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Comment by hoppyhoppy2 | Hacker News Reader

It's a psychological condition afflicting someone, not that they're actually an imposter.

Imagine a lawyer who is terrified to go to work every day. She went to a good law school, got good grades, passed the bar exam, is well-respected in her field, etc. But she is terrified that her colleagues will, one of these days, find out that she's not even truly a lawyer at all -- she's just someone who managed to jump through enough hoops to convince people that she's a real lawyer. Once the people around her learn who she really is, hoo boy... she's going to lose her law license and her reputation and her clients and her house... she lives in fear of being "found out" every single day and it's beginning to affect both her career and her health.

Is this lawyer an imposter? No, she's truly the lawyer everyone thinks she is, and it would be inaccurate to call her an imposter. But she is suffering from imposter syndrome.

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What you just described is an example of imposter syndrome (at least the way I think of it). The comment I was responding to was not.

If the lawyer feels like an imposter in her current role, that's different from feeling like an imposter in a role you don't even have. This is the distinction I'm making, and why I think the label doesn't fit. Should I feel like I have imposter syndrome because I'd be uncomfortable as a professional athlete, something I don't do? Or should I just realize I don't have confidence to do something else? To me those are very different. Recognizing I can't do everything isn't a form of imposter syndrome - if it is it makes the label completely meaningless.

I'm aware it's a psychological condition. We're arguing over something we haven't even defined yet though, so how would you define it?

If someone doesn't think of themself as a "real artist" even though they really do make real art, they might not seek a paid job that uses their art skills, as a UI designer or otherwise. I think that could reasonably be described as "imposter syndrome" by a layperson, but I'm not going to haggle over whether or not it meets a formal definition.

> but I'm not going to haggle over whether or not it meets a formal definition

I'm not trying to haggle, but we can't have a meaningful conversation about a term if you aren't going to define it.

Agree to disagree, I guess.

>Should I feel like I have imposter syndrome because I'd be uncomfortable as a professional athlete, something I don't do?

We aren't talking about short couch potatoes being scared to apply to the NBA. That's a justified sense of inadequacy.

We're talking about people switching from one fairly normal job to another one that probably has a lot of overlap with what a person was already doing. Imposter syndrome is the unjustified sense of inadequacy.

Its not a binary thing though. Some people would have a little bit of doubt transitioning to a slightly different role and that's normal. Change is scary to lots of people to varying degrees. However, some people are very competent, yet might be afraid to apply for a higher level position or a slightly different role because they fear that they are actually terrible and that they've gotten where they are due to luck and graft. That's imposter syndrome.

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