Every tech blogger who’s ever put finger to keyboard seems to have written about the Imposter Syndrome. There’s no shortage of opinions and experiences. The following is a brief look at some of these posts.
I’ve tried to summarise the below in a way that does them justice. If I’ve failed, feel free to shout at me.
Scott Hanselman: I’m a phony. Are you?
As technology bloggers go, Scott Hanselman is a fairly big cheese. But he’s not just a blogger — Scott hosts a number of podcasts, including the excellent Hanselminutes. As a side-project, he’s also had a little thing called a career, including his current senior position at Microsoft.
On the face of it, Scott Hanselman has no reason to feel like a phony. Yet he does.
For every one of his achievements that we see, he sees nine failures, such as his 27 unused domains. This is one of the things about Imposter Syndrome: anyone who’s not achieved all they had dared dream — in other words, every human who ever lived — can experience it. In Scott’s emboldened words: You Are Not Alone.
But Scott also a more positive take on the subject. Imposter Syndrome enables us to learn. When we hear that Croaking-Bastard Voice of Self-Doubt, that’s showing us space into which we can grow.
He ends with some words from Dave Ward: “I think the more you know, the more you realise just how much you don’t know … We’re all just fumbling in the adjacent possible, grasping at whatever good ideas and understanding we can manage to wrap our heads around.”
David Walsh is a JavaScript guy (although that’s selling him short). I’m a C++ kind of chap. As a result, I don’t often find myself on David’s blog. Having read his powerful post on the Imposter Syndrome, I should find an excuse to visit more often.
The post is relatively long, but is well worth reading. David details his ongoing battles with the Imposter Syndrome and, more generally, low self-esteem. Ironically, some of this seems to have stemmed from his success, which resulted in him being repeatedly thrown in over his head. And, just as Scott Hanselman suggested, David seems to have grown into each challenge.
This is a deeply personal piece of writing, so I won’t describe his story in any more detail.
At the end of the post, David offers a number of small suggestions — almost bug fixes — to help combat this feeling. Chief among these is to realise that Imposter Syndrome keeps us grounded. Any alleged ‘experts’ without self-doubt are probably both arrogant and ignorant.
(On a more trivial note, David uses the equally-valid “-or” spelling of “Imposter”. Which just goes to show, even the word itself suffers from self-doubt.)
Alicia Liu: Overcoming Impostor Syndrome
When you Google “Imposter Syndrome Tech”, this post by Alicia Liu appears at the top of the list. That makes it noteworthy. It also makes it convenient, but let’s not dwell on that.
Alicia isn’t someone I had really heard of before. Needless to say, it sounds like she’s achieved a fair amount.
As with many other posts, she describes an alternative narrative that was running in her head. With every success came a voice that focused on dumb luck, and started every sentence with ‘but only because’. She got into college … ‘but only because of affirmative action’. She was successful in school … ‘but only because the course was easy’.
This alternative narrative — or negative commentary, or whatever you want to call it — has a lot to answer for. It’s there inside all of us, bouncing its worthless opinions from synapse to synapse. As a result, we can end up shying away from paths that we know we should have taken.
As Alicia notes, programming is a constant source of failure, regardless of our past achievements. It is the every-day reminder of our own inadequacies. No wonder we all feel like frauds! What separates the novice from the veteran is that the latter has more tools for overcoming this. In many ways, experience is the process of acquiring those tools.
Yilling Chen: How To Overcome Imposter Syndrome In The Tech Industry
It’s always interesting to hear from someone relatively new to the field. In this case, Yilling Chen has recently made the switch from research biology to programming. Inevitably, this led to feelings of newby-ism and self-doubt.
Eventually, she had a realisation: No one is born good at software engineering. Everyone has to learn.
I think of it as like playing the guitar — even Jimi Hendrix didn’t have the nature-given ability to contort his fingers in weird and wonderful ways. (Okay, that’s possibly not true for Jimi Hendrix. I mean, come on.)
The approach Yilling took is a good one: change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, as Carol Dweck calls them. In other words, going from seeing failure as “This proves I’m not good enough” to “This is an opportunity to learn”.
With this attitude, Yilling sought out challenges. She was willing to look foolish, if it meant an opportunity for growth. This may not keep Imposter Syndrome at bay, but it will help develop those tools that Alicia Liu discussed.
Rob Conery: The Imposter’s Handbook
Rob Conery’s The Imposter’s Handbook is the reason I’m here.
Strictly speaking, that’s not true. It was actually a .NET Rocks! episode featuring Rob, in which he talked about Imposter Syndrome. I spent the entire time nodding my head, and not just because I was watching tennis while lying on my sofa. It was a spine-tingling listen for me.
The book itself is more of a general Computer Science book, albeit one that is written in a very accessible way.
However, its origin story is interesting. Rob set out to do some self-learning, and did so online. The result was his book.
Side note: The cover features a Nasa-created mock travel poster of an astronaut falling towards a planet. I have this poster in my house. Given the topic of this blog, I’m beginning to worry that I’m trying to be Rob Conery.
The thing to take from Rob is his approach: learn, learn, and learn some more. Do so in public, so that people can see when you make a fool of yourself. Get used to looking like a fool. Imposter Syndrome won’t know what’s hit it.
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There are countless more resources that I could have covered. If you find any that particularly resonate with you, please mention them in the comments below.