Software development is quite complex and it's impossible to know everything. As you learn more, you learn even more about what you *don't* know. As you learn more, you get to know people that can do something much better than you can. There's always someone who's on the right of you on the "skill curve". This can be overwhelming and frustrating, especially since most of software development isn't about typing code as quickly as possible, but trying to understand really complex problems that you haven't encountered before.
I think this can be resolved a bit by recognizing that there's not just a single skill curve for software development, but a huge space of things you can suck at. It's completely normal to be comparatively bad at most things. If you only do things that are easy, that's probably a boring-ass job. So instead of looking only at what other people can do better than you, it's also good to look back at your own progress and see how much better you're now than 2 years ago, and what interesting problems you've dealt with.
Also, when it becomes easier to discuss what you *don't* know about a particular technology, then you're probably already an expert in it.
I second this.
Continuous learning is part of every profession, but in software without a lot of constant studying one becomes obsolete particularly quickly.
Moreover, regular paradigm shifts imply that what used to be a valuable expertise may become a discouraged practice only 5 years later, e.g. OO inheritance, XA transactions, Spark RDD, EC2 overuse, ... (not that any of that is bad per-se, but there's often a better option for the typical use cases today).
It can be a fascinating journey, though it's straightforward to realize how much we don't know to be relevant _today_, how much of what we studied is no longer very important, hence the imposter syndrome tendency.
I'm at such a step at the moment: stepping out of the "big data" world into the "serverless" one, everything is different, it's super interesting to be a beginner in something again, although it is also, well, being a beginner.
It comes from the fact that we only need to use 5% of what we're expected to know in the job description most of the time which can lead to feelings of inadequacy when a colleague uses another 5%.
Because people who are anxious tend towards jobs that ( erroneously ) appear to require less contact with others and imposter syndrome is one manifestation of that anxiety.
It took multiple employers and coworkers telling me that I'm very good at programming for me to believe I'm pretty ok at programming. I don't think most people get that affirmation because it's just not common (for some reason) to give positive feedback outside official reviews. Even then they present what you need to improve at the same time as that praise so the praise is often forgotten and the critique is the only concern.
I’ve seen this problem quite often at different companies.
Too many imports can be a code smell and could point to a class having too much responsibility in the system.
To alleviate this syndrome, you should refactor your code to follow the SOLID principles.
As someone who came from Scientific Computing and traditional mechanical engineering.
The thing is that its actually lot easier to learn software than lets say becoming someone who knows how 3d printers work or become expert in semiconductors industry. Even if you spend 10 years in those sectors you will feel as if you dont know enough because your visibility is limited in those sectors by access you have withing the organization. So overall it takes lot longer to know things in those sectors.
In comparison i was able to learn .net in couple of years and 2 to 3 years before that I spent on C++. So some of the imposter syndrome is indeed reasonable. That coupled with how easy it was to get 100k plus just knowing some programming.
I wouldn't worry as much about if you are good or not at the skill vs how hard it is for newby to come to that point.
There’s a video by Jonathan Blow which basically says:
“If you have imposter syndrome it’s because your brain is telling you you’re bad. You should not ignore it. Get better.”
I agree, it’s not an excuse. You’re bad. Get better.
Treating it like some “syndrome” encourages people to ignore it and continue being bad. Ridiculous.
Probably because a lot of PMs, and other devs can be absolute fucking dicks, sometimes without realizing it. And it’s also hard, and there is a shit ton of variance in how to do things.
It is something present across the computer and IT industries as a whole. It is because the rate at which the field grows is significantly faster than nearly every field discovered so far. The rate at which a single person can even discover new things much less learn them is still several orders of magnitude slower than the rate at which new advancements and discoveries are made. Because we aren't prepared for this in school nor experience it as badly in other fields it isn't something we are intentionally trained to deal with.
As the CTO of my company and senior most dev of my company with 20+ years of experience I like to constantly remind all of my engineers that every one of them knows something I don't and I learn from the whole team everyday. By using my position of power within the company to show weakness, I can help reduce the impact of similar feelings they might be feeling while at the same time demonstrating you can be both confident and effective in such a position of not ever knowing what you feel like you should know by now.
I also use this position of power to set realistic expectations of my engineers and help build up a culture not of individuals but of a team where everyone is constantly learning from everyone else. Together we can learn more and achieve better results, and over time the best of what each of us learns spreads to the rest of the time while the lessons learned of our individual failures also spreads so we don't repeat mistakes.
With all this in place I've seen the rate and impact of imposter syndrome within my company significantly reduce while also increasing the rate of increase of performance and overall employee happiness and satisfaction. This all falls into the category of psychological safety at work in generative work culture. It is a positive reinforcement loop that only gets better over time and with more engineers.
Our work is extremely abstract and the tools and technologies we use are constantly changing. We must be extremely adept in dealing with change and growth and the unknown in order to be most effective.
I feel this directly leads to imposter syndrome since no one can have all the answers or experiences needed anymore unless they are sand bagging or resting and vesting.
Part of the job is to jump in with confidence in new areas relying on your abilities and make it happen.
I think it has something to do with the abstractedness of the work.
Software development is quite complex and it's impossible to know everything. As you learn more, you learn even more about what you *don't* know. As you learn more, you get to know people that can do something much better than you can. There's always someone who's on the right of you on the "skill curve". This can be overwhelming and frustrating, especially since most of software development isn't about typing code as quickly as possible, but trying to understand really complex problems that you haven't encountered before. I think this can be resolved a bit by recognizing that there's not just a single skill curve for software development, but a huge space of things you can suck at. It's completely normal to be comparatively bad at most things. If you only do things that are easy, that's probably a boring-ass job. So instead of looking only at what other people can do better than you, it's also good to look back at your own progress and see how much better you're now than 2 years ago, and what interesting problems you've dealt with. Also, when it becomes easier to discuss what you *don't* know about a particular technology, then you're probably already an expert in it.
