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Why I feel like a fraud

blog.asmartbear.com

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61–70 of 78 posts

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#61

Post by run4yourlives »

Here's a little secret:

Nobody really knows what they are doing; they're just winging it, more or less.

That's not to mean extremely talented people aren't doing some amazing things, it means that there is no documented pattern to follow that once completed equals success. It also means that you can in fact be as good or better at every "expert" in your chosen field, and that many of the people reading this probably already are.

Everyone is using a blank piece of paper, and everyone is painting their own portrait their own way. Knowing how to both create demand and deliver a perceived value is much more valuable than whatever it is you are actually doing to deliver the product. There is nothing fraudulent about it. Every mechanic is a genius to a person that has never seen a car.

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#62

Post by jmtulloss »

throwaway111222 wrote: post #16
edw519 wrote: post #5

hn rerun. Orignal thread with comments: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059985

Sometimes good posts are worth rerunning.

I certainly agree, but linking to the previous comments is also valuable. He didn't call it a dupe, he called it a rerun. I think that's appropriate.

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#63

Post by araneae »

sabat wrote: post #30
araneae wrote: post #2

Just because there's a name for feeling like a fraud even if you aren't one, doesn't meant you aren't one! I felt like a fraud in graduate school and it turned out I was one.

You were an actual fraud? By what definition? [edit: I wonder if you were really a fraud, or are just feeling down on yourself.]

Well, I dropped out after 1.5 years :).

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#65

Post by andrewvc »

danilocampos wrote: post #25
patio11 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, for what it is worth. At least three times this year half my brain was screaming "They're going to find out any second now! . Flee, flee!" It all worked out.

"They're going to find out any second now!" That's really it, isn't it? The whole thing just boils down to an odd, amorphous they capable of seeing straight through you if you happen to give them half a chance. I wish I could understand the source of this better.

Yep, and that's why the person best capable of making you truly miserable is yourself.

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#66

Post by prodigal_erik »

nadam wrote: post #19

I sometimes feel that I wasted all my years because I was developing quite diverse applications, so I am not an expert of anything. For example I am writing a Java to Scala translator now. I hate that I was dealing with completely other topics when I could have done Phd in programming languages and could have worked on compilers all the time. There is a company founded in 1995 working on source code analysis, transla…

Being a generalist isn't always an easy sell, but we can be uniquely valuable in a small shop that lacks an army of specialists. Just since last year I've been called on to document several protocols for partners, design and back-test a Bayesian estimator, troubleshoot a balky load balancer using only a tcpdump (it was reusing port numbers too aggressively), sleaze together some last-minute map/reduce analytics feeding Excel graphs, and track down regressions caused by bad svn merges. Nobody sane would put all of that in one job description (nominally I maintain a soft realtime Java app server), yet someone had to do it, and there I was. As a specialist I'd worry about only getting asymptotically better at solving one problem which could become irrelevant.

Actually it's the stuff I'm supposed to know how to do where I feel like a fraud, because I compare the imaginary progress of an idealized version of myself to what I've actually accomplished. When I'm handling one of these tasks from left field, everyone knows I'm winging it, and that makes success sweeter.

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#68

Post by throwaway111222 »

danilocampos wrote: post #29
silentbicycle wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to read about more people who feel this way, it's usually called "Imposter syndrome" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imposter_syndrome ). I feel this way from time to time, I assume it comes from being self-taught and not always knowing what my peers know. Meditating helps, as does having a supportive SO.

I, too, am self-taught. I spend a decent amount of time in terror, imagining a sea of unknown-unknowns just waiting to ruin my projects or make me look the fool.

This is why I never contributed to open-source software. I guess it's just an irrational fear of failure at the bottom of it.

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#69

Post by adw »

patio11 wrote: post #11
danilocampos wrote: post #7

Holy shit. I thought this was just me. I spend a lot of time churning on this. I'm a little shell-shocked at the revelation that others feel this way too. I wish I had something more compelling to contribute than catharsis, but... wow, thanks for (re-)submitting this.

Me too, for what it is worth. At least three times this year half my brain was screaming "They're going to find out any second now! . Flee, flee!" It all worked out.

Me three. I'm not as high-achieving as you guys, but I have an okay sheaf of academic qualifications (up to PhD) which to this day I'm absolutely convinced I don't deserve.

It's not rare at all among people I know, too, most of whom are way smarter than me.

Re: Why I feel like a fraud

#70

Post by redcap »

sabat wrote: post #31
dholowiski wrote: post #13

I struggle with this often: I KNOW I'm not as smart/talented/capable as other people think I am, especially at programming. I haven't been programming for that long, and it takes me an hour to write something that should take me 10 minutes to write. However, my skills continue to amaze my peers (who are all non-technical) and they think I'm a genius because I can build a web site with a login form, or register a doma…

Just because you read a book, and wrote a few blog posts doesn't make you an expert! Or it does make you an expert, but "expert" doesn't mean what we think it means. ;-)

My dad always said that "x is an unknown quantity, and a spurt is a drip under pressure".

I tend to take self-professed "experts" with a grain of salt.

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