This is more just a note for younger and less experienced devs out there...

I've been doing this for around 25 years professionally, and about 15 years more generally beyond that. I've seen a lot and done a lot, many things most developers never will: built my own OS (nothing especially amazing, but still), created my own language and compiler for it, created multiple web frameworks and UI toolkits from scratch before those things were common like they are today. I've had eleven technical books published, along with some articles. I've done interviews and speaking engagements at various user groups, meetups and conferences. I've taught classes on programming. On the job, I'm the guy that others often come to when they have a difficult problem they are having trouble solving because I seem to them to usually have the answer, or at least a gut feel that gets them on the right track. To be blunt, I've probably forgotten more about CS than a lot of devs will ever know and it's all just a natural consequence of doing this for so long.

I don't say any of this to try and impress anyone, I really don't... I say it only so that there's some weight behind what I say next:

Almost every day I feel like I'm not good enough. Sometimes, I face a challenge that feels like it might be the one that finally breaks me. I often feel like I don't have a clue what to do next. My head bangs against the wall as much as anyone and I do my fair share of yelling and screaming out of frustration. I beat myself up for every little mistake, and I make plenty.

Imposter syndrome is very real and it never truly goes away no matter what successes you've had and you have to fight the urge to feel shame when things aren't going well because you're not alone in those feelings and they can destroy even the best of us. I suppose the Torvald's and Carmack's of the world possibly don't experience it, but us mere mortals do and we probably always will - at least, I'm still waiting for it to go away!

Remember that what we do is intrinsically hard. What we do is something not everyone can do, contrary to all the "anyone can code" things people do. In some ways, it's unnatural even! Therefore, we shouldn't expect to not face tough days, and being human, the stress of those days gets to us all and causes us to doubt ourselves in a very insidious way.

But, it's okay. You're not alone. Hang in there and go easy on yourself! You'll only ever truly fail if you give up.

Coworker: "Have you heard of imposter syndrome?"

Me: "In your case it's just called incompetence"

Whenever you're feeling like a fraud and you think you're not good enough.

imposter syndrome

Pair programing on project with friend.

We both feel like the other person is doing all the work and we are not really helping.

Twice the developer power, twice the imposter syndrome.

It seems like every other day I run into some post/tweet/article about people whining about having the imposter syndrome. It seems like no other profession (except maybe acting) is filled with people like this.

Well lemme answer that question for you lot.

YES YOU ARE A BLOODY IMPOSTER.

There. I said it. BUT.

Know that you're already a step up from those clowns that talk a lot but say nothing of substance.

You're better than the rockstar dev that "understands" the entire codebase because s/he is the freaking moron that created that convoluted nonsensical pile of shit in the first place.

You're better than that person who thinks knowing nothing is fine. It's just a job and a pay cheque.

The main question is, what the flying fuck are you going to do about being an imposter? Whine about it on twtr/fb/medium? HOW ABOUT YOU GO LEARN SOMETHING BEYOND FRAMEWORKS OR MAKING DUMB CRUD WEBSITES WITH COLOR CHANGING BUTTONS.

Computers are hard. Did you expect to spend 1 year studying random things and waltz into the field as a fucking expert? FUCK YOU. How about you let a "doctor" who taught himself medicine for 1 year do your open heart surgery?

Learn how a godamn computer actually works. Do you expect your doctors and surgeons to be ignorant of how the body works? If you aspire to be a professional WHY THE FUCK DO YOU STAY AT THE SURFACE.

Go learn about Compilers, complete projects with low level languages like C / Rust (protip: stay away from C++, Java doesn't count), read up on CPU architecture, to name a few topics.

Then, after learning how your computers work, you can start learning functional programming and appreciate the tradeoffs it makes. Or go learn AI/ML/DS. But preferably not before.

Basically, it's fine if you were never formally taught. Get yourself schooled, quit bitching, and be patient. It's ok to be stupid, but it's not ok to stay stupid forever.

/rant

!rant

Got pulled into a meeting with my PM at 4:30 yesterday. Was a bit worried (been feeling some imposter syndrome recently), but then he starts out, "These are my favorite meetings to have." I got a pretty big raise! Totally unprompted. I love my job and my PM.

Learning git (command line) finally

The constant back and forth between imposter syndrome and God complex

Conversations I've genuinely had at work:

Me: "Do you want some advice understanding that function?"
Dev: "Yeah, please!"
Me: "Get a plastic bag and some super glue..."

Dev: "I think I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!"
Me: "It's just the train of mental bitchslaps coming in the other direction."
... Some time later
Dev:"You were right... "

Dev: "If the system is so unstable, how does it keep working?"
Me: "Do you see any goats in the office?"
Dev: "Uhm no... Why would there be goats?"
Me: "There aren't, now, we ran out."
Dev: "The hell are you talking about?"
Me: "We just sacrifice our own blood to Cthulhu these days, it's cleaner and we didn't have to pay to have all the goats blood and waste matter to be cleaned up. That and it was needlessly cruel to the poor goats and that is why there is no goats and despite conventional logic the app continues to work."

