Ask HN: Why am I underperforming?
The concern my managers have is that I am very productive when I have a free hand but seem to progress slowly when I have to interact and integrate with the rest of the team(who I get along well with).
For example, in the React project we recently began I was quite quick in getting the UI components built and semi functional, progress was fast and noticeable(I was easily the highest performer). The same was true when we did a short practice React project prior to starting this one.
Now that we have formalised a develop branch, each feature begins as a ticket(pre-decided and handed down), features are then worked on as a branch and must be rebased before being merged. Only our CTO has merge abilities and he reviews all tickets before doing so.
It can take days to get branches merged as the CTO is quite busy and codes himself (on a different project)as well as other non-coding CTO tasks, if comments are made they must be resolved or addressed before moving ahead. Nothing gets accepted without tests (actions, reducers, ui components, integration tests etc.) and none of this code is currently live.
I do move along a lot faster when I'm not attempting to get features merged one ticket at a time, waiting for feedback, and using test driven development etc. although my code is not unreliable or brittle.
I got the impression that merely having comments made on my pull requests was not a good thing (a sign that I wasn't doing things right). And when my approach to solving an issue is different from the CTO's it's considered wrong.
I feel that there is something wrong, not simply with my performance but I can't put words to it.