A friend of mine is the CEO of his own small business. We’re not very close friends, but we know each other well enough to have visited each other’s houses for dinner and drinks a few times.

His business is advertising a role which interests me. I have suitable skills for this role but limited experience, so it’s likely to get better candidates than I – at least on paper. It is reporting to one of his subordinates, and I have no idea how much (if any) input my friend might have into the recruiting process.

I would like to apply for this job but I don’t want to cause problems for my friend, nor to have our friendship unduly influence the recruiting process. I have not yet spoken to my friend about it because doing so would certainly result in the latter outcome.

They work in quite a small office. There is a strong chance that, were I to manage to get to the interview stage anonymously, my friend would see me when I arrived. But I also know he’s out of the office a lot.

How should I proceed? I am happy to consider that “not proceeding” may be the best course of action here, especially given that I may well not get the job.

I’ve worked in Software Development teams my entire career and I’ve come to realize the spectrum of skill-sets is utterly staggering. Over the years I’ve managed to adapt my in-office behavior to handle utterly incompetent and lazy people.

The way I handle it is to simply cap my anger and frustration, but I find myself going home and venting my anger in the form of complaining to my family and friends, but this is not healthy to me nor my family/friends.

How do I handle personal stress caused by utterly incompetent and lazy co-workers?

Optional info below:

In my younger years, I naively believed incompetent/lazy people didn’t cut it in the software industry for long. I disappointingly found that preferential treatment, nepotism, and just plain self-interest on the part of managers seem to undermine this natural filtering of idiots from the software engineering industry. Thus, it seems I must learn to deal with them.

I have endless patience for people who are junior and ask numerous questions, but I don’t seem to know how to handle stress caused by the utterly incompetent and lazy people that don’t apply themselves.

I’m 6 months into a new job that uses a technology I’ve had no experience in (but am trying really hard to learn). Often I get tasks that I have real difficulty with. I flag this: I say that I’ve never done that before and I’ll have difficulty. I get some help, but the task always takes way longer than estimated and is done pretty badly. This puts me under a huge amount of stress and is embarrassing as my tasks often get rejected at QA.

I’m all for learning but its just too much. I need to master things incrementally, not all at once. Or else do a proper course on the subject.

How can I talk to my boss about this without looking like I’m useless or backing away from challenges?