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Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

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Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#261

Post by robteix »

jaggederest wrote: post #177
robteix wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, that makes sense. It's also probably accommodating to people with disabilities as well. The part I have the major problem with is the average length. Peak was 8 hours, I just chuckled and said thanks but no thanks. 2 hours? Sure. No problem. Even 3 hours is fine.

Agree. The discussion with my friend was actually sparked by the home assignment someone asked him to do. That was easily a 10-hour job. That's way too much. He correctly declined.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#262

Post by unclebucknasty »

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…

Exactly. That Aston Martin could be part of why he is broke.

You never know what someone is going through. In fact, odds are the more you percieve a person has having "it all together", the further off the mark you likely are. This is true for the simple reason that everyone struggles with something.

"Empathy" is a good word here. I think we tend to decide how much of our empathy we believe a person deserves based on our own perception of "how well they're doing", particularly relative to ourselves. The truth is, we should always start with empathy and grace, though that's often easier said than done.

So, thanks for inserting that word. Needed the reminder myself.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#263

Post by [deleted] »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #260

Yes. Make something hard. Impostor syndrome comes from feeling like you can't do the things people expect you to be able to do, so if you can point to concrete evidence that you're capable of doing something difficult (whether on a team at work or in a personal project you did 100% yourself) you'll greatly reduce any feelings of impostor syndrome you may have.

[deleted]

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#264

Post by jjuel »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #260

Yes. Make something hard. Impostor syndrome comes from feeling like you can't do the things people expect you to be able to do, so if you can point to concrete evidence that you're capable of doing something difficult (whether on a team at work or in a personal project you did 100% yourself) you'll greatly reduce any feelings of impostor syndrome you may have.

But what if you struggle with it (even if you eventually finish)? What if you look back and think that code could be much better? There are still so many things that can creep into your mind making you think you aren't as good as you might actually be. Sure it may reduce a little, but it is a temporary relief. At least in my experience.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#265

Post by robohoe »

kohanz wrote: post #168
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.

I think this is because you work with some tremendously smart people and as such end up feeling inadequate in our own knowledge. You're pretty much required to work at a certain level as there is some expectation of your knowledge from other peers.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#266

Post by wellpast »

The truth is you are an imposter. No one fulfills the perfect ideal of whatever role they are playing (employee, manager, parent, etc). Recognize and accept that you're an imposter and continually reach for the ideal.

There are various stresses (will I lose my job? etc) that are reasonable and tangential to this idea of "imposter syndrome". The particular trick to avoiding stress _directly related_ to this imposter syndrome is to dismiss it as the scientifically unsound and useless idea that it is: that is to say, it shouldn't exist: or put another way, your self-worth doesn't _have_ to be derived from your capability, nor should it. Decouple your self-worth from your professional ability; this may be hard in general or in our particular culture/zeitgeist, but I think it's a losing battle any other way.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#267

Post by hardwaresofton »

fenwick67 wrote: post #233
hardwaresofton wrote: post #34

Aaaand self promotion: https://vadosware.io/post/the-cure-for-impostor-syndrome-is-... tl;dr - Stop claiming to be an expert at things you haven't delved into deeply. Conversely, if you've delved into a subject deeply, there's a high chance you won't feel like an impostor. If you don't have time (or resources) to delve into something deeply, and understand thoroughly, accept that fact and move on.

I don't like how you posit that expertise is some absolute thing. To some coworkers I'm a programming expert. To a 30-year veteran sysadmin I'm a novice. The same goes for any skill or knowledge - musicianship, cooking etc. Only one person in the world is the best at something, and it's not reasonable to compare yourself to that person when there's billions of us.

I don't think I posited that though -- could you restate what you believed my thesis to be? I might just be a terrible writer and couldn't get my point across.

> To some coworkers I'm a programming expert. To a 30-year veteran sysadmin I'm a novice.

I agree with this -- but it was less about how others see you and how you see yourself. My point was that rather than claiming to be a programming expert, if you just get more specific about what you know, and keep good track of what you've learned/deep dove into at least once, and don't over-sell yourself, it is unlikely to feel like an impostor.

Regardless of your actual level of expertise, if you've literally taken the time to follow an interrupt through the kernel, or read the SMTP spec, you have those pieces of knowledge (though they may be rusty).

> The same goes for any skill or knowledge - musicianship, cooking etc. Only one person in the world is the best at something, and it's not reasonable to compare yourself to that person when there's billions of us.

This is kind of a weird claim and seems to contradict the first thing you said. Most non-trivial skills can't be boiled down to one person just being the undisputed "best" -- for the world to work that way, expertise would have to be some absolute-ish thing.

If I had to try and sum up your thesis:

Expertise is very much about perspective. An amateur may look like a superhero to one group, but a novice to another group.

If I had to sum up mine:

Expertise is how much of a finite space of known things you currently know.

The two theses seem orthogonal, I don't think we actually disagree.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#268

Post by robohoe »

sethammons wrote: post #214

On mobile, sorry for typos. I've experienced imposter syndrome hard. One of my first jobs was a small programming gig, but I switched careers twice before securing a job as a "real" developer. Oh, man, what I didn't know. Everything was new. Source control? Neat! Unit test? Wow! I was so far behind. I worked hard and researched everything I could that I heard someone talk about more than once. If I couldn't find info…

We are our own worst critics.

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#269

Post by dbliss »

Being prepared. This is what I have found to be the most helpful. I'm an SDM at a big tech company, and when I was hired I thought they must have made a mistake. I felt like an imposter in meetings and managing my team for a long time. I was able to relieve the anxiety by focusing on always being the most prepared person in the room (ie. read everything before hand, try to anticipate questions and answers, speak with confidence [fake it 'til you make it]). Eventually this just became second nature and the thing I was doing didn't feel like I was an imposter anymore. I just recently changed roles to a new org and I feel the same anxiety creeping back in, so this a pep talk for myself too. The thing to remember is you got where you are for some reason, try to think about the positive attributes you know you have, and just keep practicing the rest. Good luck!

Re: Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

#270

Post by hardwaresofton »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #123
hardwaresofton wrote: post #34

Aaaand self promotion: https://vadosware.io/post/the-cure-for-impostor-syndrome-is-... tl;dr - Stop claiming to be an expert at things you haven't delved into deeply. Conversely, if you've delved into a subject deeply, there's a high chance you won't feel like an impostor. If you don't have time (or resources) to delve into something deeply, and understand thoroughly, accept that fact and move on.

Absolutely false. Being aware of your need to learn and improve is perfectly normal and healthy. Impostor syndrome hits experts, often when they are at their peak, while beginners rarely experience it, hence the name "syndrome".

Could you restate what was "false"? Are you referring to the article or my comment?

I didn't mean to state that being aware of your need to learn and improve isn't normal or healthy -- but you can't learn about everything. You literally don't have the time to learn (and practice, and implement in production) everything as deeply and thoroughly to make you a tried and true expert. You have to cut and run at some point, if you want to get anything done. If you know anyone that constantly keeps every single piece of the actual "stack" (and I don't mean AWS + your apps, I mean down to the assembly at the very least) in their head, please direct me to them so I can learn how they do it.

I don't think widely considered experts experience the impostor syndrome in the same way that I see it explained. Experts on postgres internals don't wonder if they're experts on postgres internals... Maybe they worry if they're good application developers, but that's a different thing.

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