Learning to Deal with the Impostor Syndrome | Hacker News Reader

Learning to Deal with the Impostor Syndrome

nytimes.com

70 pointsanishkothari20 comments

After landing a highly prestigious position at a company with a great reputation, I spent the first months thinking that every person I spoke to, worked with, or passed on my way to lunch knew I didn't belong. I thought I would be found out at every turn. This added to an already stressful transition. Only gradually did evidence from positive interactions with others chip away at my self doubt. I never truly believed that I was as capable as my peers, but then again they were some of the most intelligent people I've ever met.

Truthfully, I'd rather face perpetual self doubt than be overconfident. People who consider themselves exceptional usually turn out to be under delusions of grandeur and the truly gifted are often surprisingly humble. Wanting to catch up to the latter group creates the drive that keeps me learning new skills rather than coasting.

I totally agree. We just finished our perf cycle here at the Goog, and in my self evaluation I rated my impact as "medium" on the various projects I worked on. (I started back in June, so I haven't been around very long, and I'm very much still ramping up.)

The peer evaluations I got all rated my impact as "important" to "critical". I don't feel like I did anything too outstanding; just doing what anybody would do, and I feel like I still have a tremendous amount to learn, and the senior personnel are still way ahead of me.

I definitely feel like a touch of impostor syndrome can be a help toward excelling, as long as it doesn't cripple you.

A little imposter syndrome keeps you hungry. A lot of imposter syndrome is paralyzing.

I had a very similar experience to you during my first performance review at Microsoft. Thought I was just scraping by, ended up getting a promotion.

The 'lack of confidence' led me to mentally enjoy competitions because I then don't have to query people to know my place.

A very interesting humble brag thread. I'm not sure it's imposter syndrome if you think you're doing well when presented with evidence and then believe it. Not by definition anyway.

The performance reviews remind me of this little joke (actually a common real experience) -- "I got rated Above Average!" 'What was the average rating?' "Let me check... Oh. It's Exceptional".

Neat read, but the moment of zen if you already know a bit about imposter syndrome is towards the end:

"One day, Buddha was teaching a large group, and Mara was moving around the edges, looking for a way into the group. I envision Mara rushing frantically back and forth in the bushes and trees, making plans to wreak havoc. One of Buddha’s attendants saw Mara, ran to Buddha and warned him of Mara’s presence. Hearing his attendant’s frantic warning, the Buddha simply replied, “Oh good, invite her in for tea.”

This story captures beautifully how we should respond to the impostor syndrome. We know what the feeling is called. We know others suffer from it. We know a little bit about why we feel this way. And we now know how to handle it: Invite it in and remind ourselves why it’s here and what it means. "

Quite often I have to willingly do the opposite of my reflexes to understand or evolve. Accepting weirdness, fear, and diving into it to get more data.

As an autodidact software developer, I've been lucky enough to avoid these self-doubts.

I still experience them, but the difference is I don't wonder what my peers think: For the first few years I was teaching myself how to code, the harsh open ego of my online community tore me down every step of the way. Mainly hackers and engineers on IRC.

There's nothing like hearing a peer or mentor tell me my work is utter crap, with full unabashed honesty. One of my most vivid memories is a fellow developer telling me my abilities were amateur and I wasn't qualified for the job, straight to my face, in front of all my peers. This is only possible in a pseudo-work online environment, with non-coworker peers. The impersonal pragmatism of online social groups has been a valuable crucible for suspected impostors, and it forces me to examine myself and see my failings. Harsh, and often false, but no longer a question lingering on my mind.

Sounds horrible. I came across the following quote earlier today that sums up my reaction pretty well: "Honesty without empathy is cruelty."

It was. On the other hand I feel like I know exactly my skill level and limitations.

Slight rant. This is currently a major problem for me that I'm not entirely sure how to handle still.

I'm young, never went to college, and my experience is entirely through work in the financial area (with side projects). In a lot of ways, I've fallen into the "Jack of all trades, master of none" spectrum. Give me any complex problem and I can generally solve it, even if I don't have experience with it. I have a very good track record and most previous bosses regard me very highly. My skills aren't entirely traditional, but they work pretty damn well.

