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.

I'm about to quit without a backup plan.

It's been almost 4 years since I started working as fullstack dev in my current company, also those are the same years of experience I have working in general. Right now I feel burnt out.

I feel I haven't progressed professionally at least in the last 2 and a half years... I feel stuck. Right now I don't feel like a dev, I feel like a dude that knows how to use a framework and only makes CRUDs.

I've lost the apetite for learning, also I feel very discouraged about the industry in general, watching media full of those tech-influencers and the apperently fakeness of the culture that companies show off only helps my disappointment and discourage about the industry in general. Also the unconscious action of comparing myself with others (and impostor syndrome) makes me feel less about myself.

I didn't go to college. During my last year of school I went to a Bootcamp and started learning by myself, I felt I choosed the correct path for me, I don't regret it, but makes me feel I entered at a young age (18) and unprepared to an industry I felt I knew at least a bit (I did two interships at 16).

Right now I can only think in taking a time for me and disconnect myself from everything, finish all the books I bought, continue doing excercise and therapy and stay connected with nature.

I know that most probably what I say about the industry is wrong but what I **feel** about it right now is not.

I know is better to search for better options and places to work than just quit, but I really feel it's gonna be the same, I know it's an unfounded fear and I'm a bit blinded about it.

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).

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?

I want to write something in PHP.

Yes, coming from me, it sounds like stockholm syndrome, but for me PHP is reminiscent of simpler times.

I want to get a server right where I bought the domain, with CPanel, log in with FTP and ~~push~~ (excuse me, _send_) index.php and other files there. I want to open phpmyadmin and throw some stupid fields together that won't work at scale, but "scale" will never happen.

I want to design websites without normalize.css, without any kind of javascript but some silly UI stuff, I want to send emails with sendmail and not sendgrid. I want my gradient buttons back.

Symphony and Laravel can kiss my ass.

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

I hate feeling both competent and incompetent at exactly the same time it’s confusing.

I both feel like a reasonably proficient developer and doubt and second guess every decision that I make.

It’s exhausting.

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!

I recently started work as a Senior Software Engineer at a top company, I can't help but have this immense impostor syndrome...I just feel like people at work are closely anticipating my failure...it's fucking crippling.

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.

many many times in the past I had this impostor syndrome in various situations but I never lost faith in my dev skills!

you have to be humble to realise that this situations are fine and that you will learn something from it (not necessarily tech things, but also how life works). Also you have to realise that development as everything else in life is just never ending learning endeavour! When you accept all of that, impostor syndrome goes away forever.

It's been around 3 years since I felt like impostor for the last time because I accepted who I am as a person.

It crawled up on me last week in a different way - I was thinking of myself - what if I am just really good at googling things and understanding how those things work but I am also very capable problem solver so I can understand the principle and apply it to my code.

Then I realised - ok, that's what programmers do! So that's the story of how the impostor syndrome actually become confirmation syndrome!

Folks, believe in yourself, be forgiving to yourself as we all were there, give yourself some time as people don't become good developers overnight - and this is OK.

I think I've reached some kind of job nirvana. My coworkers and I all complain about our work. We're overworked, underappreciated, underpaid, and and have to deal with all sorts of bullshit all the time. Pretty much everyone who has been on the team longer than a year is talking about quitting.

But I started at this company as a level 1 tech support phone technician before I transferred into the DevOps side of things, and that tech support job was SO much worse. Way more stressful, way less pay, mandatory overtime, horrible scheduling, being forced to remain calm while people hurl insults at you over the phone, and it was a dead-end job with a high turnover rate and almost no opportunities for advancement of any kind.

And every time I think back on that job, I realize that what I have now is actually pretty great. I'm paid well (still underpaid for the job I do, but catching up really fast due to my current boss giving me several big raises to keep me from quitting lol). I deal only with other tech people like developers and data scientists so no more listening to salesmen insult me on the phone. I'm not in any sort of customer service role so I can call people on their bullshit as long as I'm professional about it. I'm salaried so they can't make me work horrible shifts. 99% of my days are a normal 9-5 workday. I actually have a reliable schedule to plan around.

