[HN Gopher] Embracing Imposter Syndrome
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Embracing Imposter Syndrome
Author : iamjfu
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-02-22 12:03 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.justindfuller.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.justindfuller.com)
| borroka wrote:
| I find the fetishization of weakness and failure, the "syndromes"
| like the impostor's, difficult to relate to because I grew up
| (the contemporary times are overall better than the olden times,
| to be clear) when the examples of virtue, at least in theory,
| were self-control in the face of adversity, believing you could
| do it, and moving on quickly when things did not work out.
|
| There are only a few things as refreshing nowadays as people who
| are comfortable even the situation is uncomfortable.
| neon_me wrote:
| Is there something like "second-order imposter syndrome"??? => I
| feel and recognize my lack of depth and knowledge and see my
| superconfident team memebers to be even worse position?
|
| "I know that I know nothing" -> Sokrates | father of imposter
| syndrome
| blowski wrote:
| If I rephrase that, it sounds like you're saying "I'm pretty
| sure that I know nothing, but I'd rather that than think
| wrongly that I know everything."
| neon_me wrote:
| no, rather: "I'm pretty sure I will never know nothin, but
| how can anyone think otherwise?"
| noasaservice wrote:
| You're not good enough for impostor syndrome!
|
| /joke
| fifticon wrote:
| There are 2-3 related aspects to this: One part is to which
| degree the person's own mental model corresponds to reality. If
| they are out of sync, it will lead to pain, no matter what
| Dunning-Kruger says - the inability to plan or execute in a
| realistic way, will lead to collisions with reality. Another
| maybe more problematic part, is the 'understanding and agreement'
| the person makes with the people surrounding him, them relying on
| this communicated intent, and his sense of obligation to those
| promises. If I make unrealistic plans, and
| promise them to my surroundings, that is where insane levels of
| stress can come from, when I feel obliged by my promises to
| deliver pie in the sky.
|
| To me, the greatest 'cure' regarding imposter-syndrome, is to
| work to grow with regards to communicating which aspects are
| deliverable, and which aspects are unknown. Remaining in the
| bubble of "I have to promise all problems have been forseen",
| leads to early death.
|
| The third aspect regards humility, and the level of others.
| Realizing you have made camp near the peak of mount Stupid,
| already brings you further along than 50% of the people I have
| met so far in my 30year career. The humility is a good basis for
| working on it and improving. I have seen people have excellent
| decades-long 'careers', with Dunning-Krueger as their co-pilot,
| and they didn't all switch jobs before 3 years-tenure. Heck, I
| always leave a seat empty in my own car, for either Dunning or
| Krueger; I'm not sure many are immune to it.
| barrucadu wrote:
| Sometimes it seems like everyone and their dog has impostor
| syndrome.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I see people with less than 1 year of experience claiming
| imposter syndrome...I feel like the term has lost almost all
| meaning at that point. At some point what you're feeling is
| your actual inadequacies due to lack of experience. That's fine
| and normal, and a motivating factor to keep learning, not
| imposter syndrome...
| svachalek wrote:
| I've seen the same... while touting themselves as an industry
| expert on social media. Overselling yourself on your resume,
| the interview, Twitter, industry conferences, etc., that's
| what an actual impostor is. I think another common case is
| simple privilege, connections brought you a little farther in
| life than skills would suggest.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's an actual phenomenon and
| it's difficult for the people who are dealing with it. But
| they're not being helped by the normalization of the idea.
| For most of us, you should be feeling like you worked hard to
| get where you are and totally deserve it.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Yeah it's weird, right. I almost feel like an impostor for not
| feeling like an impostor.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| If you use any kind of social media, you know that everyone
| else's kids are smarter, their house is tidier, their vacations
| are more interesting, and most importantly: They have absolute
| certainty that they're living their life right.
|
| Whereas you have a messy house, misbehaving kids, you can't
| remember the last time you've been to a beach, and you're full of
| doubt about your own choices.
