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.

sometimes I feel like I'm a fullstackoverflow developer ^_^'

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.

!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.

So, there was this person I met on the internet who was preaching about how the success of games depends primarily on luck.
His argument was that even though he made a great game(his opinion) and uploaded it to the appstore his game failed to gain popularity.
He stated that there are about 500 games uploaded daily and it is only the matter of luck whether or not a game gets noticed and that he ran out of luck.
Now, his game was a pretty ripped off copy of the overused tile matching games. I pointed out to him that the reason his game didn't do well was probably because he made a ripoff(I actually used 'a copy's but 'ripoff' sounds more rant like) and that he priced it fairly high, while there were free games with more features and better graphics and mechanics(based on the description of the game and screenshots).
He then began to rage(all caps obviously) about how I am talking out of my ass and that I probably haven't even made a game yet.
I politely(the only reason I was polite was because the account was known to my Twitter followers. Sometimes one has to protect one's name) told him that I am an indie game developer and that I have made a decent amount of games.
He then proceeded to mock me and dared me to name a few.
So I posted four links to my 48 hour competition games and one to an official game.
He then began to call me an imposter, so I did a shout-out to him through my Twitter account.
Instead of continuing on Twitter, he ran back to the forum, and began to shit talk about how anyone can do it if they have a team with them.
I corrected him on that, stating how I was alone at the time and these particular games were the results of me working hard and striving to improve myself.
Then the guy finally starts spamming on different threads about how I am an arrogant bastard and other explicit forms of abuses before finally getting banned.
Sometimes I don't even know why I bother.
When I was starting out, there was this developer who would point out the faults in my games so that I could work on them. That was a great help and probably accelerated my growth. He was a great mentor and is now a good friend and is now in my team.
I guess some people are so hung up on their pride that they will refuse to accept their mistakes and make any efforts to improve.

The constant back and forth between imposter syndrome and God complex

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

Learning git (command line) finally

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.

Im one of the people who got laid off due to covid19. I was hoping to find work at the same salary my previous job paid me at the very least. A friend of mine pointed out the fact that since i've been in the industry a while that I could ask for a lot more than what I made. I didn't believe him, but since my wife agreed, I've been asking for double my previous salary. I actually got a job that met my ask. I'm glad to say that after being afraid I was getting in over my head, I can actually do this. Glad my friend told me my worth and I hope others have friends that can do the same for them.

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!

How do JavaScript devs distinguish their grandmother from an imposter?

isNaN

Imposter syndrome

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.

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?

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.

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

I wonder who is the imposter then

Well I did it guys. I'm officially a Software Engineer.

I'm feeling serious imposter syndrome. Working on telling myself that I'll be OK though.

Life of an Intern:

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

>be me
>drop out of uni studying civil engineering
>"self-taught" "web programmer"
>start freelancing in 2010
>Make money, feels good man
>clients keep me busy, feel important
>Code just for the fun of it
>be 2019. Married, code to make ends meet
>lose all interest
>mere sight of the ide makes me want to bash the screen
>have zero motivation
>never get any projects done
>become broke af
>look at old friends on fb. They are "Something".
>look at real software engineers and programmers with education
>realize I am an imposter
>start dropping all projects and studying theory
>become more broke
>start taking "motivation pills" to just start working again
>lose all motivation and pissed at all the real programmers and engineers for their success
>be me on May 20, 2019 at 2:56 AM
Yep, this is the end.

You’re not just an imposter. You’re the trickster goddess, the deception prodigy, the mastermind. The supervillain surrounded by mere mortals.

Embrace it.

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

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.

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?

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

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 😔

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.

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.

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.

PSA.

Bad Managers will, sometimes, abuse imposter syndrome to have you work longer hours. Don't let them.

It is easy to deal with imposter syndrome if you are faking that too.

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.

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.

Dear imposter syndrome. Please go the fuck away.

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.

Oh boy :D I think it's more than Imposter Syndrome :D

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

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

Whenever my friend messages me to debug his code or to correct the errors, I google the line with the error, open the first result and copy and send the solution to him.

Now he thinks I'm a badass programmer😂

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

Who's the imposter?

Who's got time to be an imposter. 🤷‍♂️

I am out of my depth 90% of the time, always diving into areas that are foreign to me, you just need to enjoy the buzz of knowing you are coming out the other side more knowledgeable then you did going in.