People treat me like the adult that I am.

I'd get a similar experience at other, better-paying companies, for sure, but what I have now is still pretty great.

I'm sure I'll be back in a few days to rant about more nonsensical bullshit and stress, but for now I'm feeling the zen.

Getting past my impostor syndrome
Finishing a project
Having a few hundred users on my projects
Having fun in the mean time.

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! 😂

I hate my brain.
Got a compliment, my brain automatically rejected it and judged it.
Then it started to judge the judgement. Then the judge^3.
Then go all the way to the recursion.

For the last few days my brain is making me lose focus on everything because of this.
And the most fucked up thing is, I am paranoid of my own brain, so I really judged my memories and shit. I think I am losing my mind, my uni doesn't have consulting for students either nor I have money.

Any advices from ppl who went to a psychologists will be appreciated. A lot.

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?

Doing a technical assessment. Slightly different stack than what I am used to!

- NGINX instead of Traefik
- Kubernetes instead of Docker Swarm

Just because the stack is different, anxiety / impostor syndrome is kicking in. I'm proud of myself for commanding my brain and body to execute:

While !done:
- google,
- find simplest straightforward tutorial
- implement

The chemicals inside my body are all over the place. I really want to move out of my current job!!

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

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.

Not sure if forums like DevRant ever helped me but it certainly gave me an impression of how work in the industry is. It sort of prepared
me for the bs that I could face and I ended up expecting and managing those situations. This will be both a happy, raw and a grumpy thought. I’m a self taught dev, I failed my education due to a situation outside my control but I always loved programming, it’s mostly because I love solving problems and creating something I feel is my own. Today I’m a core member in a company and I’m also a contractor in my own company. I love the variety of working on my own and I love helping team members, I love organising projects and the experiences others bring help me grow and expand what is literally my life’s passion. I started out as a consultant because someone saw my passion and my experience, they took a chance and well, I can’t say I’ve disappointed them. I just recently got to know into my adult life that I got ADD and meanwhile it probably pushed me out of the normal, it helped me focus on the things I liked. I was 6 years when I wanted to learn programming and I was 10 when I first started learning, I felt like a failure when I was 18 after literally 6 hours a day of learning development each day, I didn’t have a job for several years and when I was 24 - prior to becoming a consultant, someone offered me a job, it was one of those “5 day” interview assignments, where I practically delivered a finished, fully tested project for them. They offered me lowest of pay (15 usd/hr). They took advantage of my situation, put me on a solo project and said it wasn’t good enough because it didn’t fit their preferences after 50 hours of dedicated work without any guidance, specs or meetings. I’d say thanks but I was never considered before I had “experience” by others, I hope I’ll get the chance to give someone that experience before they go through the same as me. I could go on for so long about what I feel is wrong about this industry but one description that continually come up “impostors syndrome”, shut the fuck up if you don’t know what you’re talking about and give even “newbies” a chance. Programming and development is more than experience.

Maybe I am just sensitive.. but sometimes I feel that my new manager is being a little harsh on me.

Again, he might behave the same with everyone and I am assuming that it's just me.

1.5 months in the new job and not a single good comment/feedback I recieved from him. It's not that he criticises me or my work, or calls me a dumbass.

But whenever I submit anything for review, I get a ton of feedback where he expects everything to extreme precision.

He guides me, explains me post my failure, and has specific pointers of what he wants/how he wants things.

But all I am given is a set of documents to read initially with an expectation that I have to figure things out. When I am not upto the mark, he then guides me.

Why I worry?

1. I am on probation and this place is a start-up, don't want to get fired.

2. They got me as a Sr PM (which was also my previous role where I excelled), so I fear that expectations would be high from me. Failing to deliver those might get me in trouble.

