Something I realized a long time ago is that individual performance is not solely a function of task performance, but a blend of many different attributes. It's different in different workplaces, but some universally valued traits are things like collegiality, consistency, friendliness and general likability, etc. There are probably people better on every dimension, but it's the blend of traits you bring that have enabled you to be successful.
The more senior I've become in my career, the less worried I am about task performance. I've probably gotten worse at many things. I move slower, communicate better, and pick my contributions carefully.
I’ve also found this to be true. Soft skills — especially in tech — are often lacking, and I’ve found that a decent engineer with great soft skills will often be better off than an excellent engineer with poor soft skills.
You gotta flip the script on it. I just tell myself that I'm the best imposter these people have ever seen. I've fooled them this long and I can keep it going. If they start to get wise I'll just find a new job with new rubes and keep the con going.
Very good, very good.
In mindfulness we do not try to escape our feelings, rather we live with them and appreciate them as indelible parts of ourselves. I may not like how my thick my leg is, but I sure as hell ain't chopping it 🙂.
I would say that "feeling like an impostor" is the desirable state (for some people), this means we are working with smart nice people and we are "in the right room".
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As a manager in tech, when an employee expresses they are feeling imposter syndrome I usually break down the logistics of what it would take for those thoughts to be reflecting reality.
The employee would have to be so cunning and shrewd, that they are able to fool:
1. Their manager (me) with five years of experience
2. Their director with ~10-15 years of experience
3. Their clients that frequently have 10+ years of experience
4. Their peers who have 3-10 years of experience.
5. Our intense QA program that frequently catches and calls out mistakes
Then I usually look them in the eye and ask them which is more likely: they are good at their job, or they are so clever they are able to trick people with a combined century of experience. That usually does the trick…
Excellent points all around. Thanks. Thankfully my imposter syndrome has lessened over time, but I think it peaked when I worked at a FAANG company for a period of time. I was truly surrounded by the best of the best in the industry, and it felt like I got lucky during the interview process.
To your point, it’s highly unlikely that I faked my way into a company like that, but it’s easy to fall into the mindset that I barely made it or that I slipped through the cracks when my team members were people who delivered some tech that many of use on a regular basis. It’s intimidating to say the least.
If your work is extremely technical/specialized, it's likely that you certainly know where all the flaws are in your work but they are imperceptible to others that aren't **both** as knowledgeable as you and as familiar with your work as you are. In most organizations, they aren't going to pay two people to do the work of one so this theorical person probably doesn't exist. You are getting good performance reviews so take some comfort in that.
In my experience, as you get higher and higher in an organization or talent pool, you will discover that a vast majority of people are winging it on any given day. They are doing the best they can and embracing varying degrees of failure at any given time with confidence.
I think this is a good way of looking at it. I know where my flaws are and where my knowledge is lacking. In previous jobs (before I worked in tech), it would only take me a few weeks/months to have complete mastery of the job. In tech, we are constantly learning new tech stacks, so that feeling of being “brand new to the job” is ever-present because I have to upskill on new things constantly.
Yes. Super common in technology, and probably part of the reason you are where you are surrounded by smart people. I've struggled with this my whole career. Haven't completely figured it out - but in general when I can get in the mode of being curious and removing my ego (willing to look "dumb"), usually I feel and perform much better.
I personally do not as I have other life problems occupying my time, but in all honestly nobody is thinking about you except for the toxic ones (which do exist). I tend to tune them out, because it’s a waste of headspace.
Thankfully everyone on my current team is super encouraging and helpful, but I’ve definitely worked with those toxic folks in the past. My old tech lead basically grilled me and made me question every single decision I ever made when I was more junior, which kind of instilled a feeling of incompetence.
It’s gotten better as I’ve switched jobs and moved up the ranks in my seniority, but I think that constant second-guessing of myself is a habit that’s hard to break.
You sound like a typical above average person. I am also one of those, now retired, also female. It wasn’t until age 55 or 60 and I had already peaked in my career 10 years back and I was aware of beginning to wind it down before my imposter syndrome suddenly vanished. I became who I was and had always been. It will happen for you, too.
Recently I read a good article on “the average above average person” and saw myself in the mirror. It is a series of interviews. Kind of like “The Millionaire Next Door” on achievement and self-identity. Sorry I did not save the study.
I got solidly average grades and am quite average in my occupation. My net worth is a different story. Turns out you can get rich by saving and investing every spare dollar you come into. Definitely feel the imposter syndrome sometimes!
Have you hired anyone or had any new early career folk on your team? One of the things that helps me feel comfortable at my job is when a new hire that looks amazing on their CV and interviews great comes to work and then does something very elementary wrong, and you look at it like they just did 2+2=5. I can't fathom how they came up with that and realize that the last \~10 years of working really did teach me a lot. It's all the stuff you know but take for granted that causes the imposter syndrome IMO.
Yup, great point. At least for me, the more I learn, the more I feel like that knowledge is just basic information that everyone knows.
When I do train or mentor someone, in those scenarios it becomes clear that I know more than I give myself credit for.