|
| Why should it be any different at work? It's so easy to walk past
| someone else's desk, see them engrossed in whatever they're doing
| and think they're working so effectively, whereas yourself you
| spend 90% of the time trying to get focused and 10% in
| hyperbursts actually getting the work done. Kind of.
|
| But this impostor syndrome, at work at least, is a motivator. If
| you're always the least smart person in the room you know you
| need to keep proving yourself and this drives your actual
| performance.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| There's a kernel of common sense truth to this idea: Even
| before social media, we only framed photos of the good times
| and successes. It's not nefarious or manipulative. It's just
| the nature of sharing the good times.
|
| However, I feel like I've been seeing this idea abused more
| lately to try to normalize problem behaviors or dysfunctions.
| To extend your example: If someone sees photos of other
| people's tidy houses on social media and their immediate
| reaction is to convince themselves that those houses are
| actually very messy and disorganized behind the scenes, they
| could be projecting their own issues with cleanliness and
| disorganization on to others. It's much easier to overlook our
| own problems when we normalize them by projecting them on to
| everyone else.
|
| While it is true that social media isn't a perfect
| representation of people'a normal daily lives, it was never
| intended to be. If someone is misunderstanding social media (or
| a resume) as a 100% snapshot of people's lives, that needs to
| be corrected. However, I think it's also a problem if someone's
| only coping mechanism is to imagine the opposite scenarios and
| project it on to that person.
|
| The only lasting solution, in my opinion, is to learn how to be
| comfortable with yourself, on your own, without comparing to
| others.
| technohybrid wrote:
| "Learn how to be comfortable with yourself, on your own,
| without comparing to others."
|
| This sums it up, and i think is the right approach, i would
| like to add to keep positive and always look out for
| improvement on yourself and the situation around you, without
| "forcing it" to the point of being toxic.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| Well, the same principle applies to the golden glow of
| nostalgia. Oh, 10 years ago, how clear everything was, how
| optimistic about the future we were, how much younger and
| healthier our bodies were, blah blah.
|
| It gets really weird when you mentally project the present
| into future nostalgia. A particularly lovely late-afternoon
| winter day with the kids playing in the snow. Sure we're
| frazzled parents; nobody got enough sleep last night, dinner
| is uncertain etc. But we won't remember any of that in 10
| years. All we'll see is aww, they were so cute, everything
| was so OK.
| newbamboo wrote:
| "you're always the least smart person in the room you know you
| need to keep proving yourself and this drives your actual
| performance."
|
| Give or take locus of control and incentives, maybe. Some might
| think alternatively that it's better to find a unique niche
| rather than try to compete where others are apparently more
| talented. Incentives matter a lot.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| I'm not even good enough to have impostor syndrome, I think I'm
| just an actual impostor
| tartoran wrote:
| So you actually don't care and there is no silent suffering,
| you're just winging your way around? Some with the imposter
| syndrome would love a bit of that confidence
| arrow7000 wrote:
| No. I meant the exact opposite of what you somehow inferred.
|
| I don't feel like I'm good enough to even label these
| feelings as impostor syndrome, which I'd be able to reassure
| myself are just irrational. I just think I genuinely am not
| good enough or knowledgeable enough.
| radiox_eth wrote:
| I know what you mean. Because of it, I've returned to
| school for a masters. Turns out I knew nothing and it's a
| good thing I returned to school! For reference, I've been a
| full stack web developer for 8+ years and I have a
| bachelors in engineering (not comp-sci).
| bumby wrote:
| I know sometimes "imposter syndrome" is almost a badge of honor
| in tech, kinda like a humble brag about your self-awareness. But
| it can also be indicative of a vulnerable narcissist [1], so
| maybe it's not best to embrace it. It's still a bit of a self-
| centered perspective. Contrary to the author's conclusion, it
| might be better to overcome it instead. One way is to less
| strongly couple your self-esteem to the opinion of others.
|
| [1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/are-
| nar...
| sharken wrote:
| Getting things done is a badge of honor for me, i don't care
| much for the concept "imposter syndrome".
