Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

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Ah yes, impostor syndrome. I've been taught to be aware of it and to sort of ignore it by the techies (or I guess it's the media reporting on tech + techies who posts on their own personal blog). This has definitely been a factor why I've been fired at one place, because they believed I was too slow. If I'd have embraced the actual impostor syndrome feeling that I have, then instead of doing it away, I'd have worked my ass off to get to a level where they wouldn't think I was too slow.

One could argue that I might not be a good match with the company or something given there was a difference in expectations, but I wanted to stay there. Yet, I ignored the feeling of not being good enough and it was one of the big factors that led me to being fired.

I'm just one anecdotal point. But I read about some of the ideas on impostor syndrome, took the advice to heart, ran with it and got burned. I'm sure there are opposite stories as well.

Life is a nuanced tricky business. Receiving advice well might be even more tricky.

I've had coworkers bring up "impostor syndrome" when they're clearly just not (or kinder, let's say not yet) qualified to do their job. That's... super awkward. I think we all just need to be able to step outside ourselves and really gauge ourselves fairly like anyone else, neither being too harsh or too generous. But that's far more difficult than it sounds.

I watched a video by HealthyGamerGG where he described employees as all walking around with "score cards" in their head which he illustrated with two rows of tick boxes: a "promotion" score and a "fired" score. It works like those free-sandwich punch cards.

He said work is stressful in part because we have imperfect information which one is ahead or nearing full, and as social animals we are always trying to model what the counterpart of that scorecard looks like in our boss's head without knowing for sure. I think it's particularly insightful HealthyGamerGG doesn't simplify this to a single +/- score, but rather drew two separate rows. I've definitely worked in jobs where I knew I ran a high balance in both categories.

This hits home for me.

I find the most stressful aspect of WFH is modeling other people.

I never realized before how much I relied upon subtle social cues, especially to read negative emotions. I feel like Im flying blind when my sole interaction point with coworkers is video chat.

Thus my internal scorecard is all over the place.

There's nothing like deciphering someone's tone through slack right after you did something stupid!

Ahh good, I just opened a PR with print statements... they definitely don't think I'm an idiot now...

I think if the lesson you're taking from the whole imposter syndrome thing is "you don't need to improve", then you're not really learning the right lesson at all. Imposter syndrome is real, but it doesn't at all mean it's okay to be complacent, and it certainly isn't meant to encourage more Dunning-Krugerism.

> I think if the lesson you're taking from the whole imposter syndrome thing is "you don't need to improve"

No that's not what I learned from it. The reality is that sometimes I get a job that I shouldn't work 8 hours per day for but 12 to 16 hours per day for the first few couple of months in order to get reliably up to speed. Yes, that's harsh, but at least it means my job would be secure.

Instead, I did my best for 8 hours per day and simply wasn't good enough.

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