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.

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.

On being a woman in tech...

You lads probably have (and my fellow ladies certainly have) heard of "impostor syndrome" and, if you don't experience it, you possibly wonder what living with it is like.

Here's an example from this weekend.

Be me, about 5 years into my career, graduated from a top college, feeling decent but still unsure of skill.

Company gets a 4 week trial of an online learning website. It includes optional assessments, so that you know where in the video lessons to start. Rankings are novice, proficient, expert.

Hear from our QA that he got ranked "proficient." Which is a pretty broad category, but I become super afraid that I'll also be assessed as "proficient" and it will look like I have the same dev skills as a fucking QA (our management overlords can see our scores).

Boyfriend has me do some deep breathing before starting the test, because it's obvious how stressed I am.

Finally take it and get ranked "expert", in the 97th percentile, even though some technical difficulties made me miss four questions in a row. I decide to use my do over, and get ranked "expert" again, this time in the 99th percentile.

You'd think I'd be like, "Lawl, I can't believe I'd get the same score as our QA!" And there is some of that. But there's also the thoughts of, "that test could have been more thorough," "that score wasn't real because I resaw a question and got the right answer the second time," and "99th percentile isn't that great on a platform where new developers are over represented."

And this is all despite the fact that, if you were to ask someone how confident I am, the answer would probably "confident as hell."

Not saying this to start any fights. Figured it could be some interesting insight into a world that some people don't experience! (not that males aren't allowed to have impostor syndrome!)

The constant back and forth between imposter syndrome and God complex

You think you're doing well, then you talk to someone who operates at a skill level so far above you, it makes you think why even bother.

Experiencing it right now.

As I type this I am sat in hospital having lost power to my hands over the weekend.

I work a day job, I have my own startup that I’m working on and I’m also freelancing on another startup.

Just been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. It sucks. My hands feel about as a strong as a particularly weak 4 year old girl.

When my impostor syndrome is going rampant.

Damned, my wife's pms (aka "premenstrual syndrome") is synchronize with the windows update...

What have I done in my paste life's?

Believe it or not, this community has helped me overcome my impostor syndrome.

It's such an enormous relief whenever I open the app and read the rants, and I can actually relate to or understand many of them. It restores not only my confidence in my knowledge and skills, but also my motivation to learn and grow. It gives me strength to push forward instead of giving up on this path.

Thank you DevRant, rant on you awesome fuckers! :)

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.

90% of c/c++ "lovers" whose favourite language is c/c++ apparently turns out it is the only language they have ever known.
Mermaid syndrome too strong amongst Indian Devs.

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? ...

It’s actually pretty neat. I constantly suffer from impostor syndrome, so I always have keep learning to keep up the facade.

When I started my job a year ago, I felt impostor syndrome. Now I think everyone around me is a fucking moron and I'm an elite programmer.

Am I just an asshole, or has my journey with this company expired?

Everybody talks about burnout syndrome or crappy tech interviews, but not about a real struggle for devs, bubbles in their laptop stickers.

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!!!

Bad dev habit to unlearn:

Impostor syndrome before starting a project.

Don't think a lot before diving into a tough project. Just jump in. If you second guess yourself about being ready, you'll never do it. Either you're already good enough or you'll figure out what you need.

I wasted way too much time before starting to write an AI chess engine but it turned out a lot simpler than I expected.

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?

I think I have a "Slack" syndrome. Sometimes, I hear the notification sound even when there is no notification...

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

Life of an Intern:

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

Developing a Haskell project, indenting everything with 3 spaces. Develop to over a million lines of code. Use Darcs as a repository. Run the code on AIX powerpc architecture. Suffering from special snowflake syndrome.

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.

When lot of people are actually using you open source software and contributing to it and donating money for it, but you don't know why given the fact that it objectively is complete crap.

I feel bad each time that I receive money. Is this what the "impostor syndrome" feels like? Because I'm actually feeling like an impostor.