Dev: "So what language is the web app written in?"
Me: "You need to understand I inherited this project, I had nothing to do with it's spawning..."
Dev: "OK, that sounds ominous... How bad is it?"
Me: "Java..."
Dev: "..."

Dev: "So what's it like working on this project? What should I expect?"
Me: "You'll call your grandmother during your lunch break just to know there's a world beyond this project. You'll go home, nose bleeding and you are gonna sit in the shower and rock back and forth, holding yourself and feeling like you're suffering imposter syndrome. You'll question why you joined this team and it'll get inside your head til it's all you think about..."
Dev: "Damn man, why are you still on it?"
Me: "Stockholm syndrome, it's too late for me..."

PM: "You're such a dark person, we're not gonna find you hanging from the lights one day are we?"
Me: "Impossible, we use those industrial fluorescent strip lights, there's no cord to hang from."
PM: "That really wasn't the comforting answer I was looking for."

Head of department: "So I need to apologize, you were never meant to be left on your to manage the product on your own, it's something someone way more senior should have been doing and we reassigned him. It wasn't professional of us, it wasn't fair of us, we're sorry. Truth be told,we're impressed you've not gone mad."
Me: "I think I have. Wibble."

A card goes round work for a sick member of staff I've never met.
Me: "How would you describe her condition?"
Dev: "She said that she 'survived' the surgery."
Me: "Yeah, I'm not great at being appropriate but even I think writing 'glad to hear that you are not dead' in a get well soon card isn't the done thing."

Beware: this is me expressing how I feel about my programming/my skillset, and so on. It might be imposter syndrome but I am having a fucking bad episode right now and I just need to get this the fuck out.

I work at a distribution center right now. Can I provide for myself? Yes. Do I even slightly like my work? No I fucking hate it to the point. I hate going there every day, doing shit I don't like, not being able to focus on the shit I love but that's it for me for now.

In my free time I still am able to program a little but then the (I will call it imposter syndrome for now as I have no clue how to call it) imposter syndrome comes looking around the FUCKING corner.

*What the fuck are you doing? For real man, someone else could do that like way fucking better*

*Wow man your code..... there are so many people who would write that a million times better*

*You have re-written this for 10 times now. But seriously, this still sucks fucking balls*.

Fucking hell. Yes, at programming level I am still a junior, I fucking know that. But it fucking sucks feeling like anyone but you would do the shit you're making better anyways.

How fucking down can you get yourself. How bad can you make yourself feel through just a few fucking words/thoughts.

The only thing I am happy about right now is the fact that a very good friend is able to keep me at least slightly sane right now.

How is one supposed to deal with the burnout - depression - imposter syndrome trifecta? ...

I'm a f****** idiot. Wifi adapter stopped working, I rebooted. I reinstall my distro. I look up for a replacement card. I troubleshoot the issue in software.

Finally someone says something one of the fourms.

I hit Fn + F2

It fucking works!!! The hardware was disabled by accident when I tried to open tty2.

FUCK!!!

Every time I post a question to SO I feel so anxious.
Did I provide enough code samples and information?
Did I provide TOO MUCH information?
Is my English alright?
Did I really try everything else or will someone point out something totally obvious after that I feel that I need to delete my post because it's just dumb?

Feeling anxious right now... Worst of all: it's an important work related question, so I have to think about a new task because this issue was my only one and a road blocker.

AAAARRGGHHH!

If your reading this and currently suffering from imposter syndrome then I have some words for you...

You’re fucking awesome! If you get a little better every day then you are the fucking bomb and don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

Fuck the doubt because you are only as professional and valuable as you believe you are.

Imposter syndrome

But what if it's not imposter syndrome and you just suck?

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?

Life of an Intern:

Trying to figure out if today is the day you get fired for being an imposter.

I am sick of seeing articles about imposter syndrome. The developer community as a whole should stop circlejerking each other. Let's face the reality that some developers are just shit and that's it.

I doubt my skills all the time, imposter syndrome is a bitch.

After working for 5 years after getting my bachelor's, I have moved country and started work on a Master's.

Nothing is more humbling in CompSci than realising the depth of what you /don't/ know. Imposter syndrome, anybody?

I don't have a degree in CS. I've been in the field for 3 years at a professional level, and I've definitely improved my skills substantially. But I still get that lingering feeling of imposter syndrome. Any positive thoughts or tips to rid of that feeling? I perform well at my job but still feel like an outsider in the industry sometimes 😔

A book/documentation/tutorial a day keeps imposter syndrome away

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.

I start my first real dev position tomorrow 6 months out of college where I graduated without a CS degree because my school didn't have a major only a minor.

Cue the imposter syndrome.

My company grows like crazy. We have more money than we could ever spend, no deadlines, super smart people (some coming from Google, Apple, FB etc), and all the perks one could wish for.

I'm sometimes feeling like I don't belong here, because I'm mediocre at best with everything I do. 😥

Starting my first front end dev job in 3 weeks AAHHHHH!!

The imposter syndrome is real.

I still don't.
Imposter syndrome ftw.

