It has been months since I got hired by a small company. I suspect everyone here got laid off before I was hired because by looking at the names of the commit logs, I can see that these people are all absent from the company.

I'm already burned out with this new position as a solo dev ai/ml full-stack software engineer.

Let me share my thoughts for a moment:

I'm mostly on non-coding activities when maintaining existing code

It's hard to provide estimates. Work is done by theorizing logically meaningful sequences for a real-world business requirement, usually in unpredictable, non-linear pain to comfort velocity.

Abstractions and functions have deeper design theories, and therefore, the user story must be understood when it is theorized and written. We have to assess the previous dev's choices and why the current was picked.

Tacit knowledge - on which we create a mental list of value-assessed design choices and their theoretical contribution to the next item in the sequence. Eventually, leading their overall contribution to the real-world business model.

i.e. if the business required this line of code to be made, therefore there is a value-metric involved, and this must be carefully assessed before altering the code.

Given a threshold of comfort, only then can we possibly alter the code. Deducing and isolating the root cause and, lastly, reproducing the error.

How do you handle legacy code? How do you explain this to your new boss? This full no-scope full-stack 360 is very overwhelming; I'm already burned out while job hunting. I provide them estimates and miss by a wide margin. I don't wanna go back to the job market.