But if you do get overwhelmed with this condition, step back, take a breather, and use that moment to think things through at the big picture level before moving forward again, sometimes the right solution is hard to think off when you're to focused and drowning your way through a bad one.

Worst part of being a dev?

For me it's putting myself into infinite loops wrestling with my own self doubt. Is this really how I want to solve this problem? Could this code be cleaner? Surely there's a better way to do this? Am I adding unnecessary complexity? Is this going to come back and bite me in x months? And so on...

In fact, most days I just feel like an imposter.

(New account because my main account is not anonymous)
Let's rant!

I'm 3 exams away from my CS degree, I've chosen to do some internship instead of another exam, thinking was a great idea.

Now I'm in this company, where I've never met anyone because of pandemic. A little overview:
- No git, we exchange files on whatsapp (spicy versioning)
- Ideas are foggy, so they ask for change even if I met their requirements, because from a day to another they change
- My thesis supervisor is not in the IT field, he understands nothing

The first (and only) task they gave me, was a web page to make request to their server, fetch data etc.
Two months passed trying to met their requests, there were a lot of dynamic content changin on the page, so I asked if I could use some rendering framework to make the code less shitty, no answers.
I continued doing shitty code in plain JS.

Another intern guy graduated, I've to mantain his code. This guy once asked me "Why have you created 8 js modules to accomplish the web page job?", I just answered saying that was my way of work, since we're on the same level in the company I didn't felt to explain things like usability, maintainability etc. it's like I've a bit of imposter syndrome, so I've never 100% sure that my knowledge is correct.
Now we came at the point where I've got his code to mantain, and guess what:
900 lines of JS module that does everything from rendering to fetching data..

I do my tasks on his code, then a bug arises so the "managers" ask him what's happened (why don't you ask to me that I'm mantaing is code!?!?), he fixes the bug nonetheless he finished his intership. So we had two copies of the same work, one with my job done and still with his bug, and another one without my work and without the bug.
I ask how to merge, and they send me the lines changed (the numeration was changed on my file ofc, remember: no git...)

Now we arrive today, after a month that they haven't assigned any task to me and they say:
"Ok, now let's re-do everything with this spicy fancy stunning frontend framework".
A very "indie" Framework that now I've to study to "translate" my work. A thing that could be avoided when I've asked for a framework, 2/3 MONTHS AGO.

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'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 :(

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.

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

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

Best tool:
Your hands!
- incredibly flexible
- express a lot of commands trough very little code (just raise the middle finger and tell me if you are not expressing something VERY strong with VERY little complexity)
- reusable
- interfaces
- smells of good soap

Worst tool:
Your brain
- highly power consuming
- wrinkly, ehw!
- overthinks a lot
- imposter syndrome
- hooked on sugar like it was cocaine
- hooked on cocaine like it was sugar
- refuses to comprehend chthulu

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?

Do you ever wonder if you got promoted to senior developer too early? I keep making stupid mistakes that get picked up by more junior developers at code review I need to up my game

For those struggling with imposter syndrome, keep a record of your progress.

Break it down into

* used

* learning

* dont need a manual or cheat sheet

* use every day

You can also break it down per project:.

"Project xyz (python: 2 years)"
"Project ijk (js:6 months)".

Etc.

Critically, keep these in something physical, like a notebook or whatever you use *regularly and frequently* to keep notes. That's important because you should be glancing over your progress as a remainder.

Each time you want to add a new line, rewrite your existing progress on a new page, before adding the new line.

So as you flip through the pages you get a large and larger chronological list of your progress, and improvement, and experience.

Add a date to the title for each and a brief note about something that you did or happened on that day or week.

You wont second guess yourself so much once you can see how far you came.

Like at one time I was actually competent at js! (Before I stopped the flash cards anyway).

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

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?

The role of a Product Manager is just a decade or two old. Most organisations, including FAANG, are still figuring out what are the primary responsibilities of a PM.

A vast majority I know, including my dumbass, is struggling to keep things floating while in the role. Learning on the job is one of the only and most effective way to do so.

No wonder, imposter syndrome is so common in this group.

One of the main tasks is to make decisions. Important and impactful ones. The role came into existence to take the decision making load off our engineering friends while building any product.

