Does anyone else not enjoy pair programming? As an introvert who prefers to "work alone" and someone who has to look stuff up frequently, even things I "should know by now", I find pair programming very anxiety-inducing. I'm always wondering if the person I'm programming with thinks I'm an idiot/imposter.

I'm been hacking together software for the last year or so now and I've never considered myself to be a good programmer.

Today however I had to implement an A* search from scratch and with only the knowledge of how the algorithm should function I put together some code that looked correct.

I went to run my code expecting one of the typical "Index out of bound", "null reference", "something has not be initialised" BUT I was shocked to find that the code worked flawlessly.

I went into a weird state of shock and disbelief. I'm not naturally gifted at this stuff, so it was just really hard for me to accept that I might actually be getting better to the point where I might be able to say "I am a programmer"

Does anyone else get bad imposter syndrome?

I've caught the efficiency bug.

I recently started a minimum wage job to get my life back in order after a failed 2 year project (post mortem: next time bring more cash for a longer runway)

I've noticed this thing I do at every job, where I see inefficiency and I think "how can I use technology to automate myself out of this job?"

My first ever application was in C++ for college (a BASIC interpreter) and it's been so long I've since forgotten the language.

But after a while every language starts to look like every other language, and you start to wonder if maybe the reason you never seriously went anywhere as a programmer was because you never really were cut out for it.

Code monkey, sure. Programmer? Dunno, maybe I just suffer from imposter syndrome.

So a few years back I worked at a retail chain. Nothing as big as walmart, but they have well over 10k store locations. They had two IBM handscanners per store, old grungy ugly things, and one of these machines would inevitably be broken, lost or in need of upgrade/replacement about once a year, per location. District manager, who I hit it off with, and made a point of building report with, told me they were paying something like $1500 a piece.

After a programming dry spell, I picked up 'coding' with MIT app inventor. Built a 'mostly complete' inventory management app over the course of a month, and waited for the right time.

The day of a big store audit, (and the day before a multi-regional meeting), I made sure I was in-store at the same time as my district manager, so he could 'stumble upon' me working, scanning in and pricing items into the app.

Naturally he asked about it, and I had the numbers, the print outs, and the app itself to show him. He seemed impressed by what amounted to a code monkeys 'non-code' solution for a problem they had.

Long story short, he does what I expected, runs it by the other regionals and middle executives at the meeting, and six months later they had invested in a full blown in house app, cutting IBM out of the mix I presume.

From what I understand they now use the app throughout the entire store chain.

So if you work at IBM, sorry, that contract you lost for handscanners at 10k+ stores? Yeah that was my fault (and MIT app inventor).

They say software is 'eating the world' but it really goes to show, for a lot of 'almost coders' and 'code monkeys' half our problem is dealing with setup and platform boilerplate. I think in the future that a lot of jobs are either going to be created or destroyed thanks to better 'low code' solutions, and it seems to be a big potential future market.

In the mean while I've realized, while working on side projects, that maybe I can do this after all, and taken up Kotlin. I want to do a couple of apps for efficiency and store tracking at my current employer to see if I'm capable and not just an mit app-inventor codemonkey after all.

I'm hoping, by demonstrating what I can do, I can use that as a springboard into an internal programming position at my current gig (which seems to be a company thats moving towards a more tech oriented approach to efficiency and management). Also watching money walk out the door due to inefficiency kinda pisses me off, and the thought of fixing those issues sounds really interesting. At the end of the day I just like learning new technologies, and maybe this is all just an excuse to pick up something new after spending so long on less serious work.

I still have a ways to go, but the prospect of working on B2B, and being able to offer technological solutions to common and recurring business needs excites the hell out of me..as cringy and over-repeated as that may sound.

The hardest thing that I've had to overcome in my career is the fact that I dropped out of college and do not have a degree. In addition to the personal shame and stigma I felt around being a 'dropout', it also brought along with it a raging case of imposter syndrome. The one benefit those feelings gave me was an almost obsessive drive to constantly improve my skills, which in many ways has proved to be an advantage in a competitive and rapidly changing industry.