No one talks about the health of programmers, rsi and carpel tunnel syndrome is real... health should be paramount

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

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?

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.

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 😔

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.

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.

When you have 143 opened tabs and you feel like they are sucking the life out of you. Time to get some Oxygen !

PSA.

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

When the impostor syndrome hits me, I try to remember my achievements :
- I won a national coding contest when I was 18,
- I made and still maintain a complex app for 15 years, still actively used,
- I cannot count the number of languages I know; too many of them...

Not bragging here, btw. It's just important to actually enumerate your achievements.
If you get hit by the IS, just remember what you did 😉.

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

!Rant
Had an employee evaluation today that I had been anticipating with a lot of anxiety since December. Went in with major impostor syndrome thinking I’m just not contributing enough and I was going to be put on the spot. But, they told me they couldn’t be happier with the work I’ve been doing. Now I can finally relax.

Starting my first front end dev job in 3 weeks AAHHHHH!!

The imposter syndrome is real.

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. 😥

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.

Dear imposter syndrome. Please go the fuck away.

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.

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?

New clients and impostor syndrome.

As a self-taught freelance web developer-designer with minimum experience and an introvert it's hard to find new clients. Also the impostor syndrome-experience (call it as you want) doesn't help at all :/

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

Well, my company hired a total amateur who can't do anything right on his own without copying code from me or the internet and I have to pretend he's helping in any capacity because otherwise I'm a "bad team player" and "should communicate more".

Helped me get over impostor syndrome, at least.

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

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.

!rant. Encouragement for those feeing impostor syndrome like I am right now with a new employer. Source +
Bonus Panel: goo.gl/mhOvDs

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?"

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

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 :(

IBM. Fucking IBM. I have not heard ONE person say “We should totally become an IBM shop!” Because only people who were already STUCK with IBM when better options presented themselves still use IBM bullshit. And those people... ooooooh those fuckers are in SO MUCH denial. “Yeah but IBM does such-and-such too.” YEAH? Well your business model shouldn’t be built on businesses held captive to your antique bullshit. That shit is Stockholm syndrome. Textbook, fucking Stockholm syndrome. Don’t tell me “It used to be we could only have EIGHT character file names.” THAT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN A THING. EVER. Fucking THINK about it. If you have to justify something based how much WORSE it used to be, that thing probably fucking sucks.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not good enough to be a dev! Any advise on how to shift this feeling?

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

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?

Anyone else get Stockholm syndrome for languages? Like you gotta use a language you hate for something and the more you use it, the more you warm up to it?

mongo in slang means idiot, which comes from the term mongol or mongoloid, which is a deprecated word that used to be used for sufferers of down syndrome. So MongoDB means "Down Syndrom Data Base"

Also mongo means huge, so it may have been named after that.

Have any one used Skype for business, It seems to me it has down syndrome.
They cant just make a simple think work.

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).

Everyone and their mother has a JavaScript framework and the NEWEST cool npm module you're an idiot for not using.

It's like musicians and gear acquisition syndrome, coders love to have new stuff even if it's over-engineered, already exists, or redundant.

Hate dealing with tech hipsters 🙄 is nothing tried and true anymore?

Ever had impostor syndrome? What did you do when you had?

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

When you're in your mid-twenties and get the first few wrist aches on your mouse hand and get anxious about possible carpal tunnel syndrome... I can't be the only one.

Imposter syndrome creeping in?

Remember this woman.

Fake it until you make it or get indicted.

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

Is this normal?

How have you dealt with imposter's syndrome?

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?

Is this here your bloody fucking diary?!

Then maybe back the fuck off to Insta and Fagbook commercials Stockholm syndrome circle jerk. Right where your mind is at ease.

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!

Imposter syndrome... 😃

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

🤔🤔🤔🤔

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.

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.

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. 😫

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.

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

Maybe at some degree even viceversa.

