What syndrome is: "I'm decent, though nothing special and have obvious limitations and weaknesses I acknowledge and work around; most others are incompetent."
Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
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Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#22I think that impostor syndrome is inextricably linked with Dunning-Kruger. I believe that impostor syndrome is a lack of overconfidence in one's abilities- that implies that you have the ability to assess competence and to assess the skills needed for a job or task, and you don't default to "I know I can do it well". When you encounter a novel job or task, you don't immediately assume competence, and you will remain…
> If you never get impostor syndrome, then you either aren't challenging yourself or you might not have the subject area competence to assess your own skills
I'm not disagreeing and I can allow that IS a natural and expected safety valve.
That said, I suggest that some individuals are better off without IS operating. They're less-than-qualified but they commit because they believe they'll figure it out in time.
For low-resource individuals, this can be the least-unlikely path from destitution.
Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#23Just because you have imposter syndrome doesn't mean you#re competent ;)
It's so hard to really know.
When I did a coding bootcamp long ago in a career switch I couldn't help but look around the room and think "Hey ... some of these people really shouldn't be arbitrarily encouraged anymore."
It's a rough thing to think / do, but also maybe would have been for the best for many of them.
To their credit I talked to some folks who were in the camp a few years after me and they reported that the class sizes naturally shrank as the classes went on. Apparently students were being better evaluated and had ways "out" that encouraged a little more "yeah maybe this isn't for you" type of evaluation.
Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#24Dunning-Kruger has been thoroughly debunked. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/2020... https://scitechdaily.com/math-professor-debunks-the-dunning-...
> The majority of people can actually gauge their competence and knowledge accurately. I know plenty of C-suite folks who must be in the minority then.
It is a skill to genuinely or convincingly look past your own lack of competence.
Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#25I think that impostor syndrome is inextricably linked with Dunning-Kruger. I believe that impostor syndrome is a lack of overconfidence in one's abilities- that implies that you have the ability to assess competence and to assess the skills needed for a job or task, and you don't default to "I know I can do it well". When you encounter a novel job or task, you don't immediately assume competence, and you will remain…
This explanation may help. I call it the "frontier effect" in
development. It was taught to me by an old scientist.
Life is a frontier if you keep moving. As you progress in life you have fewer yardsticks to judge yourself against. At kindergarten we all chant in unison. By middle school you follow what the teacher says, but some people learn differently. It's probably the last "Standardised" (SAT) test you ever take.
At high school you are expected to read books by yourself and you choose different books than others. By university it's mostly hands-off, and only the lectures are common amidst diverse self-study. At PhD you know everything about a vanishingly small field, and by definition the doctoral graduate is the singular world expert on their tiniest corner of knowledge.
Each of us on a journey from a common place to a unique viewpoint in life, that can be quite lonely.
Regardless of whether you follow an academic path I think this applies to everyone. At the start it's easy to see how you measure up to others. By 40 you need to work hard to find smarter people to challenge you and you're not sure where you stand. You see that being smart or confident isn't all that, and it ruins some people. You see people you thought were smart do really dumb things, and people you considered below you race ahead by making wise life-choices.
I like the article because it hints at an important truth, that you can simultaneously be too self-assured and not enough. Our value systems for judging ourselves are weak in this society.
But as the objective clarity of that sweet spot wanes, something else kicks in as you age, which is a kind of contentment/wisdom. You care less about where you stand and are comfortable with mistakes. A few regrets adds character. Financial or institutional success are no longer good indicators as you start to turn to more spiritual ways of knowing where you stand.
Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#26Dunning-Kruger effect has become the most abused and overused piece of pop psych in the history. God I wish we could just erased it from the collective vocabulary.
Also Occam's Razor...I suspect the collective damage these two popular memes alone cause would be shocking if there was a way to see such things.
Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#27Just because you have imposter syndrome doesn't mean you#re competent ;)
It's so hard to really know. When I did a coding bootcamp long ago in a career switch I couldn't help but look around the room and think "Hey ... some of these people really shouldn't be arbitrarily encouraged anymore." It's a rough thing to think / do, but also maybe would have been for the best for many of them. To their credit I talked to some folks who were in the camp a few years after me and they reported that…
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Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#28> To find the sweet spot between impostor syndrome and overconfidence, you first need to understand that you can make mistakes without it reflecting on your competence.
> Failure is not something to be feared—it’s an opportunity to learn and improve.
These pithy quotes can be good for shaking someone out of a perfectionism-induced freeze, but they take the concept too far.
Failure is not a good outcome and should be reasonably avoided to the best of your abilities. You can and should learn from it, but removing all fear of failure isn't realistic.
This doesn't mean you should never start anything that might fail. I think that's what these quotes are trying to get people to avoid. Instead, they set unrealistic expectations about how failure can't/shouldn't/won't have any consequences when, in fact, it often does.
Likewise, making some mistakes is normal. Nobody is perfect. However, mistakes have consequences. It's how you handle and even prepare for those consequences that makes the difference. It's true that you shouldn't be so afraid of mistakes that you can't get yourself to take any risks or do anything, but you shouldn't go so far as to imagine mistakes as having no consequences. If someone is making mistakes at an unreasonably high rate, something needs to change: More training, more supervision, more education, or if all those fail, try a different role.
These little feel-good quotes might shake some people out of being too afraid to try anything, but they also mislead a lot of people into unrealistic ideas about how failure and mistakes shouldn't have any consequences.
Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#29Dunning-Kruger has been thoroughly debunked. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/2020... https://scitechdaily.com/math-professor-debunks-the-dunning-...
I think a better model is unconscious incompetence > conscious incompetence > conscious competence > unconscious competence
Re: Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect
#30I think that impostor syndrome is inextricably linked with Dunning-Kruger. I believe that impostor syndrome is a lack of overconfidence in one's abilities- that implies that you have the ability to assess competence and to assess the skills needed for a job or task, and you don't default to "I know I can do it well". When you encounter a novel job or task, you don't immediately assume competence, and you will remain…
If imposter syndrome doesn’t go away with time, it is very possible the person overly focuses on knowledge/skills that are lacking but that are not required at all to perform at their job, and this can happen even when the person already is a/the top performer.
I've spent a large part of my career managing IT teams. I've worked with a lot of noobs. The issue I find more often is not that they don't know the info, they simply don't have the confidence in what they know and no real practice applying it.
It's one thing to know that DNS travels over port 53, but leveraging that in troubleshooting is harder, since it may involve a firewall, switches, trunked ports, servers, workstations, etc.
It just takes time to learn the practical side and that's rarely taught in schools from what I've seen.
YMMV.