This shit comes with huge responsibility.

BUT, not everyone understand this. In India, being a developer was a cool thing until 2018 and so everyone rushed into the role. Now somehow everyone started thinking being a Product Manager is cool because all you have to do is sit and shoot orders and things will happen magically.

I get reached out by so many folks every month asking for guidance and when I ask them what a PM does or why they want to be a PM, the narrative is more or less same.

Very few actually understand how taxing the role is or the challenges that we face while performing the job.

WHY THE FUCK ARE PEOPLE SO IGNORANT AND DUMB?

And in another news, my first week at new job was super amazing. Loved every bit of it. People are smart, processes are neat, things are structured, and lots and lots to learn for me.

How are you guys doing? Been a while that we spoke.

Official declaration: I am the dumbest person I know.

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.

🤔🤔🤔🤔

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!

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.

I used to have imposter syndrome when I first started at my current job. But then I discovered that one of my coworkers was an actual imposter. He didn't lie on his resume or anything but he was basically incapable of thinking for himself. If there was no step-by-step process to follow, he'd spin his wheels for weeks before doing it in the worst possible way, refusing all offers of assistance from the rest of our team.

After he quit and the true extent of his incompetence came to light, I no longer felt like an imposter.

Imposter syndrome creeping in?

Remember this woman.

Fake it until you make it or get indicted.

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.

🐶

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

Is this normal?

Imposter syndrome... 😃

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.

You are NOT an imposter

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

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. 😫

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.

Can't stand it when devs who never bother to do anything / don't pull their weight etc. suddenly come out with:

"Ooh I'm really feeling the imposter syndrome right now, I feel like everyone around me is just leagues ahead of me and I shouldn't be here"

...then wait for everyone to tell them how amazing they are, how they're a critical part of the team etc.

No mate, imposter syndrome is a thing, but so is being a genuine waste of everyone's time. I'm not talking about having bad days, I'm talking about your work output being practically zilch for the past half a year or so because you're "not too familiar with the framework", then going after this pity party approach. As a senior dev, it's kinda insulting to all the great junior and mid level devs who do a better job while being paid considerably less.

Was approached by a (serious) recruiter and the project they're looking to hire for is a 3 year contract, remote and actually sounds really interesting and right up my alley.

Cue the self doubt.

Scared shitless I won't pass the bog standard PHP skill assessment test.

SHUT UP BRAIN.

if i hear another one of my peers talk about imposter syndrome i'm going to shoot myself

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.

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!

This combined with imposter syndrome, hope is getting lost

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

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

Maybe at some degree even viceversa.

Just got a rejection email from the only interview I’ve gotten.... I know it’s normal but I feel so dejected and imposter-syndromey. When I get rejected from a non dev job it doesn’t make me question my ability, but because this is the first time sending out dev resumes it’s so daunting and I feel useless😞

15 min till technical interview with IBM:
Trying to convince myself I’m not an imposter. 🙃

10 min after the interview:
I’m thinking how for the last 15 min of the interview they were pitching about how great the life at IBM is and why I should join.

How I knew this was for me.... I didn't.
It kind of just happened in the natural order of things.

I was once a wii young lad who had a dream, and that dream became a smashing pile of being broke, jobless and unemployable, not a great way to start off that early life but hey, it was what it was.

So I looked at my computer one day, lousy dusty Pentium 4 with a massive 80GB HDD, in the corner, and went... fuck it, this thing is going to make me money.

So from there I picked up my old high school book on VB6 and on with it I went, forcing my self to make that calculator I couldn't do in school and a few other things, from there I got into a course for webDev, not uni, and after being dropped from that course ... that's a story for another time, I basically said fuck the system and my journey into webDev took on a life of its own.

Starting with frontend (back when layouts where tables and css was font colours) and IE5 was still a thing, and progressing into JS for a fucktonne of "onClick" events, then backend... I went down the .PHP3, PHP4 hadn't been released yet, but at the time .ASP was a thing too although it was complicated as fuck.

For many years it was just 1 thing after another, picking up MySQL, screwing around with databases, setting up linux servers, gobbling up Python a couple years later and started automating different things, just building site after site, until one day I landed a professional gig - not just casual freelance stuff, and from there when you think you know a lot, what I thought I knew got blown out the window and imposter syndrome sunk in, but I kept pushing ahead.

