Chances are, even if you are more successful than 99% of your friends, you will still be jealous of that 1%. This is human nature, and it's difficult/impossible to get rid of this ( I had been jealous of my successful peers, and I still get jealous even now). 

My question to you is, what do you want to do about it? 

Your friends' success is something they achieve through skill and/or talent. You can't become them because you are you.

You should take advantage of their successes by talking to them and understanding their processes - cause, heck; you probably can pick up new skills to level yourself up and if they are close friends/families; they wouldn't mind spending time and resources to help you to become more successful.

I am doing this myself, and my jealousy and inferiority complex have been a good motivator to do better and learn from others so I can be a better person now than I was yesterday, as Ikki has also mentioned.

Successful people surround themselves with more successful people because

> You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

The more successful people around you, the better chance you are going to be successful, in my opinion. :D

Mid-Level Software Engineer at Workday

Junghwan Choi

As a person who underwent a similar situation where I had personal issues that affected my work performance, I just took a leap of faith. I did a personal leave - with blessings from my manager. 

Personal affairs that affect your performance are not easy to overcome and can be a death spiral where you're gonna get more and more stressed. Why balance when you can focus on the problem and solve it? \
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Is your personal emergency short-term or long-term? If it is long-term, you can do some therapy or recharge yourself by making your work task more fun and engaging by giving it a twist - make it a game with rewards, etc.

if it is short-term, definitely take a break cause you'd be a better teammate when you come back refreshed rather than slowly weigh the team down because they have to help you; this will also affect your performance review.

Just because app is built, doesn't mean there are holes to patch or make new improvements. I think every engineer is expected to keep their eyes open for opportunities and having the initiative to find and analyze bugs/enhancements will definitely go a long way to help you get promoted/grow. \
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Also growing can mean many different things - professionally or within your field or within the company. 

I think you should determine what you'd like to do in 5 years and work towards that instead of feeling the need to beg for larger/visible projects so you will "feel" like growing instead of actually growing.

That's really awesome, envy your position. But I think just because you and others say you need to get promoted doesn't necessarily mean that the manager is ready to pitch to the upper management to promote you. In the end, they are getting more bang for the buck. From what you describe, you have all the skills and checked off what it takes to move up; I think you should just be patient and form paper trails in the form of emails or Slack threads to show your expertise so that the manager has all of the necessary evidence to provide to the management for that promotion. \
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if you keep bothering the manager, he may not be too enthusiastic as we are all humans and receiving pressure doesn't feel good mentally.

That's a great question!\
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Certification is a great alternative to doing a side project, especially if it is in the direction that you'd like to progress your career in. i.e., if you are doing an AWS Solutions Architect, then I am assuming you have an interest in DevOps and how deployment to the cloud works. This also applies to side projects as well I think.

Think of it this way:

**Certification** is a license that a well-known company says you're competent at - a higher certification level means higher competency and more trust that you know at least X amount of information to do the job

**Side project** is showing that you know by providing an example **PRODUCTION level code**. It shows your competency through code and documentation and proof that you can do X amount.

I think both complement each other but Side projects have more to show because you're able to show your 100% while certification gives you a paper saying you completed minimum required training and level testing. \
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Does this makes sense?

 

**Fails:**

- My savings :( - I have to rely on my RSU now to pay back some payments
- Not following up on my goals to write more and learn more

**Wins:**

- Wrote my first linkedin article! (Check out if you're curious: <https://www.linkedin.com/posts/choitom_writing-careerbreak-developer-activity-7154541394261364736-mm-d?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop>)
- Taking care of my daughter during my paternity leave

After getting a foothold in the industry, engineers become mid-level. Most engineers stay at this level for quite a while as they navigate the senior engineer promotion (L4 -> L5 by FAANG leveling), which generally requires becoming a tech lead.