The Safety of What You Know

In the last month, I've been transitioning to work on a new (to me) project at work as the work load for the project I've been working on has been slowing. This last month has in some cases made me feel like I changed jobs with the completely different code base and project. It's made me think about how disruptive it sometimes feels and how the familiar can feel so safe.

I'm coming up on 5 years working at WebstaurantStore. I'm happy at the job, I work with a good team and am enjoying the work. Since I started, I've pretty much exclusively worked on the same project the entire time. There were some brief branching off to help on other projects from time to time, but I've probably spent 95+% time on one project.

I've gotten good at knowing the project, it's quirks, as well as all the business requirements. It's allowed me to sort of predict what people might be looking for when new features or enhancements are discussed. I know how most of the code is organized and how it works. It feels safe.

Now that I've moved on to a new project, that safety has sort of been pulled out from underneath me. I'm learning a brand new code base, a new organizational structure, new terminology, new business requirements, and new everything else that goes along with a project. It's caused some of the work I've done on it to take longer than it might take someone more familiar. In some cases it kind of feels like I'm a junior dev again.

Now I have no doubt I'll pick things up quickly enough. I consider myself to be a competent developer and will no doubt learn how to find things in the code and how it all pieces together. It's written in React with a C#/.NET backend. Both languages I've used extensively so it's one less thing I have to worry about and learn.

This new challenge has just made me think about how much the familiar is sometimes equated with a safety blanket. We know something, so we feel safe. Sometimes even at the cost of better opportunities or challenges. I knew the code base of the previous project so I felt safe in that I knew I could handle any issues that arose. With the new code base, I don't have that safety net and it's kind of scary. Scary isn't always bad though, and sometimes it's good to jump in head-first, grab the bull by its horns so to speak. Dive in and learn something new and better improve your skills whether you're a developer like me or any other profession or trade.