bottombutton

After four years, I left my first team in March to join a new team at the same company. Now it's performance review season, so my old manager forwarded some notes to my current manager about my prior work. Basically it said that I had solid results, wrote some really stable code, "championed" testing and testability for the team, and that people liked working with me. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently it was a lengthy essay.

But he also added that the one thing that had been keeping me from moving from SDE I to SDE II was my velocity at turning out deliverables. I'm basically the last one of my peers who hasn't made the jump, and that was the ongoing reason from my old manager. I'm getting passed by newer engineers pretty regularly now, and I've been at my current level for about three years.

In the last couple weeks since my new manager got that letter, she's seemed really concerned about my velocity. It wasn't until this Friday that she had read anything about it. Yet in the same time span, the new-guy-on-a-new-team feeling was pretty much gone, and productivity was up. I got put on a pretty high-visibility, high-impact feature for this month. Before, I think my manager saw me as ready. Now I think she sees me as a liability.

I was starting to get worried that I'd never meet this speed expectation at my old job; but now I'm extra nervous that if I slip on any deadline even a little bit, I'll seal this reputation with my new team and make it my label from here on out. The Slow Guy. Sure he's nice, and he writes maintainable, reliable code... but if we need it done soon, might as well give it to an intern!

Q: Did anyone else shake a reputation for being slow? Is there any hope I can do to put this velocity thing to rest and catch up with my peers? Or am I just a B engineer who peaked right out of college?

PS: I'm getting married next month. Will I have to choose between my marriage and permanent 12 hour days?