Switching jobs is when imposter syndrome hits me hardest. I know I'm ready for the next level, just need to convince the other half of my brain.

I have severest feeling of being under qualified for everything... How do you guys get over that feeling?

Over 7 years writing software, through good, bad and ugly.

I still wake up feeling like an impostor most of the days.

Impostor syndrome on fleek.

Had a nightmare last night that I had to give up dev and go back to managing a supermarket. Think this deadline is starting to get to me.

I got a Job!

I was talking with my boss after my first week and a half of working. I tell him that I enjoy having an office and whatsoever, because that way work stays in work.
My boss tells me "Yeah, you have to do something else besides working, do something else with your life"

Damn, that's one conscious boss tbh. So happy to be working there, but you know, everyday the imposter syndrome kicks in...it sucks.

Imposter syndrome is hitting me badly lately. The problem is, my entire career I've been a solo developer, i have absolutely nothing or no one to gauge my skills against. Sometimes i think I'm the shit then other times i think I'm no better than a noob.

Getting a decent job in this industry is amazingly difficult. Never had so many psychological exams, intelligence tests, interviews, for what? If i don't work out you're just going to fire me anyways. So give me a try and stop putting me through the ringer.

Job hunting is not the best thing to do while being in the imposter syndrome phase.
Especially if one is an imposter.

2010: haha yeah I use StackOverflow too
2011: SO, amirite?
2012: omg SO servers are down
2013: am engineer and I use SO to remember how to eat and breathe
2014: guys, what if SO was down. CODEPOCALYPSE!
2015: I use SO and have imposter syndrome
2016: omg, git checkout this SO meme on /r/programmerhumor
2017: I'd rather skin my mother alive than have SO dowb
2018: Stack fucking Overflow... like.. what if... you... can't... use it... in an interview...
2019: check my twitter @paresh, tons of SO references with barely intelligible english

just fucking drop dead, pieces of shit...

I really appreciate all the discourse around imposter syndrome even though I feel like I’m ACTUALLY an imposter you’re all... imposter imposters! I’m the only one who REALLY isn’t capable of doing this work.

I love programming so much but I cannot force myself to believe in myself????? I cannot imagine being able to do this as a career. I’m afraid I’m gonna have to drop out of school or even if I don’t drop out I won’t be able to find a job cause I just suck at this. Ugh

I hate "imposter syndrome" because I have it all the time while making games.

I followed a lot of tutorials while making my newest game which I just finished today. I should be damn happy for creating a tiny world, but instead I'm just dwelling on "I'm not a real gamedev, you just looked for tutorials on internet and made a game that others have made thousand times before!!! You're fake you little shit!"

Aaahdfgjkh why can't my brain let me be happy about myself. It's true that it's a bit similar to the tutorial game but I added so many things of my own there, I drew my own graphical sprites, I tweaked and edited a lot of the code after I was done with the tutorial.. I added so much! For fucks sake I even wrote my own lore for the world!

Yet my brain tells me that I'm a shitty fucking wannabe that never goes anywhere. Maybe so... Maybe I am a fake. But I had fun making this and I learned a lot about Python.

Do you guys have any similar stuff? How do you deal with it? Sorry about crap english + crap formatting, 4:30 am is my excuse for it.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not good enough to be a dev! Any advise on how to shift this feeling?

Joined a company as a junior developer and have been working there for almost 4 years.

Too scared to leave because I don't know if I'm good enough to apply for a non junior role :(

Is this the so called "imposter syndrome?"

!rant. Encouragement for those feeing impostor syndrome like I am right now with a new employer. Source +
Bonus Panel: goo.gl/mhOvDs

I've been hunting for a new job for several months because my current company isn't growing my skills any further. There have been many setbacks, a few rejections, and that awful lingering imposter syndrome. So I finally dug myself out of my self pity and began learning things that my current company doesn't implement – JS frameworks, UX practices, etc. Today I had an interview that felt more like a conversation and collaboration than getting grilled about terminology and bug fixes. No matter what the result, I've been inspired to learn again 😌

Declined a job offer with a startup, partly because of imposter syndrome. Applied for position as programmer, showed up for interview and got cold feet when it turned out they actually wanted/needed a senior programmer/chief technology officer and offered me the position after having asked me no technical questions, seen none of my code or previous projects.

Still, it was a job that paid money... And I'm still jobless two months later :(

I am a senior a DevOps engineer who took the production stack down for ~10 minutes today because of a bad code commit. I could use some encouragement! It’s a fierce world of competitive engineers and I wonder why my company doesn’t replace me. The mistake was missed by two other peer reviews... but that doesn’t stop me from feeling this way.

Have you crashed prod? Did your team support you or tear you down?

Do you ever wonder if your coworkers talk about you behind your back? Or wonder if they hate you? Or am I just too paranoid?

Beating my imposter syndrome at work. Finishing my degree so my coworkers consider me a "real programmer." Having the confidence to do both.

If ever you felt imposter syndrome, it's after your senior experienced colleague rewrites an API you built... You've been chipping away at it for months, making it faster but reaching the limits of the functional but flawed original design.

