While working on the current story, one should also figure out what he has to do for the next story.
Is this good advice? I am skeptical and I would have asked about priorioties of the task given to my manager but at this point it seems pointless to reason things with him that's why asking it here.

While working on the current story, one should also figure out what he has to do for the next story - Is this good advice?

I feel like I am basically surviving in my current job, one story to another, one deadline to another. It was not like this before. Earlier I used to be very passionate about developing stuff. I don't think it's normal. 
I do get my passion by solving some leetcode questions with my friend but that's it. I don't find joy anymore in my work, it feels forced. 
I feel like I should have a life outside my job as well which I don't have right now, and since the joy is not there anymore with my job it feels just bad. 

What can I do to change it?

I feel like I am basically surviving it was not like this before how should I change it?

I have recently joined this company and I am trying to learn and I am clocking 12 hours everyday. Inspite of that I am doubting my abilities and I have manager who doesn't actually listen.. and instead of helping me navigate through this.. he is just on repeat saying I have to deliver this urgently .. and I am not picking up fast enough..

I have manager who doesn't actually listen and wants me to pick up fast

I joined this new company, and since the beginning things were little off for me. i.e.
- the manager when interviewed me I got a gut feeling that he is not a nice guy, I checked with my friend and got convinced that it's okay 
- While onboarding, I talked to couple of my team-mates and they were either disinterested or complete rude to me, I ignored it thinking I might be the most stupid and inefficient one.. 
- While getting some sessions from senior engineer, the guy always made me feel bad about myself, about how I lacked necessary knowledge and how I should just get things.. I ignored that too thinking it's just me who is not smart enough

Since last couple of days, I talked some of other engineers and found that all my team-mates are pretty toxic and, when he shared some of the past experiences, I got now convinced that it's pretty toxic environment especially for my team.
Now my question is that all this time I thought I am the problem.. but it turned out that it was not me.. I am still pretty new here and I am seriously searching for another job now, 
but what did I miss here..?
What could I have done here such that I would have known this earlier? (I know, I could have talked to the other guys earlier but I was not so sure because I had no idea how they would react to that.. I shared my concerns only when it became unavoidable)

I have to provide estimate of a story, to the point where I have to tell how much I will be spending for each sub-story.. although I have given them those with buffer since I am new, I notice a pattern with me which is that I usually need some help which I get either at the end of the day or the next day. This can influence the estimate ofcourse but for some reason my manager wants a very aggresive dates, and it's challenging for me. 

In addition to that, I am not sure what I will say in order to justify if I can't meet the deadline. This process has sucked the life out of the work for me. 
I remember giving estimates in my past companies but they were just estimates, and when I shared my side of the story people usually understood my challenges this is not happening here..

How to give estimates when facing challenge?

Up until now, (before covid basically), I used to go to different people's desk and ask for the the flow that I would have to work on, and be genuinely interested in what they had to say, in short make friends basically and it was good strategy, they were big companies too so there weren't a lot of pressure and people were eager to help me.
After covid I have joined remote-first company which is also a late startup too. I have couple of challenges here
- I don't know many people in the company, and the team is really small, and in addition to that some people whom I have asked for help turned out to be really closed.
- I ended up asking a lot of question to one person which obviously made me look like I ask a lot of questions, and not a good first impression
- on top of it, I even was discouraged to ask questions and was told to work independently from the manager.

In my defence, I am new to all these new technologies, and I have not used to the way they have written the code, that said, I have improved much. But still I have to ask questions because everytime I get stories from different modules which I have no idea about, and there's no way I would know without asking questions.. 

So this is what I was doing in current company which back fired I guess. I was pinging one guy and trying to get his point of view, if that was not enough I used to get on calls and sync up with him for the approach and I have a feeling that although he didn't say directly to me that he didn't like this approach but he might have shared this to our manager. 

Now what I am doing is, I do my work and get all the questions which I have in mind, compile them together so that it's easier to read for the other person and send it accross to the other person asking for help. This strategy is new to me but I like it because it makes me less weak I think.. also it makes me articulate as well. But since I was told that I have bugged people.. I have become scared and confused .. thinking if sometime later my manager come back to me saying you ask too many questions on slack and bug people etc.

I am basically doubting my every move. and in addition to that clocking 12+ hours everyday. it's exhausting..

Egnyte is a software company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It sells cloud-based content security, compliance, and collaboration tools for businesses. Egnyte was founded in 2007 with a focus on modernized file servers, but it has since shifted to selling tools that help users securely collaborate with coworkers and third parties.

Egnyte

Senior Software Engineer

Sorry to hear about how demotivating the process has been for you. Here are my thoughts:
- I highly recommend [this other Q&A about missed estimates and deadlines](https://link.jointaro.com/mw5w6s6hZwamkNrVA).
- *"In addition to that, I am not sure what I will say in order to justify if I can't meet the deadline."* - In these situations, it's best to tell the truth and back it up with evidence. If there's some dependency, call it out and explain why you can't cover that portion on your end. When you give details like this, it's possible your manager or tech lead will explain a path where you can handle it on your own, which is a win. Something else I do for any larger task is to provide a breakdown of all the sub-tasks and a timeline to justify my estimate.
- *"I notice a pattern with me which is that I usually need some help which I get either at the end of the day or the next day."* - Can you proactively predict this and bake this into your estimate? Generally what frustrates teams and managers is when estimates are wrong and have to be changed on the fly. An aggressive estimate that needs to be corrected to something more reasonable is worse than an estimate that is more reasonable off the bat.

Adding on to this, it seems like your manager is fundamentally unsupportive. If they're not accommodating of the above points, no matter how clear and polite you are, I highly recommend looking to switch teams, find someone else as your main point of leadership/mentorship like a supportive tech lead, or exit the company. Here's [our in-depth session about finding the best team/company for you](https://link.jointaro.com/23LQmicDMsguo5f77).

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Alex Chiou

A broader question to bring up is that the actual **planning/estimation should be not be too expensive**. Most of an engineers' time should be spent on execution, not the meta-work like giving updates or estimates. 

Are other people on the team also feeling burdened by the stress + time it takes to provide an estimate? If so, that's something to (separately) bring up with your manager, on how to improve that process.

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Rahul Pandey

Senior engineers have proven themselves to be extremely capable at shipping high-quality, complex software efficiently. This collection breaks down how they operate and how you can get to this level too.

How to give estimates when facing challenge?

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