I understand that impostor syndrome is an occupational disease among devs... But what does it take to overcome it?
Any good stories/advice?

@SevenDeadlyBugs you make very good points there.. calling impostor syndrome a disease may have been embellishment as well.

What if you already treat yourself as WIP, and the question you ask yourself every day is "am I improving fast enough"?

Think of a situation like a junior comes in and they seem so much more professional, knowledgeable and adept than you. You start asking yourself "why did they hire me, or why do they not fire me, when there are obviously so much better devs around even straight from Uni?". I know it's unhealthy, but things like that - or thinking like that, and not just minding your own damn business - don't really contribute to your own professional confidence... Ok this turned into a random rant, sorry.

@SevenDeadlyBugs thanks.

As I see it, this thread has fulfilled its purpose: maybe someone else struggling with the impostor stumbles upon this, too, and finds help & solace in your wisdom

You never overcome it. You just get disciplined enough to just stfu and start working irrespective of how you're feeling at the moment.

@hashedram is there a point where you working or not depends on how you're feeling?

@miksaraj Of course. You work faster and better when you're in the zone, or in the flow as some people call it. The ideal mind state where you're so focussed on the code thag nothing else is relevant. It's awesome when you're in it.

But most people who've been professionally working for a long time, are just used to buckling down and getting the job done even if they're feeling down. Impostor syndrome is part of that. You recognise that you feel dumb, and simply carry on. It slows you down but it won't stop you from getting the job done.

Imposter syndrome and bunch of other things lead me to depression. The depression itself was a full year of nightmare, so when I slowly recovered after all the medication it took for me to get well, I entered a whole new mindset.

I just abandoned everything. All my ambition and side projects gone. I don’t learn anything anymore. I quit my startup job and found a new, much easier one, just making basic frontend in react, so basic in fact that things just can’t go wrong. I just live like that now, slowly drifting.

After all that, I don’t have an imposter syndrome anymore, in addition to a huge list of things that I’m unable to feel since then.

I just don’t care anymore.

So for me winning a battle against imposter syndrome came with complete loss of personality.