After a decade of development, I feel like I've finally accepted that I'm more than qualified and capable of being in my position, and that I actually deserve the success that I've earned. I'm still mildly embarrassed about my lack of a degree, and I generally avoid bringing it up around my colleagues, but overall these feelings take a backseat to the confidence I've gained with each passing challenge and new role.

It's my end of probation and I just got demoted, from originally "Senior dev" to "dev".

My manager found it a bit difficult to tell me but funny enough, I am completely fine with it apart from the little dent on my pay check. Let me talk about the bad first: money. I believe I have been on the lower end of the market pay range anyways so this step-back gives me about 5% cut, which is acceptable and fair enough.

And the good? Quite a bit. When I got this job offer 6 months ago, it was when everything literally went to shit. I was upset with a somehow not so smart but stubborn tech lead and I desperately wanted to quit. Then I got the offer, which even after 2 interviews I still didn't recall it was a job ads for "technical lead". The manager thought I was not there yet but wanted to keep me as a senior dev. Then, this pandemic almost took away this job. My manager brought my case to the CEO and convinced him to keep me, by saying a lot of good things about me (which I think might not be true for the tech side...)

Throughout the whole 6 months I have been working remotely from home. WFH is not new to me, just this time it's very challenging as I was starting a new job. I have been struggling to keep my pace. All people in the team are nice. However if I don't reach out, no one would notice I need help. And with zero knowledge for this job, I got stuck with "I don't know what I don't know". This ranges from company culture, practice, new tech.. everything. So, that's how this 6 months feels long, but also short.

In our review meeting I think my manager finally realise this. Otherwise he would have gone for the "terminate employment" option. Taking away the "senior" title also takes away the expectation of "I should know XYZ", which I don't. I told him I am kinda happy with it because this sets me up for a more comfortable position to catch my breathe. He told me he noticed my improvement along the way. I told him yes I have been putting in efforts but just given the situation it's not as quick as anyone would expect. We're on the same page now.

So compared to my previous job, I got paid less. But in return, I get many more opportunities to expose myself to new tech. I get a good team who are respectful and open-minded. This is exactly what I was looking for and the drive for me to quit my previous job.

Not to mention I got a reality check. This is also an indicator for me starting to become an imposter, which is the thing I despise most in the industry. I don't want people to value me for how many years I have got in my career. I want to prove myself by what I am capable of. If I'm not there, I should and will get there.

And the last thing which I'm not very keen but it's 100% worth mentioning, is that my manager said I should aim for taking the "senior" role back. He said the salary raise is waiting when I get there. But... Let me just take my time.

So I'm starting a job at a large company in the early part of next year... it's a total mindfuck because the salary is a m a s s i v e bump up and for the first time I'm experiencing imposter syndrome. I never really fully grasped the feeling that a lot of people here described until after that final interview and an offer was extended. I'm stoked AF to start and it's going to be a huge learning experience while working there.

The company wants me and my family to relocate to another state (US) and it's got my stomach doing somersalts.

It's especially painful because the current place I'm working is amazing; the people are great, the work is solid but fairly low pressure, and there's lateral freedom to work on improving the systems and infrastructure whenever there is free time. And I know that the new gig is going to have certain expectations that need to be met or my head could be on the chopping block.

High risk, high reward I guess 😅

My anxiety is raw dogging my brain and it fucking sucks, but my wife has been doing a great job keeping me level headed and thinking logically about the future and growth this opportunity brings with it.

I'm not trying to gloat or brag, just really needed a place to share some of this since I'm freaking out and don't feel like I have enough experience/skills to take on this job. Those interviews left me worn out. 4 rounds and the final interview was 5 hours long all in one day. 😫

Convincing them I'm a fully functional human person and not an autistic introvert with imposter syndrome crammed into a vaguely human shaped meat bag.

So I'm a junior in University for Computer Science and software engineering and while I'm a decent coder, I've noticed that I'm not as interested in the Coding aspect of it as others. I don't really think about doing projects of my own and tend to just focus on the schoolwork. I feel like I recognize patterns rather than fully understanding what's going on. I did extremely well in the Coding bootcamp I went to, better than most. But I'm worried that I'm not as into being an engineer as I think I should be. I love working with computers and the process of making something, but I'm always second guessing being an engineer.
Am I just worrying too much? Imposter syndrome?