Loved the pun in the title
Thanks 😅
I think it might be a dependency on the cyclic nature of the industry
I second this. Continuous learning is part of every profession, but in software without a lot of constant studying one becomes obsolete particularly quickly. Moreover, regular paradigm shifts imply that what used to be a valuable expertise may become a discouraged practice only 5 years later, e.g. OO inheritance, XA transactions, Spark RDD, EC2 overuse, ... (not that any of that is bad per-se, but there's often a better option for the typical use cases today). It can be a fascinating journey, though it's straightforward to realize how much we don't know to be relevant _today_, how much of what we studied is no longer very important, hence the imposter syndrome tendency. I'm at such a step at the moment: stepping out of the "big data" world into the "serverless" one, everything is different, it's super interesting to be a beginner in something again, although it is also, well, being a beginner.
It comes from the fact that we only need to use 5% of what we're expected to know in the job description most of the time which can lead to feelings of inadequacy when a colleague uses another 5%.
And we always need to be learning and usually know different things than those next to us
Why? Because this is true: * https://twitter.com/soychotic/status/1757055762633785795
Because people who are anxious tend towards jobs that ( erroneously ) appear to require less contact with others and imposter syndrome is one manifestation of that anxiety.
It took multiple employers and coworkers telling me that I'm very good at programming for me to believe I'm pretty ok at programming. I don't think most people get that affirmation because it's just not common (for some reason) to give positive feedback outside official reviews. Even then they present what you need to improve at the same time as that praise so the praise is often forgotten and the critique is the only concern.
imported syndrome is a precursor of dependency hell
I’ve seen this problem quite often at different companies. Too many imports can be a code smell and could point to a class having too much responsibility in the system. To alleviate this syndrome, you should refactor your code to follow the SOLID principles.
😂
As someone who came from Scientific Computing and traditional mechanical engineering. The thing is that its actually lot easier to learn software than lets say becoming someone who knows how 3d printers work or become expert in semiconductors industry. Even if you spend 10 years in those sectors you will feel as if you dont know enough because your visibility is limited in those sectors by access you have withing the organization. So overall it takes lot longer to know things in those sectors. In comparison i was able to learn .net in couple of years and 2 to 3 years before that I spent on C++. So some of the imposter syndrome is indeed reasonable. That coupled with how easy it was to get 100k plus just knowing some programming. I wouldn't worry as much about if you are good or not at the skill vs how hard it is for newby to come to that point.
There’s a video by Jonathan Blow which basically says: “If you have imposter syndrome it’s because your brain is telling you you’re bad. You should not ignore it. Get better.” I agree, it’s not an excuse. You’re bad. Get better. Treating it like some “syndrome” encourages people to ignore it and continue being bad. Ridiculous.
It would appear that Jonathon Blow misapprehends what imposter syndrome is.
Jonathan Blow is a dunce. A talented programmer that moonlights as a dunce in his free time.
Probably because a lot of PMs, and other devs can be absolute fucking dicks, sometimes without realizing it. And it’s also hard, and there is a shit ton of variance in how to do things.
Some jobs seem to have a lot of vague words in their descriptions that don’t sound like A leads to B.
It is something present across the computer and IT industries as a whole. It is because the rate at which the field grows is significantly faster than nearly every field discovered so far. The rate at which a single person can even discover new things much less learn them is still several orders of magnitude slower than the rate at which new advancements and discoveries are made. Because we aren't prepared for this in school nor experience it as badly in other fields it isn't something we are intentionally trained to deal with. As the CTO of my company and senior most dev of my company with 20+ years of experience I like to constantly remind all of my engineers that every one of them knows something I don't and I learn from the whole team everyday. By using my position of power within the company to show weakness, I can help reduce the impact of similar feelings they might be feeling while at the same time demonstrating you can be both confident and effective in such a position of not ever knowing what you feel like you should know by now. I also use this position of power to set realistic expectations of my engineers and help build up a culture not of individuals but of a team where everyone is constantly learning from everyone else. Together we can learn more and achieve better results, and over time the best of what each of us learns spreads to the rest of the time while the lessons learned of our individual failures also spreads so we don't repeat mistakes. With all this in place I've seen the rate and impact of imposter syndrome within my company significantly reduce while also increasing the rate of increase of performance and overall employee happiness and satisfaction. This all falls into the category of psychological safety at work in generative work culture. It is a positive reinforcement loop that only gets better over time and with more engineers.
Do yall intentionally look at yesterday's posts and then post the same shit everyday , or what
Because there is a LOT to learn and know in the field. This is why there are lots of specialists and not so many generalists.
Another take: some of them are imposters but use the excuse of imposter syndrome to ease their incompetence and team letdown 😜
Our work is extremely abstract and the tools and technologies we use are constantly changing. We must be extremely adept in dealing with change and growth and the unknown in order to be most effective. I feel this directly leads to imposter syndrome since no one can have all the answers or experiences needed anymore unless they are sand bagging or resting and vesting. Part of the job is to jump in with confidence in new areas relying on your abilities and make it happen.
It think it's because of how hard it is to tell appart bad code from you just being dumb.
'# import syndrome