'm working on to a senior dev because obviously they noticed I'm a person on the team with sometimes zero points in a whole month. It's so discouraging to have to go to a daily meeting because apparently I'm stupid? The thing is, when I explain what I'm blocked by, every person has said, "Oh weird, this seems like a really confusing task." Or, "Damn I've never seen anything like that."
So obviously I look at other peoples' tasks.. what are they working on? And their tasks are SO simple and straightforward, yet I've NEVER had a task like that, all my tasks were opened years ago, remained open for months or years, then were assigned to me. And they're all fucky. Wth.
Tbh I'm running out of things to write because I don't want to justify it, because I feel like I should be doing better. What the hell is wrong with me?
I have wanted to change jobs for close to two years now.. but you've all interacted with recruiters.. they never help, and job search is impossible as a person with anxiety and possibly autism?
I love coding, I hate my coding environment.. Anyone else ever have this type of issue in programming?
Who is your PM or senior assigning the tasks? You need to take this up with them -- everyone always needs a couple of quick hits in their back pocket. When you stall out grinding on task after impossible task it kills your motivation and productivity, and that's your boss's job to fix.
I'm a contractor, so the senior devs on the team dig through the backlog and hand out tasks from that usually. They don't seem like very important tasks, just usually have been open for a long time, current main tasks have been open two years and three years respectively before assigned to me.
I see two possible reasons for your situation. One is that the company is turning to contractors to fill in gaps in their knowledge/experience, which is why everyone else has no clue how to tackle these tasks and why they get assigned the easy ones.
The other possibility is that the senior devs are gaming the metrics, letting the employees knock out easy tasks while the contractor is stuck with untangling the knots of the more intractable tasks.
This sounds like the main problem. They’re assigning you tasks that no one else wants to do or that aren’t high priority. That means the task is difficult or unpleasant in some way, or they don’t actually care that much about it and won’t prioritize anyone else to help resolve your blockers.
It may be difficult, but I think you should have a conversation with whoever you report to about what their expectations are and how they expect blockers to be resolved if no one prioritizes your tasks. You may need to approach this less defensively and make it clear that clearing these blockers is not your responsibility. If the person you report to isn’t a team lead/manager then I would escalate the problem to a manager and make it clear you’re not getting the resources you need to do your work.
I sometimes do things (cleanup, refacs) off-ticket / not part of the ticket. It can be a light alternative when other stuff is complicated and demotivating. Depending on your environment and team/contract setup, simply doing it could be more difficult though.
If it serves your satisfaction and productivity, and is good for the product, then it's not wasted. Not everything has to be - or even can be - preplanned.