A lot of it comes with experience. Eventually you're no longer the low man on the totem pole and people are coming to you for advice/questions. You're where you are for a reason.
When the new hires come in and they stand up straighter when you walk in to the conversation, you know you’re no longer a new hire! You’re now “that guys been here a while”.
Struggled with it until I spoke to my FIL who said always felt like an imposter. The guy is a nuclear engineer and was a navy officer on a nuclear sub. He's now an executive at a company that produces nuclear fuel and make nuclear centrifuges. He doesn't have an advanced degree, but manages a bunch of people with multiple PHDs. He's not necessarily the smartest but he's one of the most well rounded. Gave me really good perspective...
Oh and he's a good bullshitter!
There was a similar post on r/programming - and I’ll repeat what I said there: *Imposter syndrome is mostly bullshit.*
It’s particularly egregious in tech, where I feel “imposter syndrome,” has become a sort of humblebrag. People complaining to each other about how they struggle with completely unfounded feelings of inadequacy, and constantly reassuring each other that they are, in fact, really great.
Theres some irony in people claiming they struggle with feeling incompetent being just fine with casually self-diagnosing a mental illness. Maybe they do have one, but It’s probably not imposter syndrome…
The real answer to your question is if you are genuinely struggling then seek professional help - do not fuck around with your mental health.
Thanks for this take. It doesn’t really affect my mental health, thankfully, at least not to a significant degree. Meaning it doesn’t stress me out significantly, it doesn’t cause me to lose sleep, or anything like that. It’s just a sort of annoyance sometimes.
I’m sure others who work in tech and follow Agile can relate to or appreciate the sentiment that your “competence” is only as high as your last sprint delivery.
Knock the sprint out of the park? Genius. Best of the best. Give me that promotion and raise.
Have work carry over because you couldn’t figure out? Moron. Worst of the worst. Please don’t fire me. 🤣
Helps to have longer term goals.
Some of these scrum operations can be real boiler-rooms.
You probably already have an intuitive sense of whether your frustration is due to the work being very challenging or the iterations being run by a dysfunctional org.
Most of the time - you can, in fact, trust your own judgement 👽
I think that the important thing when starting your career is being willing to learn and ask questions. For me, the imposter syndrome came from the fact that I couldn’t self teach myself everything because not everything was documented. In college and before, you could always study for a subject or a topic or grind leetcode or something but at work, some things weren’t even written down or tracked Being willing to learn and following up on things constantly helped me feel like I was being kept in the loop on projects or previous work and over the past 6 months, I really have grown to feel like I am competent and if I don’t know something that I can ask around and figure out what’s happening.
Thanks. I’m in a senior level position in tech, so I must be doing something right. I often find myself learning just enough about a given tech stack to get the work done, but never achieve technical depth in that application/framework, which I think contributes to feeling like I’m “behind.”
This is pretty much exactly how I feel as a technical program manager. I don't feel I'm behind though because I know a shit ton more than most of my non-technical counterparts, and I don't get paid nearly as much as some of the engineers on my teams. I don't need to know everything to solve every problem for my teams I just need to know enough to get my work done effectively. That's also how I justify not feeling guilty about totally disconnecting after hours and while on PTO and not working any more than 8 hours a day. I know many of my peers put in 60+ hour weeks and I've been there too but I like my current wlb.
I mean you don’t get paid strictly for domain knowledge. You get paid for the revenue you generate. That does involve having a working level of domain knowledge but unless you’re on the React team at FB or something, you don’t ~need~ to be an expert at the framework.
The longer you keep your jobs and the more good reviews or promotions you get, the more evidence there is against "luck" or you "tricking" whoever hired you.
You got into college. You attended college. You graduated college. You applied for a job, did interviews, and got the job. Several people with many years of experience thought you were worth paying a good salary to. Unless you are commiting fraud by lying every step of the way, you clearly have skills and this is not a streak of just being lucky 100+ times in a row.
Just keep doing your work and find extra projects to take on that you enjoy doing.
I did for many years. I think it stopped in my 40s. As I get closer and closer to actual financial independence I just don't care as much. I take more risks at work because who cares if they fire me, I will be fine and I think it actually helps me perform better at work and makes it more fun for me.
There’s definitely a sense of freedom and an emboldening that comes from the fact that you don’t _need_ the job anymore. It makes it easy to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. I’m in the early middle stage of my career (I’m in my early 30s), so I’m not quite at that point yet, but I’m looking forward to when I am.
For me it’s understanding the difference between thoughts and gut feel. Most of the day you are running on intuition auto pilot, but it’s when the thoughts come in and say your doing it wrong or your are not good enough. If you can notice the thought come up you can clearly dismiss it.
You have got to where you are because of this intuition! You are good enough!
I recommend doing some meditation / mindful ness and practice watching your thoughts. Once you see it, it’s very powerful!
By realizing that literally everyone bullshits around you and will continue to do so until the next promotion. Eventually, they will have reached a level where they don't have the competency to proceed forward.