That changed when I followed a senior colleague into a new position as a newly minted senior linux admin. As soon as I joined, I received an asinine amount of anger of nepotism or where suggestions are generally viewed as naive, then ignored. Two of those naive things were, "why does QA have root access? Why are the root ssh keys the same as prod and QA?" and "can we fix the DNS setup so that we don't need a CAB approval to run four root-owned scripts to push /etc/hosts to 95% of prod servers?". If it weren't that most of the environment isn't documented and makes our lives hell, I wouldn't bring these things up. On top of that, we're a large web company, so it's insane that these things are trivialized.

I'd like to get out of it, but at the same time, I feel like if I can get out of if, I can get out of most things. It's a complete brainfuck and killed most of my confidence at this place.

Imposter syndrome is difficult.

In regards to the Jack of all trades quote, the full thing is: "Jack of all trades, master of none, though often times better than a master of one."

What exactly is the brainfuck for you? I don't fully understand when you say "I'd like to get out of it, but at the same time, I feel like if I can get out of if, I can get out of most things".

What I mean is, as far as I understand the impostor syndrome happens when you are at a place that you feel you don't deserve (or that you aren't really up to the task/at the limit of your abilities).

In your case it seems the other way around. Your environment doesn't seem to be up to what you can achieve (by what you describe of course).

Wouldn't that cause the opposite effect? i.e. thinking, how the hell are these people my seniors/running things like this? They should now better.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding and you feel like the syndrome was pushed unto you by means of people being arrogant towards you?

If that's the case then I recommend to just keep cultivating yourself in the different subjects that interest you, to be sure that you really are the one that's correct (you never know when you will be "sure" of something just to find out you were wrong, being humble and double checking before opening my mouth has saved me lots of embarrassments... conversely because previously I didn't shut my mouth lots of times and got burned.), try to learn as much as you can from the actual experience of bearing with people that doesn't sound very pleasant to work with, and then get out of there when you can.

It definitely doesn't sound like a healthy place to be.

I dont think this is the imposter syndrome. Do you feel like you're not capable as your position and peers think you are?

Seems like you're more than capable and are pointing out flaws, only for them to go unheard. And most importantly, you recognize and know this.

I think you're just working for a big web company that isn't as good as you thought it might be.

The other extreme is described in "Assholes, a Theory", by Aaron James. This is a serious book on organizational behavior. From a review: "James proposes a theory of assholes (a person is an asshole when his sense of entitlement makes him immune to complaints from other people) that explains not only why assholes are a vital part of human society, but also how to recognize them and coexist with them."

Note the definition: "a person is an asshole when his sense of entitlement makes him immune to complaints from other people." This is the clear opposite of impostor syndrome.

O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! - Robert Burns

I came to the conclusion (which I later confirmed by reading a quote by someone famous, can't remember right now), that most intelligent people will realize that no matter how intelligent they are, there always someone else more intelligent. And even if you look up to THE most intelligent people of mankind's history (think polymaths, the DaVincis, Eulers, Leibnizs, etc), they STILL knew they couldn't know everything/be the best at everything. There's even a famous scene in a Simpsons chapter where Homer looks up to Edison as an inventor and then he realizes that even Edison looks up to someone (I think DaVinci in the cartoon).

So at some point when my impostor syndrome gets to me, I remember that in the end it's really never going to go away and secondly, it will keep me reminding me that there's still a lot to learn and that helps me stay humble because I know any day I might meet the most improbable of persons, that will teach me something that I didn't know.

In other words, I have found that keeping my impostor syndrome alive (but not letting it paralyze me as another poster suggests) helps me keep my ego in check. On one hand my ego let's me enjoy the painful fruits of frustration and experience and then my syndrome avoids that from letting me float so high that I burn with the flames of ego.

In the end, that still doesn't negate the fact that it's a constant drain of energy having to balance the two. I guess that's part of the reason why they say ignorance is bliss... although I'm not sure it's a particularly enjoyable bliss.

In my opinion and experience startup founders, whether singly or in small groups, suffer the opposite of imposter syndrome: they know exactly what they are doing, but the world does not take them seriously, or believe it. In essence founders of projects are considered imposters; and closing one or two financing rounds doesn't materially affect this.