That saying "you don't know what you don't know", it has meaning here, you don't know what you don't know... but the moment you know you don't know enough, you either crumble or you keep waterboarding yourself in knowledge to reduce the unknown.

And somewhere along the line I accepted this path.
It may have taken me a few years to get off my feet but I'm glad I took that first step.

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 thought Docker was supposed to make life easier.... Instead, it's giving me imposter syndrome all over again because I can't seem to wrap my fucking mind around it.

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?

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 feel like an imposter. I am running an IOT startup alone and it's in development phase.
Product and the app ecosystem is working so well that it's scaring me. Other products are quite finicky. I haven't worked long enough. I imagined it would take an year to develop. My code is quite simple. I just don't know why it's working so well compared to the works of others. I am scared I missing something huge.
I am in depression because work is going smoother than my expectations.

Can't tell if imposter syndrome or I'm actually talentless....

Here's something not quite a rant, but relatable. And an issue. For me at least.

------

You get really proficient with a set of tools.
- Can solve things in an efficient & elegant manor.
But it's now boring.

You find some new exciting stack, research like a madman. Possessed.
Your perfectionist self, seldom doesn't want to settle.
You burn out from pressure & deadlines.
You feel inadequate, imposter syndrome settles in.

You reminisce of the easy days when you (thought) knew everything.

Decide to rebuild using that past stack.

Gets bored.

You notice something new & exciting.. loop iterates to next repetition.

When imposter syndrome hits me, i just scroll through the latest CVEs. That reminds me, that even the best can't do it properly.
I also am old enough to have seen the latest shit emerge and disappear multiple times. So there is no pressure to keep up with latest crap of the week.
Also, our industry is full of sloppy corner cutters. So that i am not sloppy and don't like to cut corners, already makes me a rare kind of coder.

Know your strengths!

For all my friends here who have known me for years can easily notice there has been a drastic change in me.

I used to be confident. That shit was hollow but I used to laugh in the face of fear. I was ignorant and that ignorance fueled a lot of the much needed confidence.

Over the years, I learned a lot. The more I know, the more I realised how much I don't know. And for all that I know, I have to use the brain power to retain and implement it, else it rusts.

This image is of my 2021 goals that I drafted last December. Wasn't able to achieve the first, the last and the art one. But surely got myself surrounded by some of the smartest people I have ever worked with.

Now they have rightly said, be careful with what you wish for.

MY CONFIDENCE IS SHATTERED.

I feel dumb. Constant imposter syndrome. While I am learning every moment and there is no measure to it, I feel incompetent to an extent that I have started questioning how did I even reach this far?!

While, yet again I am the youngest in my team, my manager is bit micromanaging and agressive with OKRs/KPIs and tech team isn't very supportive creating constant friction (something I never faced with developers in my life because devs are my best friends), I fear how much more time will I take to ramp up in this new job and feel confident enough to tackle things on my own without constant nudge from leadership or different teams?

Or is it just that I have burnt out firefighting and lost the motivation I had?

After all, what does this all even mean?

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

First day went great. Got my laptop all set up. I still have no idea what I’m doing. Imposter syndrome really set in as of yesterday. Looking at the code base and seeing all of the code made me feel stupid. I understand I won’t know the whole code base.

It’s also my first developer job. I just feel stupid. I’m super eager to learn. But I feel like I’m going to ask a lot of stupid questions as well.

Idk how to feel. I guess a fraud would be the right answer? How can I get more comfortable at my new and first developer job?

3rd week at my first developer job. Did a couple PRs with the help of my mentor. Still feel absolutely useless. I feel like a complete imposter.

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?

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

The Imposter Syndrome is strong this week.

Just thought I'd publicly give myself a pat on the back

I haven't been on devrant since 2018, but revisiting old rants I posted now, I feel quite proud that I feel a lot less insecure and fine with not knowing things, and I've learnt a lot! I only think about what an imposter I am maybe once a month instead of once a minute

Go progress! 🎉🎉🎉

Imposter syndrome.... 😥 Enough said

Imposter syndrome.

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 ?

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.

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

This lady hotdesking near me harps on about her amazing Meetup that she's organized. She believes she can be an authority on a highly technical subject without knowing how to force quit an app on her Mac.
Shysters!