3. He isn't a micro manager and quite supportive, but his communication style isn't working for me (so far).

Somehow, as always, I am getting along well with everyone in the org and everyone is talking good about me.

But with my immediate boss, the imposter syndrome kicks in real hard and I am super insecure. Every time I have to interact with him, I get super stressed and anxious.

I know things take time, but given that I am a Sr PM (and my boss expects me to be a lead PM, a position higher than current), I feel if the expectations are not delivered then I might get fucked.

Imposter Syndrome Kicks In.
I just want to punch and runaway...

Last week summary:

-questioning my identity (I’m cleaning and realised I forgot I used to like many activities I forgot and decided to give them more time)
-questioning how tf my unconscious seems to always plan ahead of me (ah yes I can do this cause I prep… why tf did I prepare for this?)
-questioning my skills (just a standard imposter syndrome, nothing to see here, move on)
-questioning my worth (as above)
-questioning how tf somebody connected to a secret account I have (spoiler: they don’t know and it’s a crazy coincidence… but now I know secrets about them 😏)
-randomly freezing during everyday life for all the above points

Job wise all is cool, tho 🎊

Hi all, how do you deal with imposter syndrome?
I just joined a new job 3 mths back and am struggling with feeling productive. I feel my manager thinks I might be incompetent as my project deliveries are getting delayed.

I was burnt out as last job and it hasn't been easy picking up domain knowledge in a new workplace esp with wfh.
Any advice on how to deal with such a situation ?

I’ve been interviewing at a few companies lately. I’m a dev with ~6 years of experience with a specific language. Most of the experience comes from working in companies that developed their own software, not talking about cms stuff. Analytical, data tracking systems. Now working at a fintech. I’ve got an offer to work as a senior developer in a smaller tech team, with more salary. I’ve approached the current company about the offer and they told me that they don’t think I’m a senior dev and rather a strong mid level dev. The Hr also told me to think about if I’m really a senior and if the other companies expectations would be met. They would increase my salary, but not quite match it. It’s not too far off though. Their reasoning for this was that you need a lot of experience with their product (which does not correlate with seniorness of a developer, only the worth of specific employees for a company IMHO) and system architecture design. The problem is that we don’t see any tasks that could implement any system design for as log as I’ve worked here, so I don’t see how I could work into a senior role at this company. Of course imposter syndrome kicked in and I’m triple guessing myself if I should join the other company as a senior now. How should I aproach this? The current company is stressful to work at because of big workload, a lot of my coworkers think the same thing about the workload.

Every time I look up a tutorial, a guide, some sort of documentation on something that's new to me, and all I can find is written with the implication that you already have a level of understanding on this thing. It's new to me, I don't have that. Instantly questioning whether or not I'm cut out for this.

i feel like a fucking failure, I am so tired of programming, i dont even like it anymore, and all my coworkers are programmer gods. I feel like a burden. Part of it might be imposter syndrome but for the most part its true.

My best mentor was at my first tech job. I’m pretty sure he’s a big reason why I got the job. Not me specifically, but he advocated for hiring out of a bootcamp that represented minorities.

I was just out of bootcamp. I was very sure I was not prepared. No, this was imposter syndrome. As evidence, I was offered a lesser role than what I had interviewed for. I was pretty sure I was only hired because the company was trying to fill a diversity quota, they could get away with paying me less, and I would take training well.

He was assigned to be my mentor. He was very helpful with teaching me the team’s practices and overall tech practices. Mentoring is hard and he was great at it. He almost inspired me to mentor, but I know I’d be shit at it.

When I was job searching, he wrote my recommendation. He helped me in so many ways.

You mean everyday? Submit to imposter syndrome and become an actual imposter

Why am I still using Apache? Must be some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. mod_rewrite is literally the worst. After all those years it still suprises with some shitty behaviour. Hate hate and hate and hate again!

How many of you ever developed (Or partially) "Stockholm syndrome" with your boss / project manager?

Be me, a ret***

Already 3 months in a new position. (check my previous rant)
Storm have passed for a while but another storm is brewing.

