Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage

zainrizvi.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–26 of 26 posts

Re: Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage

#21

Post by paul_f »

gregd wrote: post #14

I've been coding off and on professionally for over a decade and I STILL feel like an imposter. I still have to look stuff up constantly. I still watch how-to code videos everywhere. Don't know if I'm alone or other people just can't bring themselves to admit that.

The OP is not talking about mundane things, such as remember the difference between implode and explode in PHP. They are talking about a a deep feeling of incompetence. I believe that imposter syndrome is more prevalent in the software world because, unlike auto mechanics or surgeons for example, we are not give a chance to watch the process actually take place, we only see the results. We see the finished code and don't know how it was derived. Imagine all we got was: car works again, now you fix the next one

Re: Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage

#22

Post by dekhn »

I was an academic, but not a particularly successful one, and constantly felt imposter syndrome. Over time I realized a few things- most people in my cohort had a similar amount of trouble establishing their careers, and when I look upon their academic careers, and also see how much fakery is involved in modern PR-focused science, I actually think I dodged a bullet.

Instead I went to industry where I felt like an imposter for years, then built a system that worked really well, and got to work with some absolutely fantastic people who were far smarter than me. I still felt like an imposter, but at least I was well paid and respected.

Finally, now in my career I get paid huge amounts to debug complex ML systems in production when they break. Almost nobody else has the skills to do this; almost nobody has the interest in doing it; but I've spent 20+ years focusing on exactly this kind of problem. I don't feel like an imposter any more.

Re: Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage

#23

Post by heavenlyblue »

gregd wrote: post #14

I've been coding off and on professionally for over a decade and I STILL feel like an imposter. I still have to look stuff up constantly. I still watch how-to code videos everywhere. Don't know if I'm alone or other people just can't bring themselves to admit that.

“Over a decade” is a small time being a professional. You’re what, about 35 on average?

Re: Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage

#24

Post by ZainRiz »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #23
gregd wrote: post #14

I've been coding off and on professionally for over a decade and I STILL feel like an imposter. I still have to look stuff up constantly. I still watch how-to code videos everywhere. Don't know if I'm alone or other people just can't bring themselves to admit that.

“Over a decade” is a small time being a professional. You’re what, about 35 on average?

Thank you for intensifying my impostor syndrome ;)

Re: Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage

#25

Post by gregd »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #23
gregd wrote: post #14

I've been coding off and on professionally for over a decade and I STILL feel like an imposter. I still have to look stuff up constantly. I still watch how-to code videos everywhere. Don't know if I'm alone or other people just can't bring themselves to admit that.

“Over a decade” is a small time being a professional. You’re what, about 35 on average?

I'm 53. I have a 25 year IT career and the last 10 of it has been coding and sql server mostly.

Re: Google taught me to turn Impostor Syndrome into an Advantage

#26

Post by hnarn »

I work with developers and I sometimes joke with them claiming that they’re not “real” developers because they don’t know every function in the standard library and constantly have to look things up. This is such a nonsensical level of expectation on a developer (that they would know all functions by heart) and is also a really dangerous way to work, because it breeds complacency and, in time, deviations from the norm (because the norm changes).

There are many things that perhaps legitimately should make people feel like “impostors” even when they aren’t, but the need to use reference material definitely shouldn’t be one of them.

Unfortunately many people in our business still equate knowledge or competence with “knowing things by heart” which is really unfortunate, because I think at best it tells you very little about the person, and in the worst case you may be hiring someone that through arrogance will make mistakes because they don’t care about double checking crucial parts of their code because they too feel that they “should” know what’s going on.

Post reply on HN