Imposter syndrome is fueled by colleague deification.
It's easy to view smart coworkers as superpeople... until you're reminded that they, on occasion, make dumb human mistakes too.
It's easy to view smart coworkers as superpeople... until you're reminded that they, on occasion, make dumb human mistakes too.
A benefit of being a sr dev is getting the benefit of the doubt on mistakes, so I might as well use that to my advantage and let everyone learn from them, not just me.
Of course, you have to have a culture where making a mistake doesn't immediately lead to being let go or publicly reprimanded. I have definitely learned quite a few things about people and code by helping juniors work through bugs that may not have been so obvious (including occasionally finding bugs in 3rd party libraries).
I used to suffer from imposter syndrome significantly. It helped to see the mistakes others made which anyone could have made. It also helped to have my own good ideas and talent explicitly acknowledged. Learning to not take criticism personally and own your own mistakes also helps to rob imposter syndrome of its power because it demonstrates to others that you can be forthright and self aware, and that helps build trust.
Operationally, people gravitate toward trying to treat the humans as machines.
We have machines for that.