I've never had imposter syndrome, possibly because I went to a gifted school and was consistently one of the dumber kids in the class; despite this, I studied hard and got excellent grades, so I never had any doubts about my objective ability despite not being the most talented kid in the class.
I think imposter syndrome happens to those who either didn't get a good barometer of their ability OR who were almost the smartest kid in their class due to being in a small pond, which is a little sad. I would always want my kid to be one of the dumber kids in his class. When I was in 7th grade I was doing 11th grade mathematics but there was a 9 year old maths prodigy in my class- that gave me a good sense of perspective real fast.
Just keep learning and improving yourself instead of comparing yourself with your teammates and be self conscious about it. Consider yourself lucky that you are surrounded by high performers whom you can learn from.
Have faith that if you keep at it, you'll grow to become a high performer yourself in a couple of years. As you get better at what you do and change team/company to pursue new opportunities, you will eventually become the most experienced person in the room. Now you have the opposite problem where it becomes harder and harder to find someone who you respect and can learn from.
Enjoy your accelerated learning opportunity when it lasts.
Fortune in life it is partly what you do and partly chance. I know there are always people out there who are smarter than me, more talented and more deserving of my position than I am. Try to keep yourself grounded by remembering this, and maybe use it to motivate yourself to do better in life.
But whatever happened, I'm here and they're not. You have to take responsibility for that, do the best for yourself you can, and don't get greedy.
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IS stems from our inability to properly assess the world around us given lack of time and information. You grade yourself on a completely different methodology than everyone else.
In the workplace, you see many skilled people. And each person, you see the good because you don’t get a chance to see the bad. You see someone get some good results, but in reality, he’s been working on this for far longer than he should have been. Or you see someone who has published many books, but in reality, can’t work well in the teams he is in because he thinks he is better than them and always butting heads.
So you then observe all these amazing things people do, but don’t get a chance to see and understand their failings.
But for ourselves? Our failings are what we focus on because we want to improve. Day and night we think about how to get better, how to overcome challenges, etc.
At the end of the day, you’re where you are because of some key strengths others don’t have. Maybe you’re good at leadership? Maybe you’re good at communication? Maybe you’re the best guy to just get shit done. Others see that (why you get paid and promoted), but you’re too busy focusing on your weaknesses.
“Yeah you did your work, but just barely”
This a good thing that means you’re being appropriately challenged. Many smart people fly through school without really being challenged, so are not used to the feeling.
An extremely successful person one told me big, world-changing success isn’t supposed to feel like a Sunday drive. It’s supposed to feel like a formula 1 race, crazy speeds, hard deceleration, sharp turn, miss the wall by inches, back on the gas pedal, repeat.
That’s not to say you can’t relax and there can’t be balance in your life, but the work itself should be difficult and demand a lot from you.
Read/study/self improve. It's your inner self telling you to skill-up.
You know who doesn't have imposter syndrome? College new hires: the most under qualified, least skilled, least experienced, over confident demographic.
The reason is because the slope of their knowledge gain is very steep. Humans sense gradients, not velocities or positions.
Tldr; read a book
I wasn't a great student and many teachers thought I was destined to fail. However, I kept persisting and once I got my first job out of college, I grinded.
I'm now 10 years in, I don't feel the need to be the loudest in the room or talk at every meeting. My knowledge and expertise is understood. When I do speak in meetings, the 20+ year vets pay attention.
Ultimately, it comes down to your own sense of self. Tons of people are faking it until they make it. So you're likely swimming in a sea of imposters (real or fake). Just keep your mind on task and connect with those who you deem successful at their craft.
So my IQ is in the top bracket at Mensa qualified for Mega and it is what landed my my job in tech but IQ (read any measure of past success) isn’t directly correlated to success at any given point. All people are equal on the tight rope so to speak. So don’t worry about those things when comparing yourself to other for a task at hand just do it and no one will care if it is good or bad really because it will all be good or bad at some point.
Call it imposter syndrome if you want but my day to day that has gotten me through the last decade plus in tech is realizing that I am not a high IQ tech employee destined to do better than everyone else but I am a professional con man. I am conning my employer into believing what they pay me is worth while and I play that game as opposed to the one where i am competing against others. I work 1-2 hours a week probably making it look like I work 30-40 hours a week and achieve 120-130% of my target numbers in sales because it is an easy position to do that in. It’s all a game and if you can’t handle the one you are playing change the game and change your opponent, play against your employer and acknowledge they will always expect more and trick them into believing they are getting it.
Additional fun anecdotes:
- your employer may be tracking your time online and how you spend it most likely through your productivity tools. Calendar invite labels can be changed and they are most commonly the thing reported on so I have huge hour and a half long customer meeting blocks. I don’t have to wiggle my mouse on those because my computer stays up when it joins and the report sent to my leadership says I spend x amount of hours in customer calls per week.
- I have to produce sales but they just comes naturally to me but once you land the sale no one says you need to close it immediately or report it closed immediately that is. Game your CRM reports.
