I feel like a fraud and that’s a good thing

I thought this was going to be a humblebrag -- and boy, it sure started out that way -- but I was pleasantly surprised by the end.

It made me think about how some tools, libraries, or frameworks seem to prefer to use buzzwords or neologisms to make simple things seem complicated. As though by obfusticating the problem domain, they can make their solution seem that much more magnificent. As though the docs should make you feel stupid.

And the reason they do this is because in our industry, it works. Things often seem impressive to the degree that they seem complicated. People are "advertising" their stuff by making it seem like a special snowflake instead of a simple thing.

Far be it from me to blame people for doing something that works. But there is a bit of an echo chamber, especially in this forum, where developers -- developers, not marketers, not "suits" -- prefer to use buzzwords over plain language, and they would rather you think they did something complicated than something simple or something solid.

This article really resonates with me. Most of my coworkers seem perfectly happy to simply show up, do their work and go home and have no desire to seek to improve their craft.

Sometimes I wish I could be like them. I have this thirst for knowledge and to improve my skills, which is why I'm here reading HN. But it is really overwhelming at times trying to keep up with everything here and at times I can't help but feel inferior to others at times.

I spent several years using GWT and now I'm getting compensated very nicely to work on an multiple ExtJS products. To keep from getting left behind I've toyed with Angular, React, Mithril, mercury, Redis, etc. and my queue of things to learn keeps getting larger and larger (Docker, Vagrant, Sandstorm, most of AWS stack, ...). At this point I probably have at least 200 bookmarks tagged with a generic "Programming" label.

When I'm responsible for the architecture for real systems, I sometimes feel like a fraud. Domain driven design, TDD, CQRS, anemic vs rich domain models, functional vs OO, agile... do I really know what I'm doing? Does anyone know what they're doing?

I recently looked back at some code from some senior level architects I worked with when I was still relatively junior - guys I really respected. Some of those projects had truly awful architecture and I must admit I felt a bit better about myself after seeing that code.

This article felt very validating for me. I've always done well at school (4.0 in college), on various tests and at work, but it never registered and I've always felt like a bit of an impostor. When I was an engineer at Google I particularly had this feeling because I couldn't really build anything. Well, strictly speaking that wasn't true; what I mean was that my job was so pigeon holed that I only knew how to do specific things really well. I couldn't, for example, setup a basic web business with a database backend (horror!). After I joined YC I had to go through the process of learning about all the tools that were available that would help me piece together a product without having Google's giant infrastructure behind me, and without the help of internal technical mailing lists where any question could be quickly and expertly answered. This was quite daunting, but also enormously gratifying. I finally learned that I can build entire products on my own and have a sense for a full development stack and how to e.g., inter-operate a crawler and an indexer and a frontend, and how to host the whole thing. But even after doing this, I still feel like an impostor! I think this feeling will probably never leave me, but as the author says it can be beneficial. But I think I (and others who suffer from this) need to be mindful of the downsides of this syndrome: the reluctance to ask questions for fear of seeming incompetent. The difficulty in approaching new problems for fear the new knowledge involved might be insurmountable. And of course the general sense of self doubt that afflicts those with impostor syndrome.

It's a lot easier to handle feeling like a fraud when you receive no negative feedback with overwhelming positive feedback, and are very confident regarding a certain domain. If someone feels like a fraud even in their "core competency", that can create a lot of unneeded stress and anxiety in their life.

But I agree that intellectual humility is very important to self-growth.

The article touches some of the core things I ponder when trying to keep on top of the latest and greatest in the tech world and deciding how to distribute my finite time and energy, and many issues resonated with my feelings on some of the high tech trends.

I disagree however that feeling like a fraud is a good thing (unless you are one) and strongly believe there are much better motivators for studying and being great at something than the fear of others being better than you. I think it is exactly this fear which is at the heart of what enables the emperor's new clothes syndrome to flourish.

Of course, in addition to the hype and buzz there are also a growing amount of authentic great new technologies, but you can't hope to learn them all. The best you can do is know about them so that you'll be able to retrieve them and dive deeper if and when they become relevant to something you need to implement.

I've been following Chris' work for years, and I think he articulates this 'trying too hard' nonsense you see everywhere on Github. Like we can make a 3D cube in HTML and make it spin, but people can't buy a ticket to fly to another country without what feels like a case study in dark patterns, usability issues, and horrific a11y issues.

