Why I Feel Like a Fraud | Hacker News Reader

Why I Feel Like a Fraud

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197 pointslarrykubin38 comments

Competent people worry that they might not be competent. To a large extent, that constant critical self-appraisal is what makes them competent.

In contrast, incompetent people regularly believe they're doing a great job.

Well said -- that's a terrific summary of my post.

This is well-documented in the literature under the name Dunning-Kruger Effect. It is different from Imposter Syndrome in that the latter implies pathology. You can learn more about research into self-appraisal and skill here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Note, however, that there's newer evidence that says it's not just incompetent people that overestimate their own abilities, but "Kruger and Dunning’s main data is better explained by positing simply that we all have noisy estimates of our ability and of task difficulty." http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/all-are-unaware.html

I completely agree. It is doubt about your own competence that makes one want to learn more and improve their skills. In contrast if you think you are a genius you won't have that same desire to keep studying.

But does this work after you become aware of it?

Why I do not feel like a fraud

I share many of OP's sentiments, but not his conclusion.

Sure, there were many times when something I did seemed "too easy". So many times I'd listen to the user, understand their problem, and help them solve it with software. No big deal. Many of us have been doing that for years. Then the user would say, "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" "You're so much better than anyone else we've tried," or "This software is incredible! You should take it to market."

Or when I got compliments I didn't think I deserved. People called me "the smartest programmer I ever met," "brilliant," or "head and shoulders above the rest", and I knew it wasn't true, but accepted their praise anyway. And believe me, I'm not bragging, I'm just sharing experiences that many of you probably had too. Others thought we were geniuses and we thought that we were just doing our jobs.

So why don't I feel like a fraud? Because I paid my dues. I may not the smartest or most gifted guy, and I'm certainly no genius, but I know I did the hard work.

While others were partying, I was debugging til 2 in the morning. While others were at lunch, I was eating a sandwich at my desk trying to find a better way to do something. While others promoted "good enough" software, I dug down 5 more levels to overcome the tradeoff. And while others accepted the status quo, I wrote my own framework to provide software that was in a different class from theirs.

I bet many of you share the same experience. Sure, we have been given gifts that many others never got, but those gifts only took us so far. We had to learn how to use those gifts. The real successes came from hard work. The kind of hard work that many people I know never do.

So if someone "overpraises" me, that's OK. I know I don't deserve it, but I accept it anyway. Kinda makes up for all those hours when I was slaving away and no one said anything at all.

but I doubt that anyone works harder than me

Seems like a pretty bold statement to make on a forum full of workaholic entrepreneurs.

Fair enough. Modified to "I know I did the hard work".

I think you're at a different stage of career development than many of us. You have experiences and maturity that I admire. Your lesson that the way to avoid feeling like a fraud is to work hard is a great one, thanks.

Ok, I can kind of see your point here. But most of those nights I spent "working" till 2 AM didn't really feel like work. They still don't most of the time. It's fun, I love doing this stuff. So for me at least, it's tough not to feel like a fraud when a great deal of my time has been spent having fun.

Once some of my hard earned knowledge has internalized, I often feel like its just a collection of parlor tricks and sleight of hand. If other people took a moment to think about it, they'd see through what I'd done and exclaim "That's easy! He just XXX".

Sometimes it makes it hard to contribute back to the community, even though that same community makes my employment possible, because I fear that once they learn my tricks, the magic will be gone and I'll be seen as someone who merely pulled a fast one.

I've decided that this will be the year that I really work on some introspection and posting some of that knowledge. It will either help me get over my fear, or prove that I didn't know that much after all. At least I'll know.

Sharing the secrets behind the parlor tricks can help with this feeling. Some particular technique may feel easy for you, but there could be people out there who haven't discovered it yet, and are stuck on some task.

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. I remember being stuck on things for a long time, bashing around on google trying to find something, anything that would help me understand it, saying to myself that once I figure it out, I'll certainly do a huge writeup of exactly what I needed to know to ease my pain.

