"If I had to take a guess, I would be scared if anything less than 15 JavaScript frameworks got released last night."
- Got a nice chuckle out of that.
Caring about how good of an engineer you are is just an exercise of narcissism anyways. The best engineers probably focus more on the external world and their projects than on themselves.
Generally when discussing impostor syndrome, one of the major fears is of being "found out", and in the case of engineering, "fired in disgrace and drummed out of the field, never to have a job in it again". That's not narcissism. It's a legitimate fear. It may not be a fear grounded in reality, but it's a legitimate fear.
I would argue that the best engineers focus on themselves quite a bit--they just focus on improving themselves and their strengths and weaknesses instead of their relative ranking among others.
There's a world of difference between introspection and narcissism.
Being self-absorbed is a vice, but being aware of your limits and how best to push them is a virtue.
While that may be true for some, a number of highly effective people in various fields seem to have a sense of dissatisfaction that pushes them to do more. That sense can often apply to their own self-assessment.
I don't think anyone's immune to thinking about how they rate, but the best know they're good, so it's usually just a passing thought they spend very little time on.
You're a better *software engineer than you think. Fixed that for you. I expect PE's need less affirmation after passing rigorous apprenticeship and evaluation.
This is actually pretty interesting. Maybe imposter syndrome is an inevitable side effect of our aversion to credentialism.
Maybe imagining they have imposter syndrome is really another case of the Dunning–Kruger effect making the incompetent overestimate themselves :)
BOOM <- The sound of my head exploding. But yeah, I find this stuff really hard to navigate. Does having confidence mean I'm bad? Does fearing being bad mean I'm good? Best to just ignore all of it and go about one's business.
Better title, "Imposter Syndrome at Google (or X): Not being good enough is probably all in your head."
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While there's plenty of room to carry on the discussion of what should or does qualify as "engineering", I think that in this case it gets in the way of the primary discussion.
You are right. I posted my initial reaction, but I realize now that it doesn't particularly matter here.