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. 👺

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.

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.

Wait, you mean to tell me, here I am with imposter syndrome, and some people can't even write a test for is-odd? Like people who are *less* competent than that are actually passing interviews?

I'm getting beat up pretty bad by Rust. I like it so far but man is it hard. Imposter-syndrome is almost making me lose motivation. Almost, but I won't quit, one day I'll get there.

I think the primary reason I think I'm having such a hard time is that I'm trying to learn stuff that prevents me from making some mistakes that I have never run into. I know a bit of the theory but no hand's on experience on double-free errors, memory leaks and weird low-level stuff. I read the documentation, mostly understand what stuff is for but when I go write code I'm just like "now what?". I don't have enough experience to know when and where to use some concepts and I'm super lost. I don't know where to start and the feeling of being completely overwhelmed by all sorts of new stuff is at the same time exciting and frightening.

I have never, as a programmer, thought something was hard. All of my past knowledge required dedication, work and patience, but I wouldn't say I ever felt something was *hard*. But Rust... damn. Rust is hard.

Hopefully at the end of this super steep learning curve I'll know a lot more stuff and have stronger "dev powers" and be one step closer to being as knowledgeable as some of you guys around here to whom I look up to.

I have been a developer for a few years and I think I know my shit. Fullstack. I took 2 interview tests recently and received rejections that have completely killed my confidence. I don't want to apply to any new jobs because I am terrified after all these years, I am not as good as I think I am. I have been a dev for about 8 years now when will I be badass 😭

its not imposter syndrome

i've got over 6 years in industry and i still hardly have a fucking clue what im doing or a proper foundation

not like school covered much if anything relevant to industry anyway

welp

Imposter syndrome is hitting hard today.

It's nice reading other people's code. Make you realize that your not too shabby quality wise!

I don't have a "most painful error".

The real pain for me is the

WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING

I'VE DONE THIS 1000 TIMES BEFORE

THIS ISN'T HARD

THIS SHOULDN'T TAKE THIS LONG...

It's just the worst combo of events / feelings / leads to the hopeless depths of imposter syndrome and etc.

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

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.. :)

My dev role model is our humble and stupid senior developer.

He gives hope to everyone that there is at least one person who knows less but is at a higher rank.

Several devs never faced imposter syndrome for him 🙏

I got such a bad employer… oh, pardon me: committent-but-actually-employer-minus-the-responsabilities that I developed bruxism, rage bursts and chest pains due to anxiety.

Bright side 1: i quitted by saying them in their face “you don’t even fucking know what docker is and you claim to be an expert, get a fucking update”

Bright side 2: They failed a while… Oh wow much surprise, very unexpected considering that they fired the only dev with experience on the product and that they re-made the interface every other day making everyone’s job a miserable joke. Smart move, 10/10 would invest in them.
The “bright side” in this is mostly that I’m forced to accept I was a very valuable asset and shut up any imposter syndrome related to that bs work.

Bright side 3: It forced me to see someone which in turn forced me face some piled up shit, so I recently feel better and hate myself less!

Best: Got my first dev job a month before I graduated my bootcamp. Was hired till rona layoffs started happening. Found another dev job 4 months later, and just received a promotion from said job just before going on holiday leave.

Worst: Being laid off for those 4 months. Sure unemployment + stimulus got me through financially, but mentally and emotionally I was starting to crack. I had thought I broke through the barrier with that first job and was going to be set. That layoff threw a wrench in my whole plan. In those 4 months unemployed I developed some imposter syndrome. Regardless, I plugged along with my side projects. One company was really impressed with one of them and was using a similar stack for an upcoming project, so luckily they ended up hiring me. Confidence restored.

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?

10 years in small startups, and I start a FAANG level position on Monday.

The anxiety and imposter syndrome will have me dead by then...

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.

How long does it take you guys to learn Node JS?

My professor wants me to work for him on a CRUD Server for a semester, I have some experience with JavaScript and API programming with Spring Boot. Should I take the offer and learn more about Node at home?

I think I will feel like an imposter if I take the offer if I don't have any previous experience in the stack

Imposter syndrome at its best right now.

!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.

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

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!!!!

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

For years I felt like an imposter for not rooting my smartphones, and not owning any raspbis. - Now finally I got an pi 4 and installed my so long desired pi-hole.

