Yes, you're an imposter. You're not the person who is your made up mental idea of what you think a Googler is. Everyone there is just a person who is mostly insecure in the same way and is just trying to pretend they are smarter than they are.
Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#52Relax. People seem to have this idea that you can jump into an existing team and start making big impacts on an established product with no ramp up time. It takes time to understand something, and much woe and misery arises if you start tilting at Chestertons fences out of the gate. Developing a feel for the interpersonal dynamics of a team is also not something that comes about instantly by osmosis. I'd try to get a bead on what expectations are, keep plugging along, and give it time.
A month is an eyeblink. It may not seem like it in the fever pitch environment that is all too easy to fall prey to, but I've waited longer waiting on customers to navigate red tape to get a few service accounts setup to install our products...
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#53Nootropics (SEMAX + selank + alpha-GPC, for example, or noopept + aniracetam + alpha-GPC) and a multivitamin + D & K + chelated/TRAACS magnesium supplement (eg, AOR Ortho-Core + Life Extension D & K + Doctor's Best High Absorption Magnesium). Iodine protocol. Brainwave entrainment audio and/or meditation. BTW, fuck Google! I didn't feel like an imposter while there (2010), but they seemed obsessed with having me do j…
Nicotine is a powerful nootropic.
No, don't do drugs.
You're feeling incapable of doing your job. Address either your capabilities or your feelings. If your background isn't as good as you thought, this is your time to catch up. If it's your feelings, confront them. Why do you feel inadequate? What can you do to improve your perception of yourself?
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#54[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#55In my experience it takes 4-6 months to feel like you belong.
You don't feel like you have that much to do because they're not giving you that much to do yet. They are giving you time to look around. No one expects you to rockstar the first day (or month even).
After you look around for a while and get the lay of the land, you're expected to spot places you can pitch in and one fine day, you'll see something that really needs doing, say excitedly "hey! I can do that", own it, and then you'll feel like you're home.
Just jumping in to a big office with an energetic team is extremely disorienting. A month in and you've already battled through their (undoubtably weird and opinionated) tool stack and are submitting? Good work. Carry on.
Heh, I've taken that long to get a workstation allocated, get a parking pass issued, and find the bathroom (not in that order...).
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#56Nootropics (SEMAX + selank + alpha-GPC, for example, or noopept + aniracetam + alpha-GPC) and a multivitamin + D & K + chelated/TRAACS magnesium supplement (eg, AOR Ortho-Core + Life Extension D & K + Doctor's Best High Absorption Magnesium). Iodine protocol. Brainwave entrainment audio and/or meditation. BTW, fuck Google! I didn't feel like an imposter while there (2010), but they seemed obsessed with having me do j…
What the actual hell.
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#57Sounds like you've been set adrift in a canoe without a paddle and you're trying to keep up with the other canoeists. You need to ask your colleagues to pair with them, and your management to encourage the practice. The amount of institutional knowledge you need in order to thrive should be more fire hose than eyedropper. The reason people fight with their tools? The tools suck in terms of instructions and the only w…
This is good advice
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#58This is a struggle I can identify with. Settle into the company couch and pass the popcorn.
There is a reason why I return to contract work that has taken some soul searching to discover; I'm just not a Company Man.
The big picture isn't the problem for me so much as abiding by the glacial pace demanded as an FTE. Granted, every company runs at a different tempo, but to operate as a unit there has to be syncopation. Despite adjusting to the pace of a project, it's a temporary change, like vacationing in a different time zone. Freelancer/Samurai/Pirate - all suffer the same fate when it comes to community.
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#59Part of why you have less work than you “should” right now is so you can familiarize yourself with the added complexities, both technical and interpersonal, of working in a giant engineering org. So do that. Read documentation. Learn the automation flows. Learn the organization and the political sensitivities. Look at old code reviews. Etc.
Re: Ask HN: First month job anxiety. Am I actually an impostor?
#60Well, if it makes you feel any better: I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I still feel like the expectations placed on me are far above my capabilities - but they’re also far above the capabilities of anybody I’ve ever worked with. They’ll always try to demand more out of you than you or anybody else can possibly deliver, and be genuinely disappointed when you can’t work miracles all day, every day. Just do the b…
Thank you for posting this. Sometimes it feels like those demanding results expect someone who can create a world overnight or spin gold out of air. It's easy to acknowledge that at some level all professional relationships are adversarial, but when talking to others, there is sometimes the incredulous sense that as co-workers you should make every effort to collaborate and speak as honestly as possible to maximise the quality of the product, but interpersonal politics of personal gain throw that idea down the toilet.