|
| But i will acknowledge that confidence needs to be built up,
| and doing so can trigger thoughts related to the imposter
| syndrome.
|
| We can't all be in the top 5%, but i found that you can get
| very far with these skills.
|
| 1. Be able to relate an observation to something you have
| encountered earlier. For me that involves documenting a lot of
| what i work with and making it easily searchable. OneNote works
| great for this.
|
| 2. Do your best to remember something you have just learned
| from a colleague, it's always nice when you only need to
| explain something once.
|
| 3. Be curious. If something doesn't add up, you're most likely
| on to something important. Also, know when to stop as there are
| always other tasks waiting.
|
| 4. Learn how to search for information. Not just using Google,
| but also incidents, changes, issues, commits, logs and so on.
| Every data source matters.
|
| There are other tips and tricks, but these are some of the most
| important skills.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| As a fellow imposter syndrome sufferer, I feel for Justin. There
| is a real sense of struggle underlying his writing. The part on
| rationality struck me in a certain way though. It is his sense of
| rationality as identity. I've felt this myself as I'm sure many
| others here have too. It's not exactly a healthy perspective.
|
| Rational identity is a product of the enlightenment's
| masculinization of rationality[1]. With the genderization of
| modes of thought comes the social ideals and expectations that
| serve to mold people into themselves. Let's face it, ideal
| rationality is a human-denying mode of thinking rather than a
| human-affirming mode of thinking. It strips away our rich
| emotional capacity in a way that alienates us from ourselves.
| That's why I feel for this guy, I really do.
|
| 1. Bordo 1986 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1987-21388-001
| mettamage wrote:
| 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.
| svachalek wrote:
| 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.
| phaedrus wrote:
| 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.
| pydry wrote:
| 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.
| tetsusaiga wrote:
| 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...
| epgui wrote:
| 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.
| mettamage wrote:
| > 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.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| I know this won't be popular but I think it is important which is
| why I am writing this.
|
| IMHO, "imposter syndrome" is yet another pop-psychology nonsense
| fabricated to make money for the professionals, in the same
| category as "Just pay us $300 per hour and we'll listen to you
| and tell you how everyone you don't like is a narcissist".
|
| If you have had to exaggerate and lie about your talents and
| capabilities to land yourself a job, you are a real imposter, in
| every sense of the word. It is not some "psychological disease"
| which is not representative of reality.
|
| If you are in a culture/market, where you have to one-up your
| competitor's exaggeration of themselves to survive, you gotta do
| what you gotta do. You can accept it as it is and maybe at some
| point, you can get yourself in a position where you can be honest
| and survive (even though lying would get you much better
| opportunities)... or just embrace the fact that you are okay with
| being a liar and justify it in whatever ways it gives you
| comfort.
|
| If you have a problem with lying, you will have a problem with it
| whatever you dress it up as... and it will continue to eat you
| from the inside even though you know all these fancy theories
| made up by psychologists. At least knowing and accepting it will
| help you get out when the situation favors you to do so.
| kvark wrote:
| How do you draw the line between exaggeration and whatnot?
|
| The problem exposed by the imposter syndrome is not about lie
| at all. One day you are creating something, shipping products,
| feeling valuable and knowledgeable. The other day you start
| wondering if it was mostly the team around you, and what you've
| been doing wasn't that important in the large scale of things.
|
| The imposter syndrome is about this kind of doubt. It doesn't
| mean what you wrote in the resume is a lie, or that your story
| about working on things is a lie. It just makes you reconsider
| your role in the events.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I can relate.
|
| Here's my story: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-
| not-what-ships...