Quite disturbing that at least 30-40% of my traffic is known ad shit. Such an infestation.

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

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?

So I started doing PHP, HTML and CSS a week ago. And I once started a codecademy course in JS.
I can consider myself a full stack web dev now? Right?
(Every "WordPress dev" ever (and me😀))

I have been a developer in one company or another for over 27+ years. Today I had to dismiss / fire / let go of a recently hired developer (a Senior by career length) on one of the teams I now manage. Basically imposter syndrome compounded with an inability to communicate a need for support (even when we reached out daily to assist).

When I had to let this person go I felt all the times when it happened to my colleagues , and to me. Like a thousand knives stabbing . It wasn’t easy.

It’s of course not easy to be dismissed . But it’s also not easy to be the one to dismiss.

First day of my first developer job is Monday. Oh shit. Nerves are starting to set in. What if I’m not good enough for the job? I mean I didn’t the coding assessment they wanted me to do. And passed. Which is why they gave me the job. But fuck man I’m nervous! I have never had a job like this before. And it’s remote after my first week. Oh shit.

People saying they have imposter syndrome to describe the accurate feeling that they don't know what they're doing at their job.

Goodbye, imposter syndrome.

Today I patched a StackOverflowException bug (that I myself introduced a few months ago) which caused the prod application to crash the other day.

Now I truly feel like I belong! 😂

still can't believe someone actually hired me as dev and then multiple companies tried poaching me (one tried twice, another tried four times)

what are they all on

35y/o and a child (well, 2 soon), experienced as an integration dev (not my dream job tho), scripted a lot as a devops engineer (bash, py).

My heart says "jump deeper into devops and/or py", but my imposter syndrome infested brain says it might be too late and that after 10 years in IT it's time to navigate more into management/architect role (mostly because I've seen a lot of people around me follow this path).

Thoughts?

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

I always thought I suffered from imposter syndrome until I saw what the previous developer on this NodeJS/SailsJS project did.

They put return statements inside of a switch block. He also put in the break statements as well. The return statements were the exact same thing every time it was written.

Fuck shitty JS developers....

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.

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

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.

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

My intelligence is artificial.

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...

Combatting imposter syndrome is all about being more realistic with yourself imo.

Not in the way you might think. By realistic, I mean you NEED to regularly tell yourself that you are doing your best - especially in the work or areas that can promote insecurities of “not being good enough”. Acknowledge that you are only human, that all of us are different, that all of us make mistakes, and all of us have different interests in life. That, and practice gratitude for your situation. Your interests and decisions lead your different paths, so might as well embrace, enjoy, and love your uniqueness.

That being said, I also think it’s important to do difficult things. I think @wisecrack said it the best in that “real learning feels like falling”. Like the uncertainty of the abyss causes the most anxiety. Next time you feel like you don’t belong, recognize and separate that feeling and reframe it as a symptom to your own self improvement process. Take that risk and do things that are uncomfortable in the pursuit of personal success.

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.

Finishing my degree after moving to a foreign country alone, while also working as a dev part time.

I recently moved to another country and switched jobs, and even though I'm getting stuff done, I feel like I just don't deserve the job. It just feels surreal that I made it so far and it just feels like dumb luck sometimes.

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.

"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!

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

Just be honest and transparent about who you are and what you can do. If you haven’t hidden anything you won’t feel like an imposter. You will be confident that you earned your reputation.

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?

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.

Not imposter syndrome but definitely a moment of self doubt.

Am I good enough?

Been applying for jobs and couldn't get through.

Most of my applications are in neighbouring continent and visa is the primary filter to get rejected. Thanks to COVID-19, it is even more difficult than ever.

And for those applications where I land interviews, I am being ghosted in final rounds.

Quite strange that teams don't even care to reject anymore. Just leave me hanging to assume the worst, the truth, the reality which I don't want to face.

And self doubt creeps in where I see people with average/below average capabilities and skillset are able to find better jobs.

I am not comparing myself, undermining their struggles, or playing the blame game.

All I am saying that luck plays a huge role in how things work out.

You can still fail even after doing everything right. Or am I just dumb enough to not know where I am going wrong to improve?

At this point, if I reflect on past, seems like all the offers I have got in past were purely based on luck.

I am aware that this is temporary and things shall change for good but boy, this feeling sucks.

