Hard stop.
How often can a $10 purchase have such a drastic effect on your mentality and life for the better?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/189200528X
(Fear not, I do not personally profit off this link in any way, <3, only want the best for you bb)
How do you get things done in a larger organization? At AWS it's solved by having APIs and documentation for everything. This leads to a janky UI, a lot of redundancy in their systems, and a pretty bad work environment from what I hear.
In a lot of technical organizations, this problem is solved instead informally through relationships between members of the organization. You want to get something done outside of your constrained contexts? You'll probably need some relationships. Getting a lot of cards done is great, but if you're pushing too hard all the time you're going to sour those relationships.
What I'm saying boils down to this: being a developer in a large organization is about 1-3 parts coding to 7-9 parts communication and relationships. Further, if you spend time communicating you can often realize that the feature you're implementing was already implemented two years ago and there's just a regression that's caused the line of code to no longer be executed.
You can say fuck it to the communications with your peers if you'd like. However, keep in mind that most of your jobs as you become senior are going to come from referrals from former colleagues. Your boss right now isn't going to help you get your next job–the people sitting around you might.
Consider reading [non-violent communication](https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...).
It makes you realize that everything is not about you (nothing actually is), and shows how you can use empathy to stop taking things personally but really understand what people are trying to say when they're talking to you.
For context: I grew up Mormon, which I consider "cult-lite mainstream" on the cult<->religion spectrum. Having gone through that and left the church, I've spent some time deconstructing what influenced me to think the way I did as a believing member.
The best advice I can give is (a) make friends with people who are inside information bubbles [1], (b) people are motivated primarily by feelings and needs [2] despite what they say, (c) people often cover what they're really feeling with political, philosophical, and ideological language, which is often very difficult to decrypt to outsiders, and leads to significant misunderstandings, which usually serves to further separate and prevent friendship from happening, which is what's needed in the first place.
[1] see Daryl Davis (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-man-daryl-davis-befrien...)
[2] see Nonviolent Communication, a book that I place in the "top 3" most influential books in my life (https://amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Ch...)
Nonviolent Communication.
I think it was linked on HN where it caught my attention. This book teaches a great way to communicate, but for me, it has also helped me think about my feelings and how I can communicate those feelings better. I feel more in touch with my feelings and more empathetic as a direct result from following what the book is teaching.
On the communication side, it has helped me put more structure around tough conversations, personally and professionally. It has helped me understand others more and vice versa. It's also helped me see toxic traits in others. Such as people who aren't interested in understanding or people who struggle to understand their own emotions.
https://www.amazon.com/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Lif...
a cursory search online already makes this look absolutely awesome! I'm totally adding this to my repertoire
honestly, i work in public education and I feel like these kinds of negotiating and communication skills could easily be a doctoral dissertation