I am an application specialist working for a small startup from the West Coast in the US. I am working remotely from the UK.
In my team we all code and work with customers, and I think I was hired primarily for being personable and well liked by all the 16 people who interviewed me.
Now I am the only technical person my company has in EMEA. I do a bit of everything, and my week is split between coding, supporting customers remotely or on site, attending events and workshops. I am independent 90% of the time, and if I don't talk to customers I might spend the day in isolation.
After a few months into the job, I got to the point where I am terrified I could lose it at any time. Reasons include:
Most of my colleagues are much better coders than me. I rarely hear from them, and I am afraid I could be seen as the black sheep of the team.
I rarely get feedback from my line manager in the US. I mainly work with a 'dotted line' manager based in Europe. He is a Sales person and he's very positive about my interactions with customers; but in general, I don't have ways of measuring how well I am doing. If customers or colleagues complain behind my back, I have no way of knowing; and I am afraid of asking for help. My manager is very busy and I am also afraid of asking too much support.
They gave me an above-average salary (senior dev, even if I am not); this makes it fairly easy for the company to find a better, cheaper coder. Now we are hiring some former customer, I like her a lot, she's great, but I am afraid somebody will ask the question 'do we really need them both'?
The culture is nice, but in terms of onboarding it's largely based on 'learn everything by yourself'. I feel I am not making as much progress as I should, and I am afraid I will be let go with my manager saying 'after all these months I expected you to know how to do this'.
My question is: how can I be more productive, getting to a point where I am no longer afraid of losing my job?