This combined with imposter syndrome, hope is getting lost

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 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

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.

how do i deal with impostor syndrome?

i read thedailywtf.com... daily.

also, since i'm trying to be a gamedev i watch youtube channels that foxus on reviewing/trying shitty games.

helps with the impostor syndrome quite a lot, but has a side effect of causing depression from "how the hell are all these incompetent morons successful, and i' m not?"

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

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!

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.

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

[how to deal with impostor syndrome]

By consuming the flesh of the innocent, or learning new skills, i forgot which one.

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?

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

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

I'm a programmer who is still learning, and I've been having some nasty impostor syndrome lately. How do you deal with it? And does anyone know some websites with good programming tests/quizzes? I want to see how much I know.

(also first rant yay)

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.

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?

The Imposter Syndrome is strong this week.

Even the least likely people experience Imposter Syndrome ...

Having a really bad last paper syndrome!!!
Ughh!!

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

I'm struggling to write a function that finds a subsequence in a sequence. I made a fucking programming language and String::find is where I get stuck. Fucking fuck.

Impostor syndrome hitting hard today

My rant is that I low key hate devRant.

I'm 23, I'm an average software engineer, with some expertise in machine learning and with a decent job.
But seeing all your cool stories, skills and rants makes me feel like I don't know shit and everyone else is just more driven, skillful and passionate, taking care of a 1000 pet projects at a time and dominating their work routine.

Oh impostor syndrome, how I've missed you!

P.S.: I still love your rants, keep them coming.

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

Imposter syndrome.

Freelance Headhunters...

No idea where they got my name and the number of my work phone...

- they do not give a damn and call me 1045 am to discuss "EXCITING BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES™"

- they are sure I am having a case of stockholm syndrome, because I could NEVER be satisfied in my current employment

- they call every other day with a new number and start the same process again

How fucking dense can people get?

Devs knows everything (even new technology) syndrome by managers

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. 👺

Imposter syndrome.... 😥 Enough said

"Is it an impostor syndrome or am I good at pretending?"

That feeling when you've been programming, scripting and developing games, software and web pages for nearly a decade and you still feel like a talentless hack that doesn't deserve the wages you are paid, and constantly fear being exposed as a fraud by your peers... :x

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.

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

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 😭

Java, or: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome the programming language.

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

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.

Imposter syndrome is hitting hard today.

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 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.

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.

When I realized that programming is the greatest way to make one's living, that I will never love anything more than programming, and that every feature and quirk in a new language is like a new friend.

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

Any fellow devs here who have a completely unrelated degree? The impostor syndrome is real.

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.

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

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.

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.. :)

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.

*revving chainsaw noises*

Today I started nuking leftover project code.

At the end, some projects shrunk by roughly up to 40 % .

Can anyone explain to me why programmers have such an awful hoarding syndrome?

Why do you keep shit that might unleash complete havoc cause it hasn't been touched since years and noone knows id it still works?

It's like having a leg with gangrene and keeping it cause "it doesn't look that bad".

For fucks sake. Clean up and remove shit when it's not necessary anymore.

Reason why I did a bloody gore massacre in nearly a dozen projects... After all the rework of networking, it's finally evident which projects have a bad / nasty behaviour of "fucked up" connection handling (HTTP 1.1).

And when my gory massacre removal goes life, I think 25-35 % of persistent connections on the loadbalancers will vanish. Maybe even more, since some very nasty stuff was in some projects.

Like "let's implement monitoring without having any clue about how monitoring works and even less clues about how TCP/ HTTP works."

*Bangs devs heads on table*

Stop. Doing. Stupid. Things.

For fucks sake.

:@ :@

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

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 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.

!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.

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 🙏

To be honest, the majority of my work is just man and grep, and these two things already somehow make me better than the vast majority of my colleagues. Impostor syndrome doesn't think so though.

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?

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.

This rant must be because of my oldness. I was never into Pokemon, but my oldest kid was.

So the hashtag for Pokemon Go makes little sense to me. It could just as easy be an insulting Poke Mongo (ie harazzing a Down's Syndrome person) as Pokemon Go.