In one week he starts it as a side project, and fixes the whole thing, soap to nuts... I need to sit down with that guy more.

I fucked up.

In my career, colleagues always looked up to me to solve everything. From day 1.
Hell, I have nicknames; « The Dad », « Machine », « The Beard »... when I meet a new group of devs at the bar they use those nicknames even if I have no clue who they are.

Result? I'm not allowed to fail and even if I do and try to take responsibility, no one ever blame me.

They see me as a fucking zen programming monk, all wise, patient and kind.

Oh boy here we go. I screw things up all the time and can never let go the guilt since I'm not allowed to take responsibility of my mistakes.

Once again I wake up after a night of stress working, trying to overcome analysis paralysis. I'm late. Supposed to have meetings with some fucking PHDs, fueling my imposter syndrome.

Can't even learn anything in those conditions.

Fuck they should call me the fraud.

Ok, so I already asked when junior is no longer a junior..got mixed answers. Now I'd like to know what defines seniority level in your country?! Years of experience, having wide range of knowledge, great leadership skills, having boobs (joke).. ?!? But seriously, I have no clue what the standards in my country are, and internet is full of different opinions & examples that are making me wanna go cry in a corner.. o.O

Figured some answers from real people might help me get my head around this, so if it's not too much to ask fellow devs here, please answer this questions to help me grasp this better with examples..& non dev folks, you are welcome to comment too!!

A) What country are you guys from?
B) How is seniority defined there?
C) How are you placed by others?
D) If different, where would you place yourselves? Why?

Imposter syndrome. I’m SICK of hearing people say that they have imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome literally means that you are good at your job but you BELIEVE you are a fraud / not worthy / are going to get “found out”.

By self identifying as having imposter syndrome, then by definition that means you in fact DO NOT have imposter syndrome.

If you DID have imposter syndrome then you would just think you were bad at your job.

Almost all my family think I'm free tech support.

My dad knows what I do and he's proud because I finished uni (he didn't), he sometimes asks for help (he repairs electronic stuff) and I try as hard as possible to be useful (it's fun!). He knows that (most of the time) I'm working when I'm in my laptop, so he doesn't bother me, he kindly asks if he needs help with something.

My brother's studying the same I did, he's doing fine. I think better than me when I started.

My sister knows that I can repair her phone/laptop but she asks me to do it whenever I have free time and how she can avoid to "damage" it again.

My friends think I'm awesome, but I'm in constant stress (thanks imposter syndrome!).

My dog, he just barks and smiles whenever I'm around and he thinks I'm awesome, so I have that going on for me, which is nice.

🐶

Does anyone else get crippling fear anytime your boss wants a 1 on 1 meeting?

I always assume I'm getting fired and panic over it..even though so far that's never happened.

When you your first developer job... Time to find out whether it's imposter syndrome or if I'm just stupid.

Lets play a game of spot the bug...

Too easy you say?
What if I told you that this code was written by a well paid dev over an exceptionally large period of time?

Crazy huh, but that's still nothing. The most ludicrous thing about it - is that you (like me) probably suffer from a mild case of impostor syndrome.

I just ended that suffering. The only thing worse than impostor syndrome is believing you actually know what the fuck your doing. Keep it in check but learn to love it... it's probably the reason you could spot the bug after all.

My worst experience ... and best, was when the company I worked for sent me to teach OOAD to the faculty of the Mathematics and Computer Science department of a University in Pennsylvania. There I was, a guy with no degree teaching a group of PhD's the fundamentals of OOAD. Imposter Syndrome? You bet. Nervous? Yes. My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, and when I picked up a cup of water on the first day, I had to put it back down because my hands were shaking so badly. I could handle a room full of developers, but for me, this was a whole other league. As it turned out, the professors had a blast, and gave me great reviews, but that first day of a five day class was a doozy. After that, I knew I could handle anything.

Almost two years as a junior dev and I still have imposter syndrome.

Is this normal?

Imposter syndrome... 😃

This combined with imposter syndrome, hope is getting lost

TLDR: new job, lot of pressure and Linux shit

So, I just started last Monday my first real job with my degree. I know i'll learn a lot and I'm grateful for that opportunity.
But now the rant part:
They already gave me the responsability of a medium project, the developper who worked on it is leaving soon, I'll be the only developper working on Django in the start up, it's amazing that they trust me with that but i feel so much pressure because of that, I know that I'm definitely not bad, but i don't feel legitimate to handle a 50keuros project alone with a 3months deadline. I'm 19, that's a lot to handle for me.
And if that wasn't enough I wanted to switch to the last big OS I didn't tried, which is Linux , it's Sunday 5am and I spent the last 5 hours struggling with NVIDIA and my ubuntu which doesn't want to boot anymore 😭 I'm starting to desesperate and I need to find a solution before monday. I'll figure something out but that was a very hard week for me

Sorry for the bad formatting, can't write properly through my tears, next rants (and I feel there will be a lot more soon) will be better

First day of new job, starts in 3 hours. Imposter syndrome is strong! Lack of sleep from stress isn't helping!