Once I'd figured it out however, it seemed trivial. I must be the world's biggest moron for being stuck on it so long. Real engineers would have it sorted in a few minutes. That's why there was no posting explaining it. I was just in over my head and it was my amateurishness showing. It should have been obvious.

If I write it up, it will just show my ignorance... so goes the pathology.

Remember: When the magician shows you how the trick is done, you still go back to that magician for the next trick. The magician is still the expert.

If you know one more trick than everyone else, the best strategy is often to explain all the common tricks to the general public...

Then you are the only magician in town with real magic.

I get the exact same feeling all the time. After nearly 12 years of Security Penetration Testing I still go on-site thinking, "Shit, do I really know what I'm doing? What about all the cool young kids posting all these wacky papers on technology? What if I miss something? Surely it's not that hard to run a set of scanners and root an insecure box?"

I used to try to contribute to the community but I don't have the time anymore and a lot of the time I'm contributing to people who's employers we're in direct competition with (and we've had said competitors after invite only conferences trying to pass off my research as their own).

Having self-doubts is a wonderful spur to growth and improvement and, indeed, the worst performers in my experience tend to be those who believe they have already "arrived" and who therefore have a tendency to coast and stagnate while the best are those who always see a need to strive to "fill holes" in their repertoire. At some point, one gains authentic self-confidence based on a record of achievement but even then the need to continually examine one's weaknesses is critical to sustained growth.

But there is the fear of failure because of your insights which could stop you from succeeding. Some can't overcome the fear to face the consumers with an imperfect product/service even when it is more than perfect from the consumers' point.

Many great things never got to see the light because of this I would imagine.

This feeling is extremely common with very intelligent/competent people. I think one reason is that it is difficult to find a valid basis of comparison. If something comes a great deal more easily to you than to most other people, you won't have to "work" at it the same way they do. Most of society measures a lot of things based on the time and effort you put into it. If you simply have a better idea/better understanding of something, that's not a valid measure. You may still work at it -- you may work very long hours in fact -- but if you are getting results that far exceed what others are doing, it can be hard to quantify how and why that is happening.

I think very smart people also get a lot of hostility from other people out of jealousy or out of feeling threatened, which I think is part of why some people seem "very sensitive" to criticism. And then if it is normal for you to accomplish things at a certain level, "praise" often rings kind of hollow. For some things, it is a little like if your spouse made a big deal every single day about "Gee, golly whiz, you drove home from work without getting into a deadly car wreck!! I'm so proud of you!! You are just so amazing!!" You might think something like "Um, yeah, I do that everyday. Shut up and get off my back you whacko."

The antidote to this feeling is finding a solid basis for comparison that makes sense to you, that is rooted in facts and not in social BS that can be biased either by being excessively impressed or hostility/jealousy. Sometimes people who know you well can give meaningful feedback, both in terms of constructive criticism and in terms of telling you 'Yea, verily, you did good -- most people can't do that' without it feeling like it just rings hollow. But most folks who are only acquaintances will not be a good source of meaningful, useful feedback for this issue.

The section below reminded me very much of the book called Learned Optimism (someone on HN recommended the book and I found it very interesting). It's all about how you explain your successes and failures, and how positive explanations enable you to continue on and do well. On the other hand, negative explanations are discouraging and make you more likely to give up.

From the article:

* You dismiss complements, awards, and positive reinforcement as "no big deal."

* You are crushed by mild, constructive criticism.

* You believe you're not as smart/talented/capable as other people think you are.

* You worry others will discover you're not as smart/talented/capable as they think you are.

* You think other people with similar jobs are more "adult" than you are, and they "have their shit together" while you flounder around.

* You feel your successes are due more to luck than ability; with your failures it's the other way around.