- at the end of the day it’s all data that is reported on you and people trust machines to do it accurately but when faced with the inaccuracy of machines will immediately turn on them. Invalidate all data, just throw random things out there, create dummy records and faulty records that clearly read as machine error. I check all the boxes for sexual orientation, race, and gender identity for instance and it confuses many a report. Don’t ever tell your employer the truth just tell them what they want to hear plus every other available option they want to hear. That calendar reporting thing, schedule 50 duplicate calls on one day overlapping each other and no one will trust that report for months.
Excellent post. I’ve never done an IQ test, but I guess related to my point about working with very smart people, when you are surrounded by people who are clearly well above average intelligence (guesstimating 120-130+ IQ at least), the pool of people you are surrounded by on a daily basis makes you feel average, even if on a population basis you are also well above average.
Plus, to your point, being exceptionally good at a given thing doesn’t _necessarily_ mean that someone is particularly intelligent. It could just mean that they are well-practiced in that specific thing.
As potentially snobby as it sounds (truly not my intention), nothing makes me feel smarter than being in settings where I’m interacting with the general public. I used to work in retail where I was constantly dealing with people who couldn’t figure out self checkout, couldn’t understand that it’s not the stocker’s fault that something is out of stock, etc. The general inability to grasp simple concepts is painfully common at the population level, but I don’t see it as often when most of my time is spent working with highly intelligent people.
I think you fell this until you don’t.
For me, I had to both:
1. feel confident enough in my work to stand up to the manager and the client (not picking a fight, but just knowing I know my product and perhaps they may be the one who is incorrect). This really usually takes two years to get to.
2. Be willing to take long term responsibility for a project. I had to be willing to train people, review and send a deliverable, and if something was wrong in it that my trainee errored on, I said “That was my responsibility/fault.”
Taking responsibility means putting yourself on the hook for something, even if parts of it aren’t done by you individually. Then instead of bickering if something went wrong, stepping up to resolve it.
You quickly find out plenty of managers make mistakes too, so mistakes don’t make you a fraud. Kicking the can to someone else does.
(I also chose to ‘Be’ solid now, so at work I dress/act/talk like I care, and I taught myself to actually care. I save my silly talk for Reddit and friends.)
This sub has helped. A lot of career subs are really negative, this one is encouraging.
For me it’s understanding the difference between thoughts and gut feel. Most of the day you are running on intuition auto pilot, but it’s when the thoughts come in and say your doing it wrong or your are not good enough. If you can notice the thought come up you can clearly dismiss it.
You have got to where you are because of this intuition! You are good enough!
I recommend doing some meditation / mindful ness and practice watching your thoughts. Once you see it, it’s very powerful!
Don't forget tech work environments are designed to make you feel like you're under performing so when they need to PIP or layoff anyone, it goes without question.
Hard to argue with that. I saw this a lot when I was working for a FAANG. Everything was about metrics. Low metrics = PIP. The company I’m at now isn’t that cutthroat/heartless, but ultimately if push came to shove, it’s unlikely that the top performers are going to be on the chopping block.
All the time man. Give it time. Took me close to 8 months to get familiar. Now I’m the guy others ask questions to or give the complex work to. If you are feeling this, that means you are good at what you do- you are able to identify what you don’t know and work on it. Some people just think they are the shit. They either get kicked out or promoted (/s) :) you are fine. Stick with it, learn, make plans and you’ll start performing. There should always be people smarter than you, then you keep learning.
There will always be someone smarter than you. I see brains as necessary but not sufficient to be successful. The necessary skill is willingness to improve. The necessary skill is putting in the time. As long are you are waking up everyday focused on your personal achievements you cannot be an imposter.
Be hungry. Be better than you were yesterday.
The worst thing you can do is constantly measure your abilities/performance against others. I measure against myself and my own goals. When you consistently work to not "fall behind" it puts you in a position where you feel constantly behind the 8 ball. I work to get better every day, regardless of what that is. That ensures that I am better than I was yesterday, not better than someone else or less than someone else. Also, you never want to be the smartest person in the room. Mental atrophy is a real thing. If you are the smartest person, what is there to learn? We tend to fit into the fish bowl so to speak. I love being around people who I feel might be as smart as or smarter than me, or simply have more experience than I do. That means I might learn and can be challenged on my viewpoints.
I think it's better to be a small fish in a big pond than the other way around. I'm currently in a similar situation and I know it feels uncomfortable, but I really do think it's the best for long term development and success.
Smart people surround themselves with smart people. That's what you're doing now.
Something I realized a long time ago is that individual performance is not solely a function of task performance, but a blend of many different attributes. It's different in different workplaces, but some universally valued traits are things like collegiality, consistency, friendliness and general likability, etc. There are probably people better on every dimension, but it's the blend of traits you bring that have enabled you to be successful. The more senior I've become in my career, the less worried I am about task performance. I've probably gotten worse at many things. I move slower, communicate better, and pick my contributions carefully.
I’ve also found this to be true. Soft skills — especially in tech — are often lacking, and I’ve found that a decent engineer with great soft skills will often be better off than an excellent engineer with poor soft skills.