On a side note, I have reconfirmed that I don't actually need sleep. College theories confirmed!

So... got a job interview next week as a front-end dev.
Imposter syndrome is going into overdrive.
Never had an actual interview since i got my job through contacts.
Any tips?

How I feel . Imposter syndrome stack overflow and google are my best friends lol

Serious question. Who out there does NOT have imposter syndrome? How do I get to that place?

🤔🤔🤔🤔

I am a pretty well of dev with a nice job and a nice salary. Yet I still suffer from imposter syndrome. It's nice to get on here and read rants about shit I've also has issues with or just feel better about myself because I wasn't the one the person that rant was about. Cheers to you devrant

I don't know about y'all but this is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL for me.
Imposter Syndrome is real but it comes and goes. Just fucking believe in yourselves!

Imposter syndrome and burnout, and imposter syndrome being fed by the burnout.

Maybe at some degree even viceversa.

Broke down and asked the junior dev to help me hash out an issue. He's also struggling with it.

I'm not a retard after all... unless were both retards.

I changed my job, after 7 years at the same company going from dev to senior to lead, I'm now moving into a new role as a lead..... Thats scary.

All the experience in the world doesn't ease that imposter syndrome

Even the least likely people experience Imposter Syndrome ...

So happy right now! Went to an interview not actually knowing it was an interview (my fault) I just moved half way across the world and was worrying big time about Gettysburg ng a job and feeling some imposter syndrome but luckily they somehow saw that I might actually have some talent and I start Monday! Can't put into words how I am feeling right now ! P.s happy Thanksgiving everyone

having serious imposter syndrome at the moment and it's starring to affect me quite badly ; anyone managed to deal with it in the past ?

Get rid of the imposter syndrome.

I've been wanting to ask this for a while now: How does everyone feel about imposter syndrome? Have you ever experienced these moments of finally getting the hang of something and then suddenly have it all smashed within a second?
How do you deal with it?

Imposter syndrome.... 😥 Enough said

Manager gave me a PHP task today that I straight up could not figure out and I feel awful and like such a failure from just 1 little issue

It's one of those days where I just need to let it it out. I'M A FUCKING IMPOSTER.

but I'm going to keep learning anyway. 👺

Imposter syndrome.

Where are my fellow ladies at?
How do you battle imposter syndrome in the classroom or workplace?

I suffer from major imposter syndrome, despite having years of experience, domain knowledge, and a MS in CS. Help.

Don't you just hate it when your company's lead developer has so bad imposter syndrome, that he can't actually produce anything even moderately complex. Then it's you who has to fix his fuck-ups..I really need a raise.. :)

Started my internship Monday. Got given a new top spec MacBook Pro. Yay. Except it has the German Keyboard layout. () require shift and yet {} and [] require alt. Whoever designed the layout clearly doesn't program.
Oh and the imposter syndrome is coming on strong.

Anything that allows me to forget my imposter syndrome for a few minutes.

Examples include:

- Coworker sending me a Slack message commenting on a function I sent him: "Dude this thing is awesome"

- Manager commenting on a data sync process I wrote: "I love that. Seriously."

- Myself finally solving a problem that had been eating my lunch all day: "In your face, computer!"

Okay, imposter syndrome just hit me real hard, when colleague, who just finished his first semester told me about his company he founded on the side based on an idea, for which he built a prototype in hackathon in a foreign country.

After work I'll definitely have to start working seriously on the sideproject I started some time ago, but always got distracted. Easiest way to install dual boot linux on my machine (512gb ssd, almost full; 1tb hdd, empty af), without the fear of fucking my windows completely up (of course I have a backup, but I'm still paranoid)? Also, which distro would you recommend for c++ game development?

Nothing like fighting with JavaScript all day to reinforce your imposter syndrome!

Most days, I feel pretty good about my skill and contributions, but I still sometimes worry that I might be the cog with the terrible code that all my coworkers rant about.

some of you seriously need to look up 'imposter syndrome'

I think I may have officially gotten myself fired before I even started a new job. My salaried start date was supposed to be Jan 3 but they hired me to do spot work at my hourly rate until then. My server side PHP skills were never great but they appear to be completely inadequate to the task of patching their undocumented, spaghetti legacy code. I just sent a note basically saying I either need to convert their entire site to something else 3 weeks ahead of the timeframe we planned or to basically outsource my work to another developer to patch this code. Feeling like a total imposter at the moment. I wouldn't hire me.

"Imposter Syndrome" - We are living in the 21st century! Here in Germany there are 124.000 free jobs. And even if you are the last creep out of the basement, you are still better than nothing! :D

With these motivating words I release you into the day!

"What is going on... this should work?!
Is my maths wrong?
My maths is wrong...
Oh no!
It's a model view projection matrix?!
I'm shit if I'm failing at this, it's 3D dev 101!
I got a first class degree... I don't deserve any of this or this job!!"

<2 seconds later>

uniforms.viewMatrix.set(camera.matrixWorldInverse.elements);
uniforms.viewMatrix.set(camera.projectionMatrix.elements);

"You set the same uniform twice you tool, due to copy and paste..."

