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Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

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Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#161

Post by henriquemaia »

From my experience, if you become too entangled in abstract tasks, this impostor feelings starts to inevitably creep in, as you don’t have an actual measure of success for what you are doing.

So my take is that once you start feeling that, you should find a manual hobby, something that you produce with your hands, by your effort, even if simple things. In my case, I sew. Since I do manual work, crafting solutions for mundane things, I see the results of what I’m doing, I have a direct contact between doing something and achieving something — again, even if just a mundane thing.

This takes me out of my abstract world, where I tend to get lost, and from measuring myself by the standards of others in tasks that are not quantifiable in terms of real competence. By doing manual work, I take a much needed break from the my intelectual work and demands. For a bit I feel more like a normal person, competent enough to do this particular manual job.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#162

Post by robteix »

jaggederest wrote: post #39
taurath wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every high performer at my workplace states regularly that they wouldn’t be able to pass the entrance exam at the place they currently work. It’s a cruel fucking environment.

In the last couple weeks I've had to decline 18 total hours of "challenges" and "work samples" from 4 different interview processes. I'm not sure at what point it became de rigueur to require applicants to complete on average 4.5 hours of work without pay, but I really, really don't think it's reasonable. I've even offered to show them my current projects in lieu of work samples, and no go. Baffling.

I was discussing this with a friend just last week. He too believes it is wrong to ask for a home assignment. But I have serious anxiety problems so I find whiteboard coding tests terribly difficult. Same thing with pair programming -- it's fine when you know the other person as colleague, but impossible for me in a "judgy" interview situation.

I'd rather do it at home.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#164

Post by eeZah7Ux »

buserror wrote: post #139
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "am I the only one who sees what a load of shit this is?" Disillusionment.

Not really. Experience induced clarity. I'm like OP. I've been in the tech industry for a stupid amount of years, and I swear I can improvise a CEO grade speech for any circumstance.

Disillusionment: "a feeling of disappointment resulting from the discovery that something is not as good as one believed it to be."

> Not really.

How so?

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#165

Post by candu »

nambit wrote: post #133

What's the opposite? I feel like I'm smarter than everybody else here (big 5 tech). Including Principal engineers, CEOs and VPs. I'll talk to some random engineer who might impress me once in a while but for the most part, there's a lot of smart people but there's a lot of dumb people. I consider myself near the top. I know this might feel like /r/iamverysmart but I'm self aware enough to know that what I feel is not…

The opposite would be the Dunning-Kruger effect: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

There's also the (closely related) illusory superiority effect (i.e. "everyone's an above average driver"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority

Consulting disabused me of this mindset pretty quickly. As I took on tasks outside my expertise (e.g. project management, contract negotiation, marketing, devops, etc.), I had direct proof that said expertise was far more limited than I'd realized. I might be good at engineering (and even there, I've gained more of an appreciation for where my skillset starts and ends), but there's a lot I don't know.

Aside from that: talk to people outside your field, and take the time to deeply listen. Nearly everyone I talk to, whether they're a field biologist, a welder, a sommelier, a lawyer, or an art history expert, takes something for granted that I have no idea about. In many cases, I've been surprised by how deep and interesting knowledge outside my field can be, and I've been forced to re-evaluate my earlier belief that engineers are somehow superior to other walks of human life.

For instance: did you know that humans exhibit marked sex differences in olfactory perception? [1] I learned this from a scientifically-minded wine expert on the bus from Montréal to Toronto. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about: people know things you can't imagine.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4221136/

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#166

Post by aninhumer »

madaxe_again wrote: post #101
js8 wrote: post #16

I might have an impostor syndrome at work. And I am somewhat anxious about it. And I feel like it decreases my performance by quite a bit. And luckily, my managers understand it and are very supportive of me. However, I have a question (and this is going meta). Maybe my managers are too understanding about it. Sometimes I wish they give me a harder time, and feel like I don't get reprimanded for failure enough and st…

Maybe we are all impostors This, a thousandfold. I have struggled with impostor syndrome throughout my life - it doesn’t help that my 35 years to date look like a smacked out Mary Sue fantasy. In my previous business I often felt like I was pulling the wool over the eyes of the world - what right did I have to lead these people, to charge those people, to make these decisions? Well, none, and neither does anyone else…

I think imposter syndrome is an inevitable consequence of a competitive labour environment. People like to call this kind of environment "meritocracy", but since "merit" is not something objective that can be measured effectively, the reality is we compete on our ability to convince others we have "merit".

And since we are forced to compete for work, we feel the need to present the best possible version of ourselves, which is inevitably just slightly beyond the level of "merit" we perceive ourselves as actually having. I believe this disconnect is the main cause of imposter syndrome.

I think it's also the cause of so much bullshit in business environments. Since labour relations are fundamentally antagonistic, people feel unable to communicate problems or inefficiencies for fear that it will reflect badly on them. Especially when that problem is "I am not good at doing this task". Workplaces try to introduce blame free cultures to avoid this, but they will always struggle, because a business relationship is necessarily judgemental.

And I don't think there's an easy way to fix this without challenging the idea, entrenched in so much of our economic and political discussion, that competition will always produce the best results.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#167

Post by francoisdevlin »

nambit wrote: post #133

What's the opposite? I feel like I'm smarter than everybody else here (big 5 tech). Including Principal engineers, CEOs and VPs. I'll talk to some random engineer who might impress me once in a while but for the most part, there's a lot of smart people but there's a lot of dumb people. I consider myself near the top. I know this might feel like /r/iamverysmart but I'm self aware enough to know that what I feel is not…

Find harder and harder problems, and keep doing that until the problems are tougher than you. Failing is okay. It'll give you some perspective, and you'll meet some people at least as smart as you on the way.

Then wait until you have kids, and you'll realize how out classed you can be :-)

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#168

Post by kohanz »

alexquez wrote: post #158

I've been in software for 14 years without a computer science degree and carry a chip on my shoulder because I missed out on algorithms and compilers in school. I'm mostly self-taught and have had the opportunity to run a SAAS company for six years now (CodePen). I'm winging it like many other people in our industry. I wish I'd had two things to when I started my career. 1. A right of passage that endorsed my skills…

While I think you make excellent points, I believe that impostor syndrome is actually quite common, if not moreso, amongst the highly educated.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#170

Post by bazza451 »

This is what helped me: on a level, everyone in every industry is bullshitting one way or another because the future is unwritten. Who knows what may happen tomorrow, you can only deal with it in the best way you can.

Just try and do the best job possible you can at the time. There will always be people who know more but everything is a learning process, you’ll get to that level eventually.

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