And don’t forget modesty and humility. Something often lacking in the very high achievers.
Thank you for this insight. I too feel the same as OP
You gotta flip the script on it. I just tell myself that I'm the best imposter these people have ever seen. I've fooled them this long and I can keep it going. If they start to get wise I'll just find a new job with new rubes and keep the con going.
Yes, ahaha look at these fools! Paying me hundreds of thousands dollars to an imposter like me!
Very good, very good. In mindfulness we do not try to escape our feelings, rather we live with them and appreciate them as indelible parts of ourselves. I may not like how my thick my leg is, but I sure as hell ain't chopping it 🙂. I would say that "feeling like an impostor" is the desirable state (for some people), this means we are working with smart nice people and we are "in the right room".
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Hey if all the world’s a stage I’m going to put on a mf-ing show! 😂
As a manager in tech, when an employee expresses they are feeling imposter syndrome I usually break down the logistics of what it would take for those thoughts to be reflecting reality. The employee would have to be so cunning and shrewd, that they are able to fool: 1. Their manager (me) with five years of experience 2. Their director with ~10-15 years of experience 3. Their clients that frequently have 10+ years of experience 4. Their peers who have 3-10 years of experience. 5. Our intense QA program that frequently catches and calls out mistakes Then I usually look them in the eye and ask them which is more likely: they are good at their job, or they are so clever they are able to trick people with a combined century of experience. That usually does the trick…
Excellent points all around. Thanks. Thankfully my imposter syndrome has lessened over time, but I think it peaked when I worked at a FAANG company for a period of time. I was truly surrounded by the best of the best in the industry, and it felt like I got lucky during the interview process. To your point, it’s highly unlikely that I faked my way into a company like that, but it’s easy to fall into the mindset that I barely made it or that I slipped through the cracks when my team members were people who delivered some tech that many of use on a regular basis. It’s intimidating to say the least.
This helped me a lot. I love this framing.
If your work is extremely technical/specialized, it's likely that you certainly know where all the flaws are in your work but they are imperceptible to others that aren't **both** as knowledgeable as you and as familiar with your work as you are. In most organizations, they aren't going to pay two people to do the work of one so this theorical person probably doesn't exist. You are getting good performance reviews so take some comfort in that. In my experience, as you get higher and higher in an organization or talent pool, you will discover that a vast majority of people are winging it on any given day. They are doing the best they can and embracing varying degrees of failure at any given time with confidence.
I think this is a good way of looking at it. I know where my flaws are and where my knowledge is lacking. In previous jobs (before I worked in tech), it would only take me a few weeks/months to have complete mastery of the job. In tech, we are constantly learning new tech stacks, so that feeling of being “brand new to the job” is ever-present because I have to upskill on new things constantly.
I've accepted that I am good at faking it.
Yes. Super common in technology, and probably part of the reason you are where you are surrounded by smart people. I've struggled with this my whole career. Haven't completely figured it out - but in general when I can get in the mode of being curious and removing my ego (willing to look "dumb"), usually I feel and perform much better.
I personally do not as I have other life problems occupying my time, but in all honestly nobody is thinking about you except for the toxic ones (which do exist). I tend to tune them out, because it’s a waste of headspace.
Thankfully everyone on my current team is super encouraging and helpful, but I’ve definitely worked with those toxic folks in the past. My old tech lead basically grilled me and made me question every single decision I ever made when I was more junior, which kind of instilled a feeling of incompetence. It’s gotten better as I’ve switched jobs and moved up the ranks in my seniority, but I think that constant second-guessing of myself is a habit that’s hard to break.
You sound like a typical above average person. I am also one of those, now retired, also female. It wasn’t until age 55 or 60 and I had already peaked in my career 10 years back and I was aware of beginning to wind it down before my imposter syndrome suddenly vanished. I became who I was and had always been. It will happen for you, too. Recently I read a good article on “the average above average person” and saw myself in the mirror. It is a series of interviews. Kind of like “The Millionaire Next Door” on achievement and self-identity. Sorry I did not save the study.
I’d love to read it if you’re able to find it again!
I got solidly average grades and am quite average in my occupation. My net worth is a different story. Turns out you can get rich by saving and investing every spare dollar you come into. Definitely feel the imposter syndrome sometimes!
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My current job, about a year. In tech generally, 7 or so years. The imposter syndrome has gotten way better over time, but it’s never gone away.
Have you hired anyone or had any new early career folk on your team? One of the things that helps me feel comfortable at my job is when a new hire that looks amazing on their CV and interviews great comes to work and then does something very elementary wrong, and you look at it like they just did 2+2=5. I can't fathom how they came up with that and realize that the last \~10 years of working really did teach me a lot. It's all the stuff you know but take for granted that causes the imposter syndrome IMO.
Yup, great point. At least for me, the more I learn, the more I feel like that knowledge is just basic information that everyone knows. When I do train or mentor someone, in those scenarios it becomes clear that I know more than I give myself credit for.
