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Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

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Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#101

The title is somewhat misleading, because it's talking about two different types of imposter. The "imposter" of "imposter syndrome" believes others didn't figure what they really are, that they're flawed, underskilled, will fail, etc. ; and that makes you somewhat of a fraud, i.e. an imposter, because they're secretly not the skilled person that was hired. The "actual imposter" from the "imposter syndrome" would be s…

Thank you for pointing that final point out: as I read the article, I was feeling that something was off with the labelling of the imposter.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#103

A lot of the discussion here is treating impostor syndrome and qualifications as binary: You're either qualified or not. And your evaluation of your skills is either above your actual skills or not. But it's more nuanced than that. I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. I have impostor syndrome all the time. Why? Because I measure myself against 1) role models that are ahead of me in many ways - I've always do…

>My fallacy is that there is a billion things that I am good at, but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them)

It's like the paradox of AI, which is that as soon as we've reduced something previously regarded as 'intelligent' to something that can be coded in software, it ceases to be thought of as intelligence any longer.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#105

A lot of the discussion here is treating impostor syndrome and qualifications as binary: You're either qualified or not. And your evaluation of your skills is either above your actual skills or not. But it's more nuanced than that. I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. I have impostor syndrome all the time. Why? Because I measure myself against 1) role models that are ahead of me in many ways - I've always do…

Total derail but: > I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. Does anyone other than a MS employee put an M in FAANG?

Seems like MS has imposter syndrome.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#106

Same as: people who suspect they have dementia, don't generally have dementia. People who suspect they may be a narcissist, are not a narcissist.

Right. People who suspect they are a con-artist are not con-artists. However, I don't think it works for incompetence -- people who suspect they are incompetent may very well be incompetent.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total derail but: > I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. Does anyone other than a MS employee put an M in FAANG?

I think as of late FAAMG is more popular or appropriate than FAANG, but I mean, who knows. According to Wikipedia at least https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech Edit: Not popular maybe, but appropriate still.

Can we put an R in there too? Does Redit count!? Did you know that modern farming is very high tech?

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#108

A lot of the discussion here is treating impostor syndrome and qualifications as binary: You're either qualified or not. And your evaluation of your skills is either above your actual skills or not. But it's more nuanced than that. I'm a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. I have impostor syndrome all the time. Why? Because I measure myself against 1) role models that are ahead of me in many ways - I've always do…

> I am not as good in the technical areas I care about as those I measure myself against.

This for sure. I find too often that I’ve been at this stuff longer than actual teenagers that blow me away nowadays.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#109
Working in data science I can safely say that that vast majority of people who feel like that have impostor syndrome at the very least really don't know what they are doing. A true imposter theoretically knows they don't know enough, and wants to get away with it. I think it's fair to say people with "impostor syndrome" aren't truly malicious impostors.. but there is this frequent assumption having "impostor syndrome" means "I actually do know what I'm doing".

I find the real issue is that being an expert no longer matters in most roles, so true experts increasingly have disappeared except in a few, mostly academic or skilled trade areas.

This is glaringly obvious in data science where I have been to many large, respectable companies where nobody understands any of the real fundamentals of what they're doing. It's just a bunch of automatons feeding data they don't understand, into models they don't understand, to be used in products they don't understand. But it's ridiculous to blame individuals for this. This is so pervasive in the culture that I have often found myself needing to guess which incorrect or not quite right answer to give in job interviews.

People working at places like this are right to feel that they don't know what they're doing, because they rushed through a boot camp to learn the basics and stopped there. At the same time they shouldn't feel like impostors because they aren't succeeding from some malicious intent, but because the system is broken. Most of them are dying for an expert to give them advice, but because of the broken system this is impossible.

It's not just tech either. We see this in "skilled" trades (to be clear, the quotes aren't because I don't believe these trades require skill, but because they have been transformed into something that increasing does not... even when it should). Plumbing for example used to be a field where it was a big deal to have connections with an experienced, expert plumber who could correctly solve your problem. Currently most "plumbers" are giant companies with a few real plumber's having their "assistants" who can hardly tell a leak from a faucet looking perplexedly at the drip in your ceiling take care of all the calls.

If you really care about knowing something today, the burden is all on you to learn it and there will be no reward other than your personal satisfaction. It may even cause you hardship from time to time when you have to pretend you don't understand something to do your job in a satisfactory way.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#110
There was a post the other day on reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/oxdwd3/w...

The thing that this particular comment brought up was the mindset of someone not beset by imposter syndrome.

So, from that post:

* Able to determine their own self-worth

* Does not compare themselves to determine their value

* Does not see failure as a bad thing, rather they see it as an opportunity for growth

* Confidence in their ability to deal with anything that may come their way, regardless of whether or not the outcome is favorable (like getting fired, for example)

* Does not worry about things they have no control over and accepts them instead

* Knows that doing their best is all they can do

* Does not derive their value from the opinions of others

* Does not let fear control their actions

---

I'd like to blame social media for the prevalence of some of the problems that establish a contrary mindset to the above... but... get off my lawn.

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