Ask HN: What ways have worked for you to overcome 'imposter syndrome'?

What really helped me was 360 anonymous peer reviews. In our case, you picked a sample of folks across teams and functions that you've worked with and ask for a review. They put down strengths and areas of opportunity for growth. Seeing grouped text for my strengths and weaknesses was really enlightening. I could agree with points of needed growth in many cases and the positive section showed that folks who work with me appreciate me and value my knowledge. Humbling all around.

These were a very important step for overcoming a large part of my imposter syndrome. Critical. Later, mentoring junior devs, representing my team in meetings, conducting interviews, doing deeper research into my domains and spreading that knowledge have all helped to reduce my feeling of being an imposter. Knowing that it is ok to not know everything, to ask questions and for help, and to strive to close those gaps. But all this, for me, paled in comparison to the 360 reviews.

This is rather good advice. To add to that I would recommend reading Feeling good by David burns. It has a lot of exercises, especially the Vertical Arrow technique that can really help OP.

Change your mindset?

If not you, then who? If there were someone better positioned for the role in which you feel an imposter, then you wouldn't be there. There probably are people who are smarter than you are who _could_ take the role. But they're doing something else. Why? Probably because they are actually better suited for some other challenge. And why bother with a role which isn't a challenge? It's better to vacate and allow someone who will actually learn something rather than tread the same tired ground. If we don't move, we die.

How do you know that you aren't well suited? If you feel you aren't suited for the role then your sense of value is probably out of whack. That's probably because you aren't seeing the game for how it really is. And that's fine because we all start out there.

Org charts don't tell you who the actual influencers are within the org. An org chart might tell you that Bob is the person to go to for making decisions. But people who work there know that Bill is the person you go to for really getting things done (maybe Bob is a lame duck, incompetent or just doesn't care).

Written rules create structures which have solid walls but also holes, leaks, cracks and open spaces. We tend to focus on the physical structure. But just as important is the unintended uses of that structure. The rules are important for what they say, but also important is what they _don't_ say.

Just the same, we're probably not understanding our value. We are looking at the wrong targets. By the time we do figure out the game, we'll likely move on and let some other imposter take our place.

That's good. Better to keep us on our toes. I would rather be on a plane flown by a tense inexperienced crew than a lethargic overconfident crew. While we're on the subject, there has been a history of plane crashes which could have been avoided if the inexperienced crew members were more vocal in pointing out problems to their superiors. They kept quiet because they suffered from imposter syndrome.

Just be helpful. You wouldn't be there if someone didn't think you could help. If there are smarter people working with you, then it's probably the people who hired you. Trust their decision to hire you.

So here's an interesting thought:

A lot of people on HN grew up in wealthier families, and perhaps never had to work a manual labor job. If the average worker lifts 100 boxes per day, you just have to lift 100 boxes and you know you are doing the work correctly. You deserve to be there.

In manual labor, you never have imposter syndrome if you are doing the work right. Why? It's extremely easy to mentally calculate your benefit to the company and compare it to your fellow workers.

After a day of doing manual work, you always feel refreshed and come home satisfied.

Software on the other hand is much more conceptual, and it is much harder to determine if your input is up to par.

To fix this, you need to figure out goals and milestones with your manager that you can work to reach and exceed - ask your manager what you can do to be in the top 25% of employees, and get a concrete list of features/bugs/etc. on a timeline from your manager for you to complete.

One thing to keep in mind is you should not compare yourself to what Mark Zuckerberg is right now. You're at the beginning of a path and he is much further along. When you boil down Facebook to what it was originally when he shipped it was a rather good idea, written as a crud app in php, and looked like this:

https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_800_800/AAEAAQAAAAA...

Ship, learn, iterate.