Imposter syndrome in my early days put myself into a roller coaster of emotions. I always compared myself to others to the detriment of myself.
Thankfully overcame that working with some great guys.

But yeah, coding has impacted life for the best though. The challenge, creativity and constant learning is beautiful.

!rant && anxiousness

So, I applied for several jobs because I started hating my current job and the boss.
On my CV and motivation letter I really only wrote stuff I am confident enough with to show if someone would ask me.
I only have 2.5 years of work experience and a B.Sc.

In 3 days I already got 2 answers out of 3 companys, I applied at, who would like to meet me.
Tomorrow is the first meeting.
Now I am anxious that I might still not live up to my CV or motivation letter although I know that I use the techniques mentioned there daily.
I fear that I might be not as good as they might think now, even feel like I know nothing at all.

I never really believed I would fall in the imposter syndrome trap, but here it is.

Any advice? I really want to find another job and I don't want to screw up the interview because I am too nervous.

Well, I got invited to a job interview for the role of Cyber Defense Developer, in a HUGE multinational it company, I'm starting to get the imposter syndrome creeping up.
Any tips about job interviews?
I'm just a student on my second year

How does a person learn all these Dev ops/backend/frontend/mobile apps technology? I've been using Vagrant + Django mostly and I feel I'm so behind when people talk about AWS EB, Node, React, SASS, Less. Whelp

So after 7 months of soul crushing searching I was able to land an awesome job I never thought I'd get! I didn't really get hired for my projects, I think I was more of a culture fit that knew enough of what they were talking about. My colleagues are awesome, helpful people but they are also clearly way ahead of me as devs. I know that many new hires have similar feelings and it's more a matter of drive + time. I understand that and I'm ready for the marathon ahead of me but I have one HUGE concern... I don't understand unit testing. I've never written unit tests in JavaScript or Java (just on paper I wrote random assert statements for a college exam question that somehow turned out correct). More importantly, I don't understand when to write unit tests and what my main objectives should be when writing them. At work they talk about unit testing like it's just as basic as understanding version control or design patterns, both of which I have had no problems asking questions about because I at least understood them generally. I come here looking for resources, mainly things I can go through over the weekend. I understand that I'm going to have to ask my colleagues for help at some point but I DON'T want to ask for help without any solid base knowledge on unit testing. I would feel much more comfortable if I could understand the concepts of unit testing generally, and then ask my team members for help on how to best apply that knowledge. I'm sorry for begging, I'll definitely be looking for resources on my own too. But if anyone could point me to resources they found to be helpful & comprehensive, or resources that they'd want their co-workers to use if they were in my position I would be very grateful!!!!

15years into engineering and suddenly imposter syndrome symptoms. Anyone else?

Our site ran into a cache stampede which took down the site for awhile. While people were helping out, I just stayed out of their way since I knew nothing about it -_-

I realise I need to git gud but I can't help feeling inadequate and useless at times like this.

Is perseverance, experience, and passion to keep learning and bettering oneself the only way to being a master?

It's weird how imposter syndrome kicks in when I get notifications on something I shared on social media!

As my contractor job ends and my beginning the process of looking for new work the sudden feeling of imposter syndrome starts washing over me.
"I'm not qualified for any of these positions...", I say to myself, but then I think to myself, I wonder how devRanters deal with this.

So let me ask you, devRant, how have you dealt the *Experience Required* section of most jobs when job hunting?

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?

Say what you want about imposter syndrome - I just realized why I'm cut out for this line of work.

My intelligence is artificial.

Stress has always been my biggest problem in development. The constant imposter syndrome when I get a project from the team is something that I can't seem to get over.

Today I've implemented two custom annotation and two validators for those annotations (Java). It's a huge nested object so it's not as easy as I thought to begin with. That pretty much the only thing I've been doing today, and I feel like I've added absolutely no value to the company and feels a bit ashamed not to have done it faster when I look back at how simple it actually was. Makes me wanna choke myself...

Am I the only one who feels like they write bad code??

dear brain, there is imposter syndrome and there is dunning-kruger. I don't care which at this point, but you have to pick just one.

A sudden flooding feeling of mediocrity...

Is it just me or feeling the imposter syndrome, and blogging about it is super trendy at the moment ?

I messed up between Dependency Manager and Dependency Injection and looked a bit of a tool.

Cure for Imposter Syndrome:

Go try to find a freelancer for a project, for something like "adding OAuth to existing .net web API 2 and angular.ja project" and many many developers respond. You will be shocked at how little they know, they say they understand the job but are clearly incompetent.

Best job security ever. Also, just suck it up and do it yourself 😆

That feeling when - one year after quitting Twitter - it’s the weekend and you finally don’t feel the pressure of having to have a side project, cool library, you name it anymore. I just enjoy my weekends and if I want to, I fucking watch Netflix 48 hours straight.
I genuinely feel that I am good enough at development that it won’t make a difference and my weekends are mine to spend. I have zero cool stuff on my GitHub and have never had any disadvantage because of that in the past 11 years of my career, so why even worry?
I officially achieved anti-imposter-Syndrome 😎

Packt.com (dev education books) is doing a survey of their readers. I don't fit into any of their boxes, closest one is data scientist.