C levels are having disagreement with each other.
Caught in the crossfire as one the of C's hire.
Have some chit chats with both side of C, each telling different stories.

C#1 told me there was a demand from C#2 to force tech guys (not defined who or how many) to resigns.

C#2 told me there is no plan to close the whole tech team. But there's a distrust brewing in the tech team especially on the C#1

Be me, C#1 hire...
Me telling them IDK what their real intentions are but there's a high probability for my reputation to be tarnished on the job Market.

I've always had good review amongst peers and confident I did and do a satisfactory job for my previous employer.

Be me:
Resorted to flexing my connection to high ranking (think of C suites) reference who I've worked and have good relations with.
Connected them to my C#2.
Dunno how the C#2 thinks of me and what my value to C#2 are.

Don't know what the future hold for me.
Tried doing one interview but topics of my reputation comes up because of me jumping to executive position without having "Manager" ever in my resume.
Got a bit too defensive on that and it might eff up my chance to have a backup ready in case I urgently need to jump ship.

Depression and impostor syndrome hits like a truck every day.

Need advice about switching to contracting.

TL;DR;

So I had 2 years of exp as an android dev, then I had a 1.5 year gap from doing android and now for the past 6 months Ive been doing android again fulltime. Im thinking of switching to contracting due to my debts and boring project and life crushing slow corporate processes in my current fulltime job, so I need tips and advices as to where should I start looking for new contracting gigs and in general what should I pay attention to. If it helps, I am based in EU, but am open to any EU/US gigs.

Now the full story:

Initially when I joined my current fulltime job after a break I had zero confidence, lowered my and employers expectations, joined as a junior but quickly picked up the latest standards and crushed it. Im doing better than half devs in my scrum team right now and would consider myself to be a mid level right now.

Asked for a 50% bump, manager kinda okayed it but the HQ overseas is taking a very long time to give me the actual bump. I have been waiting for 10 weeks already (lots of people in the decision chain were on and off vacations due to summer, also I guess manager sent this request to HQ too late, go figure). Anyways its becoming unnaceptable and I feel like its time for a change.

Now since I have mortgage and bills to pay, even with the bump that I requested that would leave me with like maximum 700-800 bucks a month after all expenses. I have debts of around 20k and paying them back at this rate would take 3 years at least and sounds like a not viable plan at all.

Also it does not help that the project Im working on is full of legacy and Im not learning anything new here. Corporate life seems to be very slow, lots of red tape kills creativity and so on. I remember in startups I was cooking features left and right each sprint, in here deploying a simple popup feature sometimes takes weeks due to incompetence in the chain. I miss the times where I worked in startups, did my job learned nre skills and after 6 months could jump on another exciting gig. Im not growing here anymore.

So because my ADD brain seems to be suited much better for working in startups, and also I need to make more money quick and I dont see a future in current company, I am thinking of going back to contracting. All I need right now is to build a few side apps, get them reviewed by seniors and fill my knowledge gaps. Then I plan of starting interviewing as a mid level or even a senior for that matter, since I worked with actual seniors and to be honest I dont think getting up to their level would be rocket science.

Only difference between mid and senior devs that I see atleast in my current company is that seniors are taking on responsibility more often, and they also take care of our tools, such as CD/CI, pipeline scripts, linters and etc. Usually seniors are the ones who do the research/investigations and then come up with actual tasks/stories for mids/juniors. Also seniors introduce new dependencies and update our stack, solve some performance issues and address bottlenecks and technical debt. I dont think its rocket science, also Ive been the sole dev responsible for apps in the past and always did decent work. Turns out all I needed was to test myself in an environment full of other devs, thats it. My only bottleneck was the imposter syndrome because I was a self taught dev who worked most of my career alone.

Anyways I posted here asking for some tips and advices on how to begin my search for new contract opportunities. I am living in EU, can you give me some decent sites where I could just start applying? Also I would appreciate any other tips opinions and feedback. Thanks!