Crushing the Impostor Syndrome | Hacker News Reader

Crushing the Impostor Syndrome

cyclonelife.net

46 pointsohjeez26 comments

I can relate to this. I wonder if forums like HN exacerbate it -- here, someone is always an expert on whatever you're talking about, just by the sheer volume of folks who come here. So it sometimes seems like everyone is a published expert with a sweet funded startup using Haskell and Go and algorithms I can't comprehend, fending off offers from Google and Facebook.

It's easy to forget that there are a lot of programmers diddling with enterprise java and php on a day to day basis, not doing anything particularly mind-blowing, just dutifully closing their tickets.

This. And we also do it to ourselves when looking for work, exacerbating the problem and pushing onto future IT personnel. Just look at the job descriptions for most IT jobs out there and you'll see that IT personnel are expected to know way too much, when really you just need the fundamentals (everything else can be learned just-in-time). I've written a much longer answer detailing a specific job description that helps flare up my imposter syndrome: http://typicalrunt.me/2013/07/29/a-response-to-crushing-the-...

This doesn't come up in the article, but everyone who has talked to me about their imposter syndrome has been a woman. All of quotes selected by the (female) author are also from women. I've found it really frustrating how much learned self-doubt some of the most talented and intelligent people I know (who happen to be women) seem to struggle with. I think this shows how important successful female role models are for young women, especially in male-dominated fields like business and programming. edit: fixed typos

Just spitballing here, but in my experience guys tend to not open up about their imposter syndrome, perhaps because it shows weakness.

Thanks for posting that, I'm a male who has had the imposter feeling sometimes. However, I eventually realized 2 things:

(a) Learning in any area means learning, among other things, how much there is to know. This makes one feel humble (at best) - yet in reality one's own knowledge is probably way above average by the time you get to this perspective.

(b) Some people who appear competent (and in some cases think themselves competent) really aren't. Don't assume too much in either direction!

That could be true. I know I have a pretty heavy case of imposter syndrome, but in times of my own egomania I like to think that it's actually just the other side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. As long as it isn't debilitatingly severe, imposter syndrome seems more like the trademark of a humble man (or woman). What's wrong with that?

Humility is great, but when people call something a "syndrome" (a word usually associated with disorders/diseases), they usually mean that the thing is interfering with your life - humility taken too far, to a degree that is making you feel worse and causing problems for you.

Impostor syndrome can mean that you have difficulty taking pride in your work (since all you can see are the problems with it), which makes it difficult to share your knowledge - which isn't good for other people who might want to know about it and learn from it, and isn't good for your reputation and career growth.

Impostor syndrome can also mean that it's hard for you to ask questions (and admit that you don't know something!), since you're worried that you don't know as much as you should, which makes your work harder.

Not taking pride in your work and not asking questions also means that you're not really being the best role model for people looking up to you - your coworkers, people who work for you, volunteers who help with your project, etc.

(This is based on what I learned from the impostor syndrome presentation described at http://adainitiative.org/2013/06/kicking-impostor-syndrome-i... .)

Glad you posted this, even though you were probably afraid of sounding sexist! :)

It's very true, though. Historically men are not allowed to have feelings or ask for help or show weakness. I think this is changing, but I have zero evidence (even anecdotal) to draw from.

I don't know if it's weakness. I'd say it's more along the lines of lack of self confidence. You do tend to see this more from females. Source: male who thinks he has no valuable skills but manages not to get fired somehow.

Men feel this way as well, it's pretty normal especially if you have high expectations of yourself and high opinions of people in your field. When I originally read about it, it didn't even mention women. Of course the word "syndrome" wasn't attached to it either....

I'd think I have very high expectations on my self, but that don't make me compare myself to others. The reason I aim for perfection is purely philosophical. If I don't make things as good as I can, why do them at all? Only people who do things for worldly matters like money and status, walk around and compare them selves to others in this silly way. :S

I'm not talking about comparing yourself to others as far as money or status. I'm talking simply on an individual level. For example, if you're a programmer you might compare yourself to John Carmack, Linus Torvalds, etc. Even on a more realistic level, a new/jr programmer might compare himself to the senior person in his group and think "Wow, I'll never be that good".

I totally agree with "If I don't make things as good as I can, why do them at all?" as I've thought along the same lines.

That's an interesting observation, I didn't even notice. But I can tell you that men definitely think/feel this way too, I'm one of them! It's like a strange kind of bi-polar disorder where (like Tina Fey expressed) you're either riding the ego trip or trying to slide past the depression.

