Live data from Hacker News

The Fallacy of Imposter Syndrome

thewebb.blog

31–32 of 32 posts

Re: The Fallacy of Imposter Syndrome

#31
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it like this.... A surgeon might go to school for up to 12 years to acquire all there advanced knowledge. It seems like after all that time, there jobs should be so complicated that it would be beyond the understanding of a layperson. But when I go to the doctor I expect that person to be able to explain what is wrong with me, and what they are going to do to fix it. So even with 12 years of education, th…

> So even with 12 years of education, there isn't REALLY a significant barrier of understanding between the average adult an the doctor. I apologize for saying this, but this kind of statement smells of Dunning-Kruger. You only feel that way because the doctor works hard to make things understandable for you, and a significant part of his training is in the direction. How much do you think the average adult would und…

I think your example actually proves the point.

Everything your doctor said has been known and codified in medicine for close to 100 years. So while the specific definitions may be missed, it's still followable for a lay person, because it's connected to concepts they get (cell, disease, antibody, intravenous, maybe even receptors.) If you asked an average adult to translate that sentence, I bet it would come close to your doctor translation, minus the side commentary on costs. Certainly a doctor in another field, say, a podiatrist or even just a first year resident, can follow along with what the immunologist said.

Whereas software is such a vast body (pun intended?) That nothing translates. DevOps interns, analytics architects, experience designers, and black hats have entire worlds of jargon to decode. But people pretend all the time it's all just software and if you're good at Angular you'll be good at embedded computing or if you're good at data modeling you can pick up machine learning.

Re: The Fallacy of Imposter Syndrome

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without trying to trivialize your reasons for going to therapy: I don't think you have imposter syndrome. If you do, something seems incongruent here. It sounds to me as though you struggle with negotiation due to a lack of confidence. That's not ideal but it can be remedied, and it's a different (better, in my opinion) issue to have. On the other hand I don't really think you can have imposter syndrome while being s…

The imposter part is I don't feel I'm as 'good' as that other guy who's making 100..maybe I don't know everything htey know..I'm not the best at super complicated algorithms or math, but I can google this shit out of stack overflow and solve 95% of all issues I've ever had. That's what kind of knocks my confidence down a little bit.

Everyone Googles and SOs. The work is too vast and varied, and the timelines have the baked in assumption that you're not reinventing the wheel. You are expected to accelerate through reusd and acquired knowledge.

I need someone who knows PHP syntax and knows what to Google for when they're staring at a problem they don't know off the top of their head.

Post reply on HN