| AIorNot wrote:
| One the problems that leads to feelings of impostor syndrome is
| the constant churn of development technologies and trends that
| happens in tech, year after year
|
| For example I'm a longtime developer and have over 15 years in
| the industry but my knowledge of frameworks is only as good as
| the latest tech stack my company or team has decided to use -
| should I throw out all my objective experience with monoliths now
| that micro services are en vouge? Should I abandon my use of
| Gitflow as a git branching paradigm now that this team uses a
| single branch model. This project doesn't use MVVM but they do
| want to use MVU. The debugging tool has changed and now we use a
| different bugtracker that I'm not good at
|
| Ie the constant fluctuations in tech, processes and environment
| are enough to drive anyone to question their learned wisdom
|
| Accepting constant change is a just a given for developers but it
| does lead to such stress
| mattdeboard wrote:
| man i started basically my dream job in December and I am being
| absolutely crushed by impostor syndrome. It sucks because it does
| actually get in the way of performance if I don't monitor it
| closely. And then the self-monitoring breeds even more anxiety.
|
| I like his, "OK, based on my experiences and connections I've
| made through research, I've covered a potentially small, but
| possibly sufficient set of scenarios. I am ready for critical
| feedback." self-guidance. I'll be using that.
| xorcist wrote:
| I know everyone is supposedly to feel like an imposter these
| days. I am stubbornly against it. So here's a contrarian take:
| _Don 't_ embrace it.
|
| If you feel out of your depth, don't try to fake it. Openly ask
| for help and try to learn. When someone uses words you don't
| understand, ask immediately.
|
| I may be biased, having had to spend time recently to clean up
| after colleagues who clearly had no idea how the frameworks we
| are using works. But instead of taking a day to learn, they
| winged it. It may not be directly related to the syndrome in
| question, but I strongly feel it is not something to celebrate.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| kubb wrote:
| Calling it 'imposter syndrome' instead of 'impostor syndrome' is
| ok I guess but it bugs me on some level. It might be because it
| reminds me of the dreaded shitposter syndrome...
| evancoop wrote:
| I have battled impostor syndrome throughout my life. The anxiety
| is real. It is a suitable antidote for some elements of Dunning-
| Krueger, but is a painful way to operate day-to-day.
|
| In terms of software or any other professional field, the only
| solution I've found is finding balance between tasks that stretch
| one's abilities (verifying potential for growth and meeting
| challenges) and tasks one can accomplish successfully/efficiently
| (verifying competence). Too high a proportion of either and the
| psychological slide begins.
| reedf1 wrote:
| I mean this sounds a lot less like imposter syndrome and a lot
| more like someone realising that they've only interacted with a
| tiny portion of the software development process after a long
| stint of job hopping. In this case you literally are an imposter,
| you are ultra experienced at the first year of a project and have
| no experience at t+1 onward.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Yes, that is also my understanding - imposter is someone doing
| without skills and it looks well on the surface vs imposter
| syndrome is someone struggling, feeling desperate and suffering
| in performance due to a mismatch of self perceived skills and
| self perceived skill requirements.
|
| Software is a team effort where the individual contribution is
| only a fraction of the whole. Even worse we just extend what
| others have provided before. As it was argued in ,No silver
| bullet' our work is constantly pushing the boundaries of what
| is doable. No wonder we feel small.
| keb_ wrote:
| This describes my situation so well, that I've finally come to
| realize I _am_ an imposter. Although I am an imposter
| voluntarily, since I job-hopped always for significantly higher
| salaries. I wonder how much longer I can fool companies into
| hiring me.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| As long as you keep delivering
| CrLf wrote:
| _" After the "Mount Stupid" peak comes the "Valley of Despair."
| This is where one goes after realizing ignorance. Accepting this
| was particularly painful for me, having spent quite a long time
| thinking I knew a lot. You see, my arrival to the valley was
| delayed for several years because I kept job-hopping before I
| could witness the consequences of my decisions."_
|
| I've seen this many times over the years. It's especially painful
| when the individual is repeatedly praised for his/her
| achievements by people which don't have to deal with future
| consequences either.
|
| It's very common with consultants. The more benign cases lead to
| the "fake best practices expert" while the more pathological
| cases lead to the "unsuspecting pyromaniac hero firefighter" that
| achieves results by (unknowingly) scorching the earth it leaves
| behind.
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