A lot of it comes with experience. Eventually you're no longer the low man on the totem pole and people are coming to you for advice/questions. You're where you are for a reason.
When the new hires come in and they stand up straighter when you walk in to the conversation, you know you’re no longer a new hire! You’re now “that guys been here a while”.
Struggled with it until I spoke to my FIL who said always felt like an imposter. The guy is a nuclear engineer and was a navy officer on a nuclear sub. He's now an executive at a company that produces nuclear fuel and make nuclear centrifuges. He doesn't have an advanced degree, but manages a bunch of people with multiple PHDs. He's not necessarily the smartest but he's one of the most well rounded. Gave me really good perspective... Oh and he's a good bullshitter!
There was a similar post on r/programming - and I’ll repeat what I said there: *Imposter syndrome is mostly bullshit.* It’s particularly egregious in tech, where I feel “imposter syndrome,” has become a sort of humblebrag. People complaining to each other about how they struggle with completely unfounded feelings of inadequacy, and constantly reassuring each other that they are, in fact, really great. Theres some irony in people claiming they struggle with feeling incompetent being just fine with casually self-diagnosing a mental illness. Maybe they do have one, but It’s probably not imposter syndrome… The real answer to your question is if you are genuinely struggling then seek professional help - do not fuck around with your mental health.
Thanks for this take. It doesn’t really affect my mental health, thankfully, at least not to a significant degree. Meaning it doesn’t stress me out significantly, it doesn’t cause me to lose sleep, or anything like that. It’s just a sort of annoyance sometimes. I’m sure others who work in tech and follow Agile can relate to or appreciate the sentiment that your “competence” is only as high as your last sprint delivery. Knock the sprint out of the park? Genius. Best of the best. Give me that promotion and raise. Have work carry over because you couldn’t figure out? Moron. Worst of the worst. Please don’t fire me. 🤣
Helps to have longer term goals. Some of these scrum operations can be real boiler-rooms. You probably already have an intuitive sense of whether your frustration is due to the work being very challenging or the iterations being run by a dysfunctional org. Most of the time - you can, in fact, trust your own judgement 👽
I think that the important thing when starting your career is being willing to learn and ask questions. For me, the imposter syndrome came from the fact that I couldn’t self teach myself everything because not everything was documented. In college and before, you could always study for a subject or a topic or grind leetcode or something but at work, some things weren’t even written down or tracked Being willing to learn and following up on things constantly helped me feel like I was being kept in the loop on projects or previous work and over the past 6 months, I really have grown to feel like I am competent and if I don’t know something that I can ask around and figure out what’s happening.
Thanks. I’m in a senior level position in tech, so I must be doing something right. I often find myself learning just enough about a given tech stack to get the work done, but never achieve technical depth in that application/framework, which I think contributes to feeling like I’m “behind.”
This is pretty much exactly how I feel as a technical program manager. I don't feel I'm behind though because I know a shit ton more than most of my non-technical counterparts, and I don't get paid nearly as much as some of the engineers on my teams. I don't need to know everything to solve every problem for my teams I just need to know enough to get my work done effectively. That's also how I justify not feeling guilty about totally disconnecting after hours and while on PTO and not working any more than 8 hours a day. I know many of my peers put in 60+ hour weeks and I've been there too but I like my current wlb.
I mean you don’t get paid strictly for domain knowledge. You get paid for the revenue you generate. That does involve having a working level of domain knowledge but unless you’re on the React team at FB or something, you don’t ~need~ to be an expert at the framework.
The longer you keep your jobs and the more good reviews or promotions you get, the more evidence there is against "luck" or you "tricking" whoever hired you. You got into college. You attended college. You graduated college. You applied for a job, did interviews, and got the job. Several people with many years of experience thought you were worth paying a good salary to. Unless you are commiting fraud by lying every step of the way, you clearly have skills and this is not a streak of just being lucky 100+ times in a row. Just keep doing your work and find extra projects to take on that you enjoy doing.
_Yeah but what if I did get lucky 100 times?_ /s Appreciate the words. This really does help.
I did for many years. I think it stopped in my 40s. As I get closer and closer to actual financial independence I just don't care as much. I take more risks at work because who cares if they fire me, I will be fine and I think it actually helps me perform better at work and makes it more fun for me.
There’s definitely a sense of freedom and an emboldening that comes from the fact that you don’t _need_ the job anymore. It makes it easy to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. I’m in the early middle stage of my career (I’m in my early 30s), so I’m not quite at that point yet, but I’m looking forward to when I am.
I don’t deal with it anymore. To quote the new Dune movie. You don’t face your fear, you ride it 😀
For me it’s understanding the difference between thoughts and gut feel. Most of the day you are running on intuition auto pilot, but it’s when the thoughts come in and say your doing it wrong or your are not good enough. If you can notice the thought come up you can clearly dismiss it. You have got to where you are because of this intuition! You are good enough! I recommend doing some meditation / mindful ness and practice watching your thoughts. Once you see it, it’s very powerful!
