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Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

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Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#241

Post by ouid »

darkerside wrote: post #186
philbarr wrote: post #122

Does anyone else get that feeling like, "am I the only one who sees what a load of shit this is?" I don't think it's imposter syndrome per se, but it's related. It's like, "I'm the only one who can see the truth." An example: years ago my old crooked boss brought everyone in to his huge office to tell us why he couldn't afford to give people the pay rise they'd been asking for. With a straight face and with his Aston…

All I've got is your word that he's crooked. There are totally reasonable ways that people can have a fancy looking Aston Martin and be dead broke at the same time (used cars, financing, underwater on loan, etc). Estimates are guesses by nature, and it's not surprising you know nothing about them. If you hate your job that much, what are you doing about it? It's weird to see the top post on HN be an immature and empa…

The problem with the scenario described above isn't that the CEO's situation is implausible, it's that it's presented entirely without evidence, and none was additionally demanded. The whole reason for having accountants is because it makes lying much harder to have to have a story for where every dollar goes. You can track it down if you're skeptical.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#242

Post by jonbarker »

roselan wrote: post #111

After 20 years as a programmer with various employers/clients, I noticed the impostor syndrome when I was alone on projects (or in small teams). But when I was working with big teams in traditional fields like bank or retail, I felt something more akin to the Dunning-Kruger effect... When alone, I compare myself to people in the videos I watch, People like Hickey, Carmack, Crockford, etc. I can't handle a candle to t…

This is a great explanation. I've long thought about these two conflicting effects, and I think as you pointed out it has something to do with what nowadays gets described as 'culture'. Dunning-Kruger seems to dominate in the 'everyone gets a trophy' culture in which I was raised; whereas in cultures that (at least in the way they speak about themselves) pride themselves on meritocracy, leaderboards, stack ranking, and the like, the impostor syndrome probably takes over.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#243

Post by alphydan »

mirimir wrote: post #13

> I asked some of my male colleagues whether they also experience impostor syndrome and got a resounding yes. In researching the topic for this column, I read an article that suggested even Albert Einstein felt this way at times. Damn. It's hard to compare oneself objectively with others. Not that it's ever such a great idea. For others, you only know what they accomplish, plus whatever they're willing to share about…

I think it's hard to imagine how smart some people can be. Einstein would hang out with people a lot more talented than him in mathematics (Poincare, Von Neumann, Goedel) ... so it's easy to see how he would be humbled.

During my PhD, I thought I was the dumbest one in the group. Some of the mathematical feats of my colleagues would take me weeks to process. But they would grok it in minutes. Eventually you have to take a holistic view: There are the things you are capable of, there are things you might be able to do but are not interested in (For me, spending 8h/day reading theorem, lema, proof statements), things you will never achieve, ... and combinations of skills that only you have and those people don't. Your path to satisfaction and happiness is often not becoming those "expert" people. But it's still great to be challenged and stimulated by them.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#244

Post by base698 »

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…

When you say self taught do you mean you bought a data structures book and read it yourself with no lectures?

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#246

Post by [deleted] »

kendallpark wrote: post #225
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…

> Something equivalent to what doctors have when they receive a medical license and become board certified. In the US this requires four 8+ hour exams, spread out over at least seven years of training; each exam requires months of preparation. I have a hard time imagining most programmers would elect to jump through those sorts of hoops just to feel more confident about their jobs. > In retrospect, I would have paid…

[deleted]

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#247

Post by philbarr »

darkerside wrote: post #186
philbarr wrote: post #122

Does anyone else get that feeling like, "am I the only one who sees what a load of shit this is?" I don't think it's imposter syndrome per se, but it's related. It's like, "I'm the only one who can see the truth." An example: years ago my old crooked boss brought everyone in to his huge office to tell us why he couldn't afford to give people the pay rise they'd been asking for. With a straight face and with his Aston…

All I've got is your word that he's crooked. There are totally reasonable ways that people can have a fancy looking Aston Martin and be dead broke at the same time (used cars, financing, underwater on loan, etc). Estimates are guesses by nature, and it's not surprising you know nothing about them. If you hate your job that much, what are you doing about it? It's weird to see the top post on HN be an immature and empa…

Yes it's a rant. It's born entirely out of frustration on a bad day.

I called him crooked because he dealt drugs to his favourite staff, or gave them coke as a reward. He was eventually on Crime Watch UK for fraud. The pay rise was to get people up to minimum wage.

Not that that matters - it was still a rant. I'm not going to apologise for that, though. Sometimes it happens.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#248

Post by jm__87 »

solipsism wrote: post #29
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…

Imposter syndrome is normal and expected. It negatively affecting your performance should not be considered normal, in my opinion. If anxiety from imposter syndrome (or anything else) is affecting your job performance, it's worth considering if an expert could help (e.g. chemically or with some kind of therapy). And I don't mean it should be stigmatized. It's probably not even uncommon. But to me "normal" implies you…

Interesting. I don't know that I've felt imposter syndrome since my first year or two as a programmer. If this persists for a long time in to your career, yet you've received pay raises, promotions and positive feedback from your manager/colleagues, perhaps it is time to start questioning your belief that you don't belong. While I'm not sure if imposter syndrome is common, almost everyone holds beliefs about themselves that are either not true or that while true, are not useful and could be reframed in a way to be more useful. Most people don't question these beliefs, but we could all do ourselves a favor if we regularly questioned our self judgements a bit more.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#249

Post by TimJYoung »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #116
jaggederest wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's some trade-offs here, because there does need to be some sense of how good a developer they are if you're hiring them as a developer: the distribution of skills is so broad at each "level" (junior, mid, senior, principal), and cultures so different you need some way of understanding if they really do have 5 years experience of LanguageX, or 3 months of it repeated 20 times... What I prefer to do is ask them t…

I can't agree more.

If a company asks cookie-cutter questions and gives out cookie-cutter exercises to complete, then they shouldn't be surprised when they also make a number of bad hires that were just developers that knew how to pass these "tests".

On the other hand, as you say, if you sit down, ask them to talk about their experience, and shut up and listen, you're going to learn really quick if they are a BS artist or actually know what they're doing.

I also really like your idea of working through problems with the interviewer. I imagine it gives the interviewer some pretty important insight into how well the person breaks down a complex task into some semblance of an architecture, as well as how good they are at keeping such an architecture clean and simple.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#250

Post by philbarr »

philbarr wrote: post #247
darkerside wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I've got is your word that he's crooked. There are totally reasonable ways that people can have a fancy looking Aston Martin and be dead broke at the same time (used cars, financing, underwater on loan, etc). Estimates are guesses by nature, and it's not surprising you know nothing about them. If you hate your job that much, what are you doing about it? It's weird to see the top post on HN be an immature and empa…

Yes it's a rant. It's born entirely out of frustration on a bad day. I called him crooked because he dealt drugs to his favourite staff, or gave them coke as a reward. He was eventually on Crime Watch UK for fraud. The pay rise was to get people up to minimum wage. Not that that matters - it was still a rant. I'm not going to apologise for that, though. Sometimes it happens.

For anyone interested: https://www.mirror.co.uk/opinion/money-opinion/p-s-investiga...
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