The worst part are the mistakes that inevitably occur during each 'phase'. When you're riding the ego trip, it's very easy to slip and make a fool of yourself or cause someone else feel stupid when they're not, while on the other end of the spectrum you make poor decisions because you feel like you're not good enough.

Guy here. I operated under imposter syndrome for a long time. It's diminished as I've learned that it's mostly a lie I tell myself, but I still struggle against it from time to time.

I found it to be interesting as well. Just anecodata, but my wife and I (I'm a dude) talk about her imposter syndrome all the time. I have it, but don't talk about it much.

For anyone who suspects they might have a bit of impostor syndrome, here are more resources for figuring out how to identify it and deal with it: http://adainitiative.org/2013/06/kicking-impostor-syndrome-i... (a video and transcript of a talk and an exercise). Here are also the slides: http://www.slideshare.net/dreamwidth/kicking-impostor-syndro...

I went to a presentation of this talk at OSCON last week, and there was a big audience of both men and women of various ages and backgrounds. I'm pretty convinced that educating people about impostor syndrome is important to a happier, more diverse, and more productive tech community; it's holding too many of us back.

I feel my most satisfied when I pull off things that impress me. Not others - sometimes others get easily impressed. If I go on too long without doing anything that I can pat myself on the back with then I start feeling like an imposter... just buying time before someone figures out that I'm a fake.

Imposter syndrome is our natural social/emotional protection against 'knowitall' syndrome where you speak and act confidently when you are unqualified and mislead people. The ability to speak and act confidently is a learned social skill, normally you are supposed to learn it by peers validating/respecting you/you respecting yourself. But the process can be shortcut by imitation and 'faking it till you make it'(e.g. The type of confidence sales people tend to have doesn't run as deep imo)

I think a lot of happiness in life depends on having realistic expectations. Sometimes you need to look around and realistically assess your co-workers. Are they all great? Are they all great all the time? Do they have some flaws? There aren't many perfect people and one shouldn't hold themselves to that standard. Tough to do.

I tend to bounce back and forth between "Impostor syndrome" and "Dunning–Kruger effect". I guess that makes me about average?

How much money is Iowa State University blowing on this blog themed advertising scheme?

http://whois.net/whois/cyclonelife.net

It's also a common meme to believe in "10X programmers", and it's things like that that makes me the most insecure. I am content with not being the best at what I do for a living (in the future - I'm a student), I might even be content with being very average at what I do. But I don't want to be average if that means to be a "1X programmer" who's paycheck and productivity is for the most part subsidized by the 10X programmers, either by them being on my team or them being halfway across the world as contributors to libraries and what have you.

Well, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants, so that last part might be framed very pessimistically. But I just don't want to be programmer that either brings a comparatively little to the table or even a net negative of contribution on bad days, who has to have some mythical 10X programmer in my vicinity (on, say, my team) in order for me to get anything remotely useful done.

It's only partly about self-esteem: if I don't have a talent for this gig, I want to find out about that so that I can get out gracefully. So it's not just a question of thinking positive and getting better self-esteem, it's also a question that has practical implications.

I work for an organisation who's business model depends on users completing a very long and complex legal form.

The form is paper-based, because it requires a number of signatures to make it legally binding. They brought in a consultancy to move the whole thing online. They've been at it for a year and a half. I started wondering what it was that's so difficult.

The consultancy created a form in which fields, guidance and rules were hard-coded. Part of what took them 18+ months is that the client kept making changes to form guidance.

I got myself a printed version of the form and used it to create a form-builder, which simply generates HTML. A non-technical business admin can change field sequences, guidance, and business rules using a simple UI, and publish those in real time. That took just 3 days.

When I demonstrated my proof of concept I got those 10x comments. Guess what. I'm a festering pile of shit as a programmer. But I've been doing this for 20 years, and have solved this little problem many times in those 20 years. I didn't write much code. I just copied and pasted stuff I had lying around, renamed some entities and methods, and put it onto a server.

It really is just experience.

I think that having the context to recognize a problem and solve it at a meta level means, almost by definition, that you aren't a "festering pile of shit as a programmer".

Programming isn't just about writing great code, it's about solving problems. Sure, one problem to solve is having code be extensible/maintainable, but it isn't the only one.

I don't care what shiny new code is written with the latest framework; if it doesn't solve a business problem, it's bad code.

Maybe I'm an exception then, because I can't relate at all to this. I've got enough interesting thoughts inside my head that takes up most of my concentration, so I would not have time to care about what others do and don't.

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