This was excellent. This is a tough thing to talk about if this is an issue for you. It's funny how these feelings come up when you're in a prominent role in a company-founder or not. I struggled with this for years and still do to some degree. I remember being in a meeting at my last job and being completely shocked after being told by several employees that they slept better at night because they knew I would take care of any problems that came up with the product and gave them the support they needed to keep our customers happy. I walked out thinking they must have been abused by very bad programmers in their past or something.

I've always tended to respond to these feelings well and just get up every day and trying to do my best. Getting praise from people is still very strange and I'm not so sure I like it.

It helps to think of how poorly "real" companies perform. I mean, which software vendor ships bug free products? It's a fantasy: and the difference is that startups (that care) can turn around fixes in the blink of an eye. This leads into the greater area of support: so many large corporations treat their customers like rubbish. If you treat your customers with a baseline level of decency, they'll be happy. The bar has been set so low that if you really care about support your customers will love you!

Honestly, the "professionalism" of large corps is nothing to aspire to.

oh yeah this def sounds familiar:

    * You dismiss complements, awards, and positive reinforcement as "no big deal."

- just reached 35K visitors after 2 months, down to top 100K in Alexa. Page Rank of 5. Meh...why isn't it a million? Why isn't it top 10,000? Why isn't is Page Rank 7?

    * You are crushed by mild, constructive criticism.

-Well I wouldn't say crushed, but it does affect me more than it should. i.e. I've had like 6 complaints about the design. After like 50,000 people saw the site since it launched. Yet it already made me start working on a redesign.

    * You believe you're not as smart/talented/capable as other people think you are.

-oh yeah, I feel like other people on HN can code stuff in their sleep, while all I do is hack things together in firebug.

    * You worry others will discover you're not as smart/talented/capable as they think you are.

-oh yeah, it just feels too easy, like I'm not doing any actual work.

    * You think other people with similar jobs are more "adult" than you are, and they "have their shit together" while you flounder around.

-oh yeah, I feel that while I spend my time "hacking" things together, others are on the phone getting coverage from CNN. That in the same period others would have created 500x more features.

    * You feel your successes are due more to luck than ability; with your failures it's the other way around.

-definitely, if I fail it's like I wasn't trying hard enough. If I win, it's just the luck of the draw,

    * You find it difficult to take credit for your accomplishments.

-Well this one not really. I don't mind taking credit. But in the back of my mind, I feel like the credit is due to luck, rather than any special work on my part. It's like anyone could hit the same #s if they tried.

    * You feel that you're the living embodiment of "fake it until you make it."

-that's actually my motto.

Can you please, um, reformat your comment.

Two newlines in the textbox makes a line in the actual comment.

Edit: It was fixed by the time I submitted this.

scroll-bar equalizer :-)

TL;DR version of your post:

I agree.

I actually just posted our 2 month stats:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060559

Collide this story with Clay Shirky's piece, on hacker news two days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1056689

What flies out of the wreckage is the idea that it is not really about, in Clay Shirky's words, "Not enough women are arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks." The issue is actually how to triumph over imposter syndrome. Men are doing it by "cheating" and claiming to be able to do things that they actually can do even thought they think they cannot and are merely imposters. Women are failing to triumph over imposter syndrome.

There may be some truth to that, but I think it is more complicated than that.

In the US, women who are childless and unmarried make about 98% as much as men with similar education and experience. Women who are married and/or have kids make, on average, about 2/3 what men make which means men make about 50% more than women make. About 90% of women have kids, sooner or later. Those who don't, are likely to adopt. When a man moves, it is usually because he got a job elsewhere. When a woman moves, it is often to follow her spouse or boyfriend to his new job. This means when a given couple move, he is probably taking a step up in his career and she is very likely taking a step down. Given that women are much more likely than men to stay home with the kids for a time or otherwise take time off from work to attend to the children, for most women it makes sense to favor supporting his career goals over hers.