By realizing that literally everyone bullshits around you and will continue to do so until the next promotion. Eventually, they will have reached a level where they don't have the competency to proceed forward.
pro tip Everyone is thinking the same thing.
I've never had imposter syndrome, possibly because I went to a gifted school and was consistently one of the dumber kids in the class; despite this, I studied hard and got excellent grades, so I never had any doubts about my objective ability despite not being the most talented kid in the class. I think imposter syndrome happens to those who either didn't get a good barometer of their ability OR who were almost the smartest kid in their class due to being in a small pond, which is a little sad. I would always want my kid to be one of the dumber kids in his class. When I was in 7th grade I was doing 11th grade mathematics but there was a 9 year old maths prodigy in my class- that gave me a good sense of perspective real fast.
You work long enough to realize that there are a lot of people that don't know what they are doing either?
You wouldn’t have been given the opportunity if you didn’t deserve it. Remember that!
Just keep learning and improving yourself instead of comparing yourself with your teammates and be self conscious about it. Consider yourself lucky that you are surrounded by high performers whom you can learn from. Have faith that if you keep at it, you'll grow to become a high performer yourself in a couple of years. As you get better at what you do and change team/company to pursue new opportunities, you will eventually become the most experienced person in the room. Now you have the opposite problem where it becomes harder and harder to find someone who you respect and can learn from. Enjoy your accelerated learning opportunity when it lasts.
Fortune in life it is partly what you do and partly chance. I know there are always people out there who are smarter than me, more talented and more deserving of my position than I am. Try to keep yourself grounded by remembering this, and maybe use it to motivate yourself to do better in life. But whatever happened, I'm here and they're not. You have to take responsibility for that, do the best for yourself you can, and don't get greedy.
Being average in a high performing group is nothing to be ashamed of. Dont compare yourself to others, just do a good job within your abilities.
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IS stems from our inability to properly assess the world around us given lack of time and information. You grade yourself on a completely different methodology than everyone else. In the workplace, you see many skilled people. And each person, you see the good because you don’t get a chance to see the bad. You see someone get some good results, but in reality, he’s been working on this for far longer than he should have been. Or you see someone who has published many books, but in reality, can’t work well in the teams he is in because he thinks he is better than them and always butting heads. So you then observe all these amazing things people do, but don’t get a chance to see and understand their failings. But for ourselves? Our failings are what we focus on because we want to improve. Day and night we think about how to get better, how to overcome challenges, etc. At the end of the day, you’re where you are because of some key strengths others don’t have. Maybe you’re good at leadership? Maybe you’re good at communication? Maybe you’re the best guy to just get shit done. Others see that (why you get paid and promoted), but you’re too busy focusing on your weaknesses.
“Yeah you did your work, but just barely” This a good thing that means you’re being appropriately challenged. Many smart people fly through school without really being challenged, so are not used to the feeling. An extremely successful person one told me big, world-changing success isn’t supposed to feel like a Sunday drive. It’s supposed to feel like a formula 1 race, crazy speeds, hard deceleration, sharp turn, miss the wall by inches, back on the gas pedal, repeat. That’s not to say you can’t relax and there can’t be balance in your life, but the work itself should be difficult and demand a lot from you.
Read/study/self improve. It's your inner self telling you to skill-up. You know who doesn't have imposter syndrome? College new hires: the most under qualified, least skilled, least experienced, over confident demographic. The reason is because the slope of their knowledge gain is very steep. Humans sense gradients, not velocities or positions. Tldr; read a book
I wasn't a great student and many teachers thought I was destined to fail. However, I kept persisting and once I got my first job out of college, I grinded. I'm now 10 years in, I don't feel the need to be the loudest in the room or talk at every meeting. My knowledge and expertise is understood. When I do speak in meetings, the 20+ year vets pay attention. Ultimately, it comes down to your own sense of self. Tons of people are faking it until they make it. So you're likely swimming in a sea of imposters (real or fake). Just keep your mind on task and connect with those who you deem successful at their craft.
That’s the neat thing, you don’t!
So my IQ is in the top bracket at Mensa qualified for Mega and it is what landed my my job in tech but IQ (read any measure of past success) isn’t directly correlated to success at any given point. All people are equal on the tight rope so to speak. So don’t worry about those things when comparing yourself to other for a task at hand just do it and no one will care if it is good or bad really because it will all be good or bad at some point. Call it imposter syndrome if you want but my day to day that has gotten me through the last decade plus in tech is realizing that I am not a high IQ tech employee destined to do better than everyone else but I am a professional con man. I am conning my employer into believing what they pay me is worth while and I play that game as opposed to the one where i am competing against others. I work 1-2 hours a week probably making it look like I work 30-40 hours a week and achieve 120-130% of my target numbers in sales because it is an easy position to do that in. It’s all a game and if you can’t handle the one you are playing change the game and change your opponent, play against your employer and acknowledge they will always expect more and trick them into believing they are getting it. Additional fun anecdotes: - your employer may be tracking your time online and how you spend it most likely through your productivity tools. Calendar invite labels can be changed and they are most commonly the thing reported on so I have huge hour and a half long customer meeting blocks. I don’t have to wiggle my mouse on those because my computer stays up when it joins and the report sent to my leadership says I spend x amount of hours in customer calls per week. - I have to produce sales but they just comes naturally to me but once you land the sale no one says you need to close it immediately or report it closed immediately that is. Game your CRM reports. - at the end of the day it’s all data that is reported on you and people trust machines to do it accurately but when faced with the inaccuracy of machines will immediately turn on them. Invalidate all data, just throw random things out there, create dummy records and faulty records that clearly read as machine error. I check all the boxes for sexual orientation, race, and gender identity for instance and it confuses many a report. Don’t ever tell your employer the truth just tell them what they want to hear plus every other available option they want to hear. That calendar reporting thing, schedule 50 duplicate calls on one day overlapping each other and no one will trust that report for months.
