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Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

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Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#131

Post by polote »

deanCommie wrote: post #77

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…

Honest question, imagine if at your company tomorrow they decide to fire one principal engineer. Would you find it fair that the one is you? Would yo find it fair if you were among the 10% they fire? The 20%? The 30%?

I ask you that because it is much simpler to answer to a binary question like, do I have imposter syndrome? Or put in other words, am I modest?

You can make the link with how people see themselves. A lot of very attractive people tell you they are not very beautiful, and spend their time trying to get validation from others. But they internally think they are the top 5%.

My opinion is a lot of those things exists because people are not honest with each other. So you can't really trust what people tell you about you. And you are always wondering how people see you.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#132

Post by vmception »

jldugger wrote: post #87
deanCommie wrote: post #77

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?

I enjoyed

FAANGMULA

and

TARANTULAS

fun meme

There are also a handful of sub $100bn marketcap publicly traded tech companies that pay on par of FAANGs and may have more enticing vesting schedules too. Greater upside as well.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#134

Post by saalweachter »

jldugger wrote: post #87
deanCommie wrote: post #77

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?

I usually use FAAMG instead of FAANG because I don't understand what Netflix is doing in there.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#135

Post by verst »

jldugger wrote: post #87
deanCommie wrote: post #77

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?

Plenty of discussions and comments from the people who originally coined the term FANG / FAANG why they would want to update the term today.

Never heard of FAAMNG though.

FAGMA or FAAM have been suggested as updated terms in light of the metrics / characteristics that initially led to the term FA(A)NG being coined.

These terms were certainly not originally intended to describe high salaries for engineers ;)

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#136

Post by IggleSniggle »

nostrademons wrote: post #128
jldugger wrote: post #87

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 still think that the acronym should be "FN MAGA". Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Amazon are the big-4 companies, with notably larger market caps than Facebook and Netflix, and those 4 are more broad platforms/conglomerates while Facebook and Netflix are closely associated with a single app or small set of apps.

Facebook has grown into a lot of the things. It probably deserves to be grouped with the others. I honestly thing FAANG became the acronym because these companies were making big waves simultaneously at one point, and the acronym is attractive.

There’s never been any good reason not to include Microsoft except that for a long time it was considered old and stodgy.

Netflix doesn’t make sense in terms of market cap, and it also doesn’t make sense in 2021 when it’s more a media company than a technology company. Don’t get me wrong, they totally nailed it on a ton of tech fronts, and deserve their technical accolades…it just looks strange next to the others.

Oh, thinking about Netflix, I just figured it out. It’s about SWE salaries, and not really related to much else.

…although if that’s it, then Amazon doesn’t really deserve it’s spot any more than Microsoft.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#137

Post by cvhashim »

saalweachter wrote: post #134
jldugger wrote: post #87

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 usually use FAAMG instead of FAANG because I don't understand what Netflix is doing in there.

Has to do with blue chip tech stocks apparently

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#138

Post by IggleSniggle »

psyc wrote: post #116
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I always thought it was more appropriate for most purposes. But on HN, perhaps the most common purpose is discussing ludicrous total comp. And, at least when I left in 2010, Microsoft most certainly did not offer that. I heard that they raised pay across the board shortly after I left, but considering where they started, I’d be shocked if it put them on par with FAANG. Anybody know?

I don’t really know, but I’m under the impression that Amazon comp is pretty comparable to Microsoft these days.

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#139

Post by auto »

andai wrote: post #82
auto wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this resonates with me, and in particular: > but I don't consider them difficult (how could they be, if I am good at them) I've struggled with this over the years. As a kid, once something clicked it felt like you had leveled up in some way, and now had a new skill. As an adult, I have a hard time not looking at everything I'm capable of and thinking "it's so simple, it obviously just works like this ". It's…

The wtf-duh dichotomy... I know it too well!

Well put!

Re: Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome

#140

Post by daenz »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #130

> It's a hard feeling to get over, but every time I feel it, I think about Brazil. He could confidently state something that's objectively not true and would double down if you questioned him about it. I know because this happened to me. I doubted things I knew to be true because he was that confident and that persuasive. I'll never know what was going on inside his head, but I don't think he spent a moment questioni…

It sounds like a cool super power but it sounds like an absolute curse as well. For one, there are people that are relatively unaffected by your RDF, and those people will always see you as a fraud (which you are, if you're doubling down on falsehoods). For two, if you can convince yourself and those around you of anything/everything, it diminishes your innate ability to know what is right. After all, if you can convince yourself of anything, "right" is whatever is convenient at the time. Sounds kind of miserable.
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