I feel like an imposter sometimes but then I look at some of my colleagues. I'm not really sure whether that's a good thing or not.

Well... instead of imposter syndrome I think I have something more alike "I can't fucking tell if I'm smarter than everyone around me or if I'm so dumb I have no clue what's going on"-syndrome.
And trying to be rational, I usually consider the second option to be more probabile... right?
Or maybe, the way my brain processes things is just so different from the people I know that It creates a layer of incomunicability, so that others can't understand my reasoning as much as I can't understand theirs.
The usual speaking-through-jargon-all-the-time trend I've encountered is also not helping.
So I strive daily to align myself to what's going on, trying not to slow anybody down, but that drains my mental energies so much I end up getting done so little... and then I realize _everybody_ has done a similar amount of work.
Are maybe my standards too high?
Or it's normal for teamwork to slow everybody down THIS much?

I used to work much better alone, or in teams with proper separation of tasks between people. Like - we agree on a common interface and then everybody goes his own way implementing his part, and as long as the contract is respected and nothing breaks, nobody cares about what's inside the boxes.

But I don't see it coming again anytime soon, and people seem to have an averagely-good opinion of my work. So well, if I get paid and things cruise along fine, there should be nothing to complain about.

Shit, I've let my flow of consciousness out.

I think the one of the more common reason for imposter syndrome is that a lot of smart people constantly get told as children the "you're so smart/capable, you can do everything!" too much, and when you hear it enough times, it gets to you, so you think everything is just easy. And then when they start hitting roadblocks, instead of helping or explaining that it's normal for things to be hard and it's normal to fail, usually parents and teachers and whatnot tell them "Oh it's okay, don't worry about it, you're smart, you'll get it" and so they at first it works, maybe it just takes more time but they manage, but as things get harder and they still put little effort because "don't worry, you're so smart, you learn so fast/easy" and as they find out more and more things they don't umderstand or don't know they start to feel a dissonance, which builds anxiety.
And this is where I thinks it actually starts: at some points there comes a situation where they either share this anxiety with someone or someone notices their worry, and(at least from what I've seen from others) usually the response they get is something along the lines of: "Nah, you're just worrying too much, you're smarter than you think, don't be so down on yourself, you need to worry less", which, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not sure telling someone that thinks he has a problem that he doesn't have a problem, helps their worrying.
And on one hand the amount if things they don't get/know/understand or fail at grows(cuz you can't just be good at EVERYTHING, so the more things you know about, the more things you don't understand) while mentally still being in that "Wait a minute, you're smarter than this, you should be getting this!" mindset that's been drilled into them, and so at some point the illusion shatters, and they start to think "Maybe I'm not so smart after all", and because they think they were wrong about their level, they feel like they have "oversold" themselves in the past and that makes any past accomplishments feel like lucky accidents instead: "If I'm not actually smart, the things I did manage to achieve must've been just accidental", which makes them feel like they've lied to themselves and everyone else when they "took credit for an accidents" and that their life is just a snowball of pretending.

Now, is that actually a cause or is it another one of my crazy 1AM ramblings? I don't know xD
I'm not an expert in any of this and I don't really know any psychology so hell if I know if that's how any of this works but that's just my theory of one of the reasons why. *shrug*. I've had this theory for years, but I don't know.
It at least makes sense to me, but not everything that makes sense is true soooo.

Anyways, wall of text is over.

Oh, and for anyone struggling with imposter syndrome: I just want you to know, it's okay to fail, and it's okay to not know shit, especially in the dev industry where every "insignificant" detail can have an entire rabbit hole of expertise behind it, nobody can expect to know every part of it. And it doesn't make you any less smart no matter how much you fail. Tnis shit is hard, so I hope you stay strong and I hope you succeed in whatever it is you're struggling with.
*Massive virtual hug* <3

!rant Week 82

Eastern philosophy has made me better at programming. I'm not much of a metaphysics guy, but abstract space breeds creativity. I find that programming and zen are alike, wholeness enveloped by nothingness. A new programming language is being an infant to a foreign universe, without any means to make sense of things. Only through your own references can you make sense of this new stimuli. That nascent feeling, being a baby, is an amazing thing. Programming is probably the most humbling task I've ever endured. We all know the feelings of imposter syndrome, and yet they seem distant when a new solution is just burgeoning. Rehabilitation refers to social programs as programming. Criminals spend all day, "programming" in most institutions. Programming as a word becomes a meditation for change. So life and programming then, are forever in twined. And my experience of being humbled as a programmer has helped me in life. And my experiences being humbled by life, have made me a better programmer.