Additionally, most jobs and education are geared towards a schedule that works well for your typical white american male with his own car and with a woman attending to details like grocery shopping so he can focus on his job/education. This hurts not only women but minorities who have fewer resources and/or a different lifestyle/different values and cannot readily conform to such expectations. Benefits also tend to line up with the expectation that you can work full time for a number of years at it. So a woman who works part-time (even 30 hours a week) at the same company for 20 years will have nowhere near the resources that someone working full-time would have. She is not likely to get tenure, she may not qualify at all for many of the benefits programs, etc.

Additionally, studies show that male traits, like being tall or having a deep voice, are generally viewed as "authoritative". This can be an insurmountable obstacle. For example, high heels may make a woman appear taller but they are not generally associated with being in charge. They are more likely to be interpreted as "sexy" rather than "authoritative".

My personal experience has been that behavior which is viewed as normal and acceptable in men is often interpreted as extremely aggressive in a woman and is socially censured. The fact that I tend to sit up front in classes or large meetings often gets noticed by other people and seems to be viewed as "aggressive". The truth is, I do so for reasons like: I don't see that well and I have some hearing problems. Other people don't necessarily know that and seem to assume I'm some brass balls bitch....or some such. Even if they did know it, I don't know that it would be viewed as more acceptable. The last week of GIS school, I realized that most women consistently sat in the back two rows of class. Given the amount of negative attention I get for doing "aggressive" things like sitting up front, I really can't blame other women for avoiding such behaviors. <shrug>

I thought that the Clay Shirky piece had two flaws. First the examples were mostly about people getting a key break by pretending to have a higher level of skill than they actually possessed. His headline grabbing phrase went far beyond the actual insight in the piece. Second the insight lacked plausibility. If you claim skills that you lack, you get caught.

This second flaw required amplification. There is a huge issue with creeping credentialism. This includes asking for skills that are not infact required. Naturally people lie about possessing these skills and escape detection because the question was bogus to begin with. However Shirky's article focused on examples where the skill was actually required and assessed. So there is a problem.

I respect Shirky so a question got lodged in my mind. He has seen and written about something real, but what? Two days later: a post on Hacker News about imposter syndrome. Now it makes more sense. You can draw but feel like a fraud, so when asked if you can draw, you say no. Then you are asked "how's your drafting?" It is good enough, but again you feel like an imposter and answer no. That is how opportunities are missed.

My badly written toplevel comment was intended to focus very narrowly on this area of intersection between the imposter piece and the Shirky piece.

No sweat. I've just read a lot about women's issues over the years and I think it very often gets short shrift. Even if women are 'more arrogant and self aggrandizing' or 'better at overcoming impostor syndrome'...or whatever the issue is here... That whole baby-bearing thing tends to trip them up. I've been close to some women who didn't initially have any particular plans to settle down and have kids and were all too happy to pursue life in a man's world on the terms offered. They did very well -- until they had a baby. Then it all came crashing down and they wound up enormously frustrated with their lives and bewildered at their inability to escape the fate of so many women that they thought for a time they had already escaped.

In contrast, European women have generally faired better than American women. Historically, they didn't fight for "rights". Instead, they worked for support and assistance for the burden of bearing and raising their kids. Getting that has allowed women in some European countries to close the wage gap to some extent and to do a better job of balancing career and family. They also generally have more family support and lower divorce rates. The typical historical American attitude of "Don't tread on me" (and the general F... You attitude that goes with it) works okay until you have a baby and then need community support of some sort. Then bitchy positions about not needing a man (or anyone else) suddenly don't work so well.

Um, I'll just stop here. Consider it a pet topic of mine. Okay? :)

Wow, quite relieved that I am not alone!

:D Thanks for sharing this.

Fake it till you make it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_it_till_you_make_it

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/steven_tyler.htm...

Its a valid quote, a very valid concept, and it is this article described in one sentence. If its good enough for recovering alcoholics to get back on their feet, and good enough for one of the greatest rock musicians of our lifetime, it's certainly good enough to be my own personal motto when diving into anything for the first time.

Possibly related: Impostor Syndrome

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

It's not "possibly related," it's explicitly stated in the article, including this very link to Wikipedia.

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