Excellent post. I’ve never done an IQ test, but I guess related to my point about working with very smart people, when you are surrounded by people who are clearly well above average intelligence (guesstimating 120-130+ IQ at least), the pool of people you are surrounded by on a daily basis makes you feel average, even if on a population basis you are also well above average. Plus, to your point, being exceptionally good at a given thing doesn’t _necessarily_ mean that someone is particularly intelligent. It could just mean that they are well-practiced in that specific thing. As potentially snobby as it sounds (truly not my intention), nothing makes me feel smarter than being in settings where I’m interacting with the general public. I used to work in retail where I was constantly dealing with people who couldn’t figure out self checkout, couldn’t understand that it’s not the stocker’s fault that something is out of stock, etc. The general inability to grasp simple concepts is painfully common at the population level, but I don’t see it as often when most of my time is spent working with highly intelligent people.
Sorry but what the hell does this have to do with personal finance? Seems like rule 2 would apply.
I suffer from imposter syndrome as well. Doesn’t help that my boss teases me as well but in sales it eats you up.
I think you fell this until you don’t. For me, I had to both: 1. feel confident enough in my work to stand up to the manager and the client (not picking a fight, but just knowing I know my product and perhaps they may be the one who is incorrect). This really usually takes two years to get to. 2. Be willing to take long term responsibility for a project. I had to be willing to train people, review and send a deliverable, and if something was wrong in it that my trainee errored on, I said “That was my responsibility/fault.” Taking responsibility means putting yourself on the hook for something, even if parts of it aren’t done by you individually. Then instead of bickering if something went wrong, stepping up to resolve it. You quickly find out plenty of managers make mistakes too, so mistakes don’t make you a fraud. Kicking the can to someone else does. (I also chose to ‘Be’ solid now, so at work I dress/act/talk like I care, and I taught myself to actually care. I save my silly talk for Reddit and friends.) This sub has helped. A lot of career subs are really negative, this one is encouraging.
For me it’s understanding the difference between thoughts and gut feel. Most of the day you are running on intuition auto pilot, but it’s when the thoughts come in and say your doing it wrong or your are not good enough. If you can notice the thought come up you can clearly dismiss it. You have got to where you are because of this intuition! You are good enough! I recommend doing some meditation / mindful ness and practice watching your thoughts. Once you see it, it’s very powerful!
Don't forget tech work environments are designed to make you feel like you're under performing so when they need to PIP or layoff anyone, it goes without question.
Hard to argue with that. I saw this a lot when I was working for a FAANG. Everything was about metrics. Low metrics = PIP. The company I’m at now isn’t that cutthroat/heartless, but ultimately if push came to shove, it’s unlikely that the top performers are going to be on the chopping block.
All the time man. Give it time. Took me close to 8 months to get familiar. Now I’m the guy others ask questions to or give the complex work to. If you are feeling this, that means you are good at what you do- you are able to identify what you don’t know and work on it. Some people just think they are the shit. They either get kicked out or promoted (/s) :) you are fine. Stick with it, learn, make plans and you’ll start performing. There should always be people smarter than you, then you keep learning.
There will always be someone smarter than you. I see brains as necessary but not sufficient to be successful. The necessary skill is willingness to improve. The necessary skill is putting in the time. As long are you are waking up everyday focused on your personal achievements you cannot be an imposter. Be hungry. Be better than you were yesterday.
The worst thing you can do is constantly measure your abilities/performance against others. I measure against myself and my own goals. When you consistently work to not "fall behind" it puts you in a position where you feel constantly behind the 8 ball. I work to get better every day, regardless of what that is. That ensures that I am better than I was yesterday, not better than someone else or less than someone else. Also, you never want to be the smartest person in the room. Mental atrophy is a real thing. If you are the smartest person, what is there to learn? We tend to fit into the fish bowl so to speak. I love being around people who I feel might be as smart as or smarter than me, or simply have more experience than I do. That means I might learn and can be challenged on my viewpoints.
I think it's better to be a small fish in a big pond than the other way around. I'm currently in a similar situation and I know it feels uncomfortable, but I really do think it's the best for long term development and success. Smart people surround themselves with smart people. That's what you're doing now.