Hello everyone, looking for some career advice here.

First of let me list my credentials off here. I graduated in 2016 with a BS in Computer Science. While I was working on my degree I worked as an engineering for 3 years in a cell phone repair company. What this entailed was managing/reverse engineering a software solution of one of that companies vendors, writing documentation etc (it started as a summer internship and became a job that I worked full time over Summers and up to 30/week in the school year).

Anyway, the vendor I acted as a point of contact offered me a job before I graduated and I started with them in May 2016 as a junior most Dev. Since then I have have maintained the same job tittle (software developer), however my duties have increased.

Currently I maintain several of our build servers, manage software releases (as in I am the lead developer of this application) for the service that makes 90% of this companies money, and am the subject matter expert for everything regarding smartphone diagnostics. I've literally been entrusted with access to all of the company servers for if something goes wrong. I'm also training our newest developers and being told I'm doing a good job at doing so.

Currently with my job on a day to day basis I'm working with Java, Android, C++, Golang, MongoDB, iOS in Objective C, and Python

(Please note this is a small company of less than 50 people)

Currently I'm only being paid 60k USD and am wondering if I should hold out for a raise or consider looking for a better job? ( Please note I live in the east coast in an area where the cost of living isn't absurd).
Because this job was practically handed to me I don't know what to expect and feel imposter syndrome as I think I deserve better pay but think I don't have enough years experience. All advice is welcome

Incoming rant.

I have 4 years professional experience at a small shop working on a web application for property and liability insurance. The application is ASP.NET with C# as the code-behind. I have a BCS and will finish my MSIS fall 2017. I have no idea why I have the degrees. I know that when I enrolled, it seemed like they would be a nice addition to an otherwise empty resume. I was lucky enough to land my first and only development job during my sophomore year of my undergraduate program. Is this enough experience to land a new job?

I feel like I'm learning nothing at my current job. The specs that come in seem very vague to me. When asked for clarification, there is often push back, and I don't know whether that's because I don't have enough experience to parse what the client means in the two sentence spec I got or if it's because the client does not actually know what they want.

I hate my current job. My productivity is low because I spend more time trying to figure out what the client wants and analyzing an 8 year old system that has 0 documentation. I know some of you will just say, "Suck it up" at this point, but I really want another job. The only thing I like about this job is that it's 100% remote. It also pays $60k a year, so a replacement should be at least that salary.

Most postings I see require professional experience of 5 years or more, and knowledge of other frameworks. I can work on getting knowledge of the other frameworks, but will have no professional experience with them. I don't live in an area with a lot of software development jobs, and the ones I see are for non-IT organizations that want 1 person to run a distributed system from 10 or more locations. A hospital system out here wants to pay $30k a year for a guy to be both software developer for new tools as well as the helpdesk and IT support guy that's on-call for four locations in the county. I made more than that before I got into the development industry, for less work, and would rather leave than settle for something like that.

I've thought about moving to somewhere near San Francisco or San Jose, but I have my daughter to think about. I have joint custody of her, and would have to give that up in order to move out of the county.

I like programming and using it to solve problems. I like designing architectures and how all the components will interface. I like designing and normalizing databases. I like taking part in coding competitions for employers that are well-known (Amazon, Facebook, Uber, Twitch, etc.), even though I often just place middle of the pack. When that happens, I feel like I'm an imposter in this industry.