I think I might really be a mathematician rather than a dev...

I hated maths at high-school.

I'm taking a year out from my degree to do a software dev placement. I fought hard to get it and totally smashed the interview. But I'm still nervous as all hell and not sure I want it.

I think it stems from not actually feeling like I'm a real dev yet. I feel like I'm a big fish in a small pond at uni, which is why I took the job. That and the fact I never really made many friends there. Still can't shake the feeling that I'm just going to fail miserably...

I guess this is what they call "impostor syndrome".

I have the first of 6 interviews next week with Google, after completing level 3 of the Foobar challenge...

I’m 100% self taught and this will be my first interview for anything development related. Needless to say I’m nervous as fuck and imposter syndrome is hitting hard.

Anyone have tips? Things you wish you knew before your first developer position interview? Or just resources? Trying to be as prepared as possible.

I hear Devs of all ages blaming everything on imposter syndrome. Everyone is scared and will get back stabbed by our rivals now and then. We cant build cool things if we don't suck it up and go balls out.

!rant
First post...starting a new job today, and I will be working as a JavaScript developer (Node, angular). I only worked with Java before this job and my only JS experience is with little side projects. I am super excited to get start working with new technologies. Anyone out there have a similar experience?

So I’ve been programming for a little over a year now. Not too long, but long enough to realize something.

Everyone always talks about imposter syndrome and I don’t understand it. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like an imposter when I code, or that I’m a dumbass and can’t code or something(Well, I have definitely felt like a dumbass when I code but that’s because I am sometimes)

What makes you feel like you have imposters syndrome and how so?

As a junior dev, i really appreciate these wk58 rants. Every time i begin to doubt my abilities, i get some insights into the work of past geniuses, and i feel like im doing pretty good for a rookie

I feel like I'm not that good of a programmer. I feel like I'm being overpaid and soon they're gonna "find out" that I'm worth nothing.

Basically I'm suffering from a highly amplified version of imposter syndrome, and I'm only 3 months into my first software engineering job.

If you've been through this or could help me calm down in any way, please write your words down. I haven't slept properly since a week with this mental burden...

I occasionally wonder if my supervisors think I'm an idiot because I'm constantly implementing stuff the wrong way and asking if I am even on the right track to a solution.

I guess that's what internships are for but I hate being dependent entirely on other developers. I may not know the best way to do stuff but I do know how to do stuff :(

I need your help.
I think I'm addicted to distractions and diversions. It's ruining my life and any chance to get experience.

Instead of actual developing, I constantly watch development tutorials and courses, listen to podcasts about development, read books and articles about development, post on development forums and go to development meetups.

I can't write a few lines of code without being 100% concentrated first, and afterwards I get distracted by everyday life events only to find myself at the end too tired to do anything productive and then surrender to sleep.

I'm getting depressed. How can I fight this? How can I push myself to work and be an actual developer?

Imposer Syndrome

Something we may encounter at somepoint in our careers. I've been reading a few articles after feeling some of the effects of this yet none seem to offer helpful solutions.

Has anyone got any advice or good tip that's helped them in the past?

Imposter syndrome.
A question guys, I'm a web dev since 2012, started with php, then shifted to frontend, for 3 years my main was PHP and basic HTML CSS, in 2017 I shifted to / did courses on vuejs, angular and react (loved angular the most) also laravel. Have also dabbled a bit in python, for crawling and mining. The problem is I've never worked with a team or for a full fledged Dev company, so I'm unsure as to how to judge my growth and whether I'm moving in the right direction. I feel like I need a lot better understanding of Linux usage and server control, or should I learn nativescript etc.

What do you suggest? Should I simply look for a mentorship program, if yes any clue where?

Feeling some Major imposter syndrome. Work is just so slow this time of year. Nothing in my sprint!

The entire team doesn't know why the request works in Postman but not in the code and now everyone has resorted to dithering imposter syndrome riddled wrecks 😖

!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

Seeing articles and stories and rants here of other devs gives me anxiety when they mention CS concepts and algorithms and stuff. My college teaches IT and not CS, so none of that more complex stuff. I begin to fear my hiring potential without that knowledge.

Luckily, there's online resources everywhere.

Applied for summer co-op positions today. First time applying for tech jobs! So much more nerve wracking than applying for random whatever I can find jobs. I’m so scared and imposter-syndrome-y, but I know everyone feels that way... aaaah

Imposter syndrome.

Was hired on after my schooling was done as a web dev building a front end site. Finished, made it pretty, and was kept on to help the business build their backend inventory using a CSV file into an online catalogue.

Problem is...don't remember jack shit about PHP/SQL/anything past writing basic JS functions and pretty bullshit.

Running an apache server? No problem. Creating database schema's? Sure. Past that? I have no idea wtf I am doing, have until August to figure it out, am having major imposter syndrome, and can't walk out of this place without getting the project done. Feels very hopeless right now, though I am trying my best to learn.