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

"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.

If you take a crappy website... and then you draw out a few screens of that visual design... and change some colors and borders... (and it not even a real interface) (just a screenshot of a photoshop document) (and it doesn't work) (and it's basically the same shitty interface) (and it's not real) (and you never tested it with users)

...and you are feeling like you have imposter syndrome, it's because you aren't a UX designer. You need help. You are deeply delusional.

We can help you - but you have to be really honest with yourself...

You're going to have to do some real work, read some books, and accept that *praise* - is not the goal.

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.

"You are an imposter"

Imposter syndrome comes from a lack of experience. Experience comes from trying things and figuring out what works. Find people with experience and ask them what works.

I don't feel the imposter syndrom anymore :)

Haven't been on here for quite a while.. mostly worked as a graphic designer from home the past year. End of 2021, I'll transfer to the RnD department at my job to become a developer and help out with the front end part (because you know.. I do design stuff). Ok No probs, I have done some basic stuff, jQuery and (god forbid) wordpress stuff, should work out. New boss tells me to learn VUE so that I become a Vue frontend developer aaaand.. I'm shitting my pants with imposter syndrom dribbled all over things.. sigh.. luckily it's the weekend so I can take a beer and think about my future. 🍻

Whenever you sense your Imposter Syndrome coming, tell it FUCK YOU and keep crushing it.

First day at work and after seeing the codebase and how everyone's talking about the code, I'm pretty sure I don't have imposter syndrome, I'm just that bad...

How do you guys cope with being a junior dev and constantly receiving criticism about your work from your team leader?
I started working as a developer quite late: I did go to college in my early years but I was lazy at the time, so I didn't complete it. So I worked about ten years in a totally different industry, but I always wanted to go back to being a developer.
I've managed to do it when I was 34: I was a web developer in a small company and I was pretty much the only dev, except for an older dude who only knew Visual Basic 6 and kept programming things with it (in 2020ish!). In those years I always felt like a was way ahead of my colleague, and my efforts to apply best practices were not so welcome.
I eventually got tired of that situation, because I was feeling like wasting my time: I was already quite old and stuck in a jurassic environment
Then, I landed in a new company. Completely different environment: they use modern frameworks, TDD, static analysis, code reviews and stuff, and they do one to one meetings every two weeks. From the beginning, I felt like I was the dinosaur there: they were way ahead of me and I struggled to keep the pace. I immediately said that to my manager, but he was like "don't worry, it's just the start. I'm sure you will do great". Except I did not. I started collecting criticism about my work and I keep receiving it. When I tell my manager that constant criticism is not good for my self esteem, he replies "I can understand, but you have to manage it and I cannot avoid to correct you when you make mistakes". But it became really difficult for me to receive constant criticism, I very rarely have a compliment or a good word about what I do.
Is it just me? Should I finally grow up now that I am almost 40 and accept that working always sucks and you cannot be satisfied of what you do? Or am I simply a bad developer and should look for another job?
I am starting to get tired of this situation.

It's my last week at my job. They have decent pay and great work life balance but the work is boring and uninspiring.

Leaving for a F500 company. The pay is insane and I've been warned the workload matches. The upcoming projects are interesting, and I've hit the next engineering level!

I'm still crazy anxious and feeling that imposter syndrome hard. I've only ever worked in small startups, and I've always been "The Guy", now I'll be a cog in the machine of incredibly smart people.

Just trying to get this off my chest, because right now I don't know what I'm doing...

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’ve recently started at a company where though I’m one of the youngest out of my colleagues I am on the same role-level as them (if that makes sense) and it’s different to my old job where I was at a start up as a junior developer (not very appreciated there tbh), here however, I feel like I am treated as their equal and in most scenarios depended on, especially if it’s a piece of work I did. I know its not a big deal but I’m not sure how to handle all this importance lol, I can’t lie I do feel sometimes I might have imposter syndrome. How would you deal in a situation like this/do things to improve self confidence?

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

Imposter syndrome is such a bitch

It feels so good to finally be able to achieve something without constant self doubt (okay I lied, but atleast I am actually programming)

But fuck me it's hard to keep reminding myself that it's okay, it's fine if it's not perfect, just evaluate all the possible solutions and pick the best one, it's fine

!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?

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

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