I think I have the most fun just working on small projects for personal use. My latest is an assistant calculator for the game Transport Fever to figure out cargo throughputs per annum based on the in-game timing information. Past projects have also been small. Ones I could use in a portfolio are a sudoku solver desktop application, PC/Web game in Unity that is a 3D FPS remake of Duck Hunt that allows open world exploration but locks the camera's viewpoint for shooting events, and a building assistant for Rome II: Total War that maps out all the bonuses/perks of user-specified building combinations in provinces so users can record their long term building plans without using all their turns to see the final results.

I seem to be an unproductive, average developer who dabbles in projects here and there.

This is what I want from other Ranters. Just say something. I don't care if it is, "Suck it up and get better." It could be your tips for finding and securing a new position. It could even be empathy, if such a thing exists on the Internet. Whatever you want, just say something that will help get me thinking of what the next steps in my career should be.

Do you ever get those moments if you wonder if you're in the right field? I'm not talking imposter syndrome or anything, just plain, you can't do it.

I've been staring at this cpp function for over an hour now, and I still can't decide where is the right place to return it. This is like every single day while studying cpp, and it's seriously beginning to dishearten me. I know it's just one of those things that'll come with time, but it's been nearly two years now and I still can't get it...

Surround yourself with good bosses, mentors and colleagues. And then talk to them, develop trust. When I feel like an imposter, thinking back of all the times my mentor told me that I'm good makes me feel better about myself and my skills.

Also, keep some sort of portfolio of your successes. And be sure to remind yourself that the portfolio would be empty of you weren't good at what you do.

So I'm in my last year of university. The GPA is high. Did one internship the summer after second year in one of the best companies in my country. Third year in my department we do a semester long internship for 5 months, I joined a company and worked on back-end using Go. This was the spring semester and I wanted to continue working in the summer. The internsip company didn't tell me anything so I looked for a job. Found one that paid great, I was getting the salary a new graduate was getting. I worked as a full-stack there. Mostly prototyping, the company was new and I was in the R&D side. After 2 months the company had some budgetary problems and we parted ways. I was in the market again for part-time job in my senior year and because of my prior experience with Go, a friend mentioned me to a company executive he met and I had an interview and got in as a full-stack part-time dev. This was for some background information.

My story is;

The work is actually great in terms of what I do. I'm learning a lot here. The problem is that I'm having imposter syndrome for the first time ever. The projects are demanding and because that I'm part-time they take time to finish. There are no due dates or anything but sometimes the CEO is coming to me and saying "Aren't you finished with it?" or "Are you going to finish it soon?". Because that I'm more qualified in Javascript and React when they gave me my current frontend project I told them that its better if they give javascript/frontend projects from now on so that I can do a better job finishing them. What the CEO told me after that was, "Then hopefully you'll finish them sooner.". The people are nice and stuff like this only happened 2-3 times and the lead that I'm working with acknowledges my pros and cons and we have a good relationship, when I do something wrong he tells me why and how I can improve my code. But I just can't get over the syndrome and for some time I actually thought they would fire me when they get a full time dev.

Everything is great for some time. It's my fourth month and I think I felt this way because this is the most demanding job I have with senior year and also I didn't know people that well because I was the new guy. Although I still have concerns, have you ever felt this way? If you share tips or any recommendations I would feel great.

Thank you for reading.

I talked to one of my coworkers about my next steps for completing my next project and he responds so lithargically. I don't know if he thinks I'm just an unexperienced idiot of if that's just how he is. Maybe it's just my imposter syndrome kicking in.

I fucking hate mobile and iPad ui and general ux. I hate that I get shit for not being able to fix people's problems on them quickly enough with or without googling. Apparently that's my fucking line of work, no I'm just a fucking code monkey, I don't know where whichever asshat hide the setting to Jimmy or abysmal fucking browser implementations in fucking mobile chrome that makes it unable for you to buy car parts but it fucking works fine on a desktop browser. I ront want to reset your fucking weak passwords because you never remember them.

I can't even change my fucking phones background, or figure out or I lack voicemail because my plan or the fucking optoknnisnt present (one plus 2) and don't care enough to put more time or google it.

Maybe I'm just fucking incompetent. I like being able just to right click shift on desktop, going to properties or running both commands.

I never will stop being an imposter until I can fucking fix anything like a legit engineer.