There's this depressing and slightly awkward moment when you're a professional software engineer, Google puts up a KIDS in code doodle/coding challenge and you can't work out how to solve the last puzzle in optimal moves...

Fuck.

Confidence in interviews/imposter syndrome. I know need to keep practicing and just take a deep breath-I really want to get that dev job!

Is looking up the answers a good way to learn?

I started with free code camp a while back and always just looked up the answers and reverse engineered them when running into trouble. If I didn’t get it I’d look up a few videos on the idea.

But recently I started at a boot camp and after I asked they greatly discouraged me from doing this but I don’t see an alternative. I could just spent hours trying to guess the right answer and maybe eventually get the right one, but then my head is full of wrong answers and it takes forever. It feels like reinventing the wheel every time. I’m scared when I get further on in the bootcamp I won’t be able to find the answers online and I’ll be directionless.

Is this just imposter syndrome or am I cheating? Everyone I’ve asked said looking up what to do is part of the job.

If you have a blog, How do you decide what to write and publish on it? And, How do I motivate myself to write posts?

Context: I created my blog/website on 29 September 2017. I had a few ideas on writing blog posts(Condition variables in Go, Serverless related stuff and a whole bunch of posts related to wireguard) but every time I have tried write a post, I learn there is someone else who has already written a post on it and probably better than what I could have done, So what is really the point of writing it? And, I feel very insecure about writing posts, I feel like, If I do write a post, every one will know, I don't know anything about **anything**. :( I know about imposter syndrome, But I don't think I have that. I work with a lot of realllly smart people and I don't know as much as them. So, I am actually an imposter.

edit: I am usually active on Telegram, IRC and I try to help out people. It's easier for me to help people in communities like that but doing the same thing with a blog makes me very uncomfortable.

How are you dealing with imposter syndrom and general self doubt?

More specifically on technical interviews, how do I know if what I am saying is reasonable and not just some gibberish of keywords I picked up over the years...

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...

Come to terms with imposter syndrome. Be part of a project I'm deeply interested in.

Does anyone face the IMPOSTER SYNDROME?

Those times when something just won't work and you have no idea why, and how to fix it and hours or even days passed without any progress and you wonder if you even deserve to eat dinner...

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.

Imposter Syndrome in full swing post graduation ☺

I feel like an imposter because ...
I forgot that in Ruby, it's "elsif" and not "else if" today. How about you?

A lot of us get imposter syndrome in this industry. I still get it on a regular basis.

You can't wait until things are perfect. You have to launch imperfectly, but with confidence that you'll get where you need to be. But then imposter syndrome sets in. Self doubt tells us we don't belong.

I found this quote in my email pile this morning:

"Isn't doing your best all you can do? Dropping the narrative of the impostor isn't arrogant, it's merely a useful way to get your work done without giving into Resistance. Time spent fretting about our status as impostors is time away from dancing with our fear, from leading and from doing work that matters." - Seth Godin

With every recruiter contacting me, my impostor syndrome grows. I think I might have missed some great opportunities because I felt unskilled or unprepared for the job.

I have a video conference interview tomorrow for a summer internship. Imposter syndrome is coming on strong and fast.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Some days I fear I'm the most incompetent. But as someone else made the comment... There are git logs with useless commit messages...

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 feel like I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself because I haven’t done much developing lately. I started a ASP.NET Core tutorial/book (that I already made a rant about) I’m enjoying it and the imposter syndrome that accompanies learning something new. But I’m scared I won’t be able to grasp anything from the project I’m building with the tut and won’t be able to actually do anything with it. But we will see hopefully when it’s complete I’ll understand it better. And I also have college to worry about so fuck that and my teacher that never likes my answers no matter how accurate they are

How do you cope with imposter syndrome? I thought I had it under control but is coming back bigger than ever today!

!rant

Sometimes I feel like I have imposter-syndrome-syndrome, because I imposter a person who feels like an imposter amongst devs . . . Which leads me to believe I may actually have imposter-syndrome-syndrome-syndrome . . .

Recently every time I write some code I have the internal fear that this code sucks terribly and that I'm doing something wrong.

Is this some type of imposter syndrome?

Almost everything worthwhile has a significant amount of discomfort associated with it. We feel discomfort when we work hard on worthwhile things and when we grow as partners, engineers, team members and human beings.

I have not a true story but rather looking for some help.

So i am a Software Engineer in a Junior position and well... imposter syndrome kicks in apparently.

The reasons why i say this are pretty straight forward:
1. I am pretty sure i know nothing, also my "creativity" in how to solve certain problems are just straight up complex.
2. I don't understand most of the stuff i do, using a framework from my company includes this.
(such as using multithreading, seriously i have no idea what threads are, how mutexes work, etc.)
3. I have come to this job / position by pure luck and lying.
4. Apparently my Boss just told me straight up that he likes my work. That's when i start to realize i might have an imposter syndrome...

So how do i deal with this shit? On a theoretical basis i might seem to understand stuff, yet i don't believe i have any knowledge about anything i do, couldn't even implement a Vector myself or something....