All code is energy, and if it's squandered in the wrong places, you get an imbalance. The net effect of engineers getting carried away in a lab is ― you get kids learning how to make their first website thinking that code is some dark art, and some black magic. It's not.

    <b>Look ma, no GruntJS</b>

It's rather simple stuff. That said, any time I read the words "Impostor Syndrome", I think of agony aunt sections in newspapers, and open teen diaries, not learning how to style a bullet point with CSS, or improving my craft.

I’m in the exact opposite spot. For me it’s becoming a bad thing.

• Lack of confidence

• Lack of self-esteem

• Lack of aggressiveness

• Lack of fearlessness

I’m much too humble and too honest. Although these are great personal qualities, and can help when working in groups, in the end they do not get you very far, nor quickly, in business.

>Feeling like a fraud keeps you humble, it keeps you sane, it keeps you on your toes.

Or it just erodes your self confidence until you're committing fixes that miss obvious details which then goes to production and breaks things. Now I'm just stuck in a positive feedback loop and frankly I don't think I'll be able to justify my pay in 6 months.

> What you do is compare your secret blooper reel with the post-production highlight reel of other people. You know more about yourself than anyone else.

What a great quote.

This guy literally "wrote the book" that taught me javascript. One of the best resources that I've ever used to this day. Kudos on the new job.

That's the human side of "meet the new technology, same as the old technology". There are a vast number of levels of cruft to master to do anything now. They're constantly changing. This used to be the issue with GUI toolkits, most of which do roughly the same thing. Now it's more server-side. Lately, it seems that the complexity is not in the code that actually does the work, but in the packaging systems. The amount of packaging seems to increase over time.

Here's a presentation comparing four build systems for Javascript: http://jbavari.github.io/JavascriptBuildSystemShowdown

This is for a language that is deployed as source code. What's wrong with this picture?

There's lots of new, exciting stuff that actually does something, like machine learning or vision processing. That's worth learning. Having to learn another build and deployment system, or worse, being expected to know it to get a job, is just wearing.

I think the sphere of technology where he's focused (frontend) is particularly fast moving right now. It is extremely humbling to read about somebody like this feeling this way. I know many developers, myself included, experience these pangs of inadequacy on a frequent basis. It would be hard not to, things move fast and everyone around us is talented and smart. But, just like anyone else, I think this article reminds us that we're all human, no matter how talented, and open to feeling inadequate. There's always more to know, more to achieve. But its good to pause and focus on the skills we have sometimes to be grateful for what we've done.

I am fortunate to have already experienced the "Do I belong here?" feeling from graduate school. The thing to remember is this - there are always people who are going to be ahead of you just by virtue of having more experience. How you carry yourself is the most important thing though.

In this context, if you see someone who is better than you at the moment, do some work trying to improve yourself and your abilities. The best don't become the best instantaneously - they do it through hard work & maybe a little talent.

My own experience probably has helped me take on the correct perspective in my own career as a developer - I do things purely because I want to do it or improve myself. I don't care about being the most popular/well-known developer or anything like that - it is a job that I happen to like is all. Stars/likes/etc. on GitHub, those don't matter. I create stuff for fun, and if it becomes popular, so be it - I work on open source stuff in the hopes it helps people and to improve my own abilities.

I missed Christians post about moving to Microsoft, so this was a nice read, especially seeing how worried he seems about it.

I did a talk back in November which included a section on "Imposter Syndrome". The video can be found here; https://james-brooks.uk/staffs-web-meetup-video/

Very good article on some of the more plastic or marketed aspects of tech, over what really building good systems and products is about.

I'm not entirely sure that programmers should be advising us on psychological issues based on personal anecdotes.

Another self promoting "evangelist". Please save us from their spam. The way to get your stuff noticed (and hence the approval of your manager) should be posting stuff with actual valuable content. Not tabloid meta teasers like this one.

FWIW to the author of this piece: I don't know who you are and googling did not turn up a Wikipedia page. So that makes me think you aren't really FAMOUS, no matter how many people online or in tech might know of you.

The song "Thank you" by Alanis Morissette comes to mind. She hit it big at a young age. She wisely did not want to suffer the fate that stars like Meatloaf suffered when he hit it big young and then crashed and burned. Overwhelmed by her fame and success, she took a sabbatical and stopped singing. She found her voice again while visiting India, where she was surrounded by throngs of people, none of whom knew here. It was a good antidote to the ills of fame.

It's a big wide world.