There. Out of my system. Please carry on.

Finally, I got my laptop back after 4 gruelling days of separation with a new disc and more RAM!!!
I can't wait to finish up installing all the programmes I need to start writing code!!!

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.

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 had a pretty good day today. Things are coming together at the new job, and I'm a little less afflicted with impostor syndrome.

Hope everyone else had a pretty good one too.

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

My intelligence is artificial.

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

Guess I was overdue for a bout of Imposters Syndrome, because now it's back in full force...

People around me and clients are increasingly saying i am a genius, because i show them an app i made in react-native or some crappy site i set up in a week as POC.

While im quite noobish still, i barely read publications out of interests, and most of the time i just put in async/await somewhere just to see if it makes the promise work or not, because i dont understand promises fully, and I think in general i just accomplished very little in the 5 years I have been programming

It is really putting pressure on my impostor syndrome, even more when i talk with my peers who can tell who was the driving force behind ES6 :/

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

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...

While speaking i cant say if without an else.
I guess it's programming syndrome

"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!

Imposter syndrome at its best right now.

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

I am my teams goto guy for anything and everything. For any problem they face technically.

They think I am some kind of genius. But in reality I just Google. :/ I don't know most of the things they ask!

The saving grace is that, whenever I try to solve anything, the pieces of the puzzle quickly fall into their places in my head.

Now the impostor syndrome is kicking in hard!

I hated lotusnotes until we upgraded to Outlook, pretty sure there was an office-wide case of Stockholm syndrome for at least a week...

Also Microsoft Communicator, flashbacks to MSN messenger and the most infuriating shortcuts. *shudder*

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

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

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

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...

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.

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?

That moment you find your C++ code from 2012 but you still feel like you know nothing after 8+ years coding. 😭
(Impostor syndrome is strong with this one! 😂)

!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?

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

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.

"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.

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

I really want to go back home to my computer

what kind of torture is this?

I haven't touched a PC in weeks, almost a month.

I feel like I am experiencing withdrawal syndrome

what to do? 😪

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

Just "finished" a side project (I know right, unprecedented) to be graced immediately afterward with another approach to vastly improve one of its features. Well shit, now I HAVE to implement it otherwise it'll just bug the shit out of me for the rest of time!

WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME BRAIN! JUST LET ME FINISH MY SHITTY SIDE PROJECTS WITH PEACE AND QUIET!

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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!!

I don't think I have this syndrome, I don't think I am great at anything and the surrounding world shows that.

I have to work really hard, more than others to get an average result.

What cheers me up is that even tho I am subaverage in everything, when I spend the extra time, I often get the avg result and when you are following your results, when you see there is progress, it feels better

What is imposter syndrome?

Fighting what I call "FTS" (Fuck This Shit) syndrome.

Most of my mistakes or challenges caused to my future self can be attributed to succumbing to FTS.

I'm taking a year out from my degree to do a software dev placement. I fought hard to get it and totally smashed the interview. But I'm still nervous as all hell and not sure I want it.

I think it stems from not actually feeling like I'm a real dev yet. I feel like I'm a big fish in a small pond at uni, which is why I took the job. That and the fact I never really made many friends there. Still can't shake the feeling that I'm just going to fail miserably...

I guess this is what they call "impostor syndrome".

Cure for Imposter Syndrome:

Go try to find a freelancer for a project, for something like "adding OAuth to existing .net web API 2 and angular.ja project" and many many developers respond. You will be shocked at how little they know, they say they understand the job but are clearly incompetent.

Best job security ever. Also, just suck it up and do it yourself 😆

Don't know if its Imposter syndrome or I'm talentless. :(

I need your help.
I think I'm addicted to distractions and diversions. It's ruining my life and any chance to get experience.

Instead of actual developing, I constantly watch development tutorials and courses, listen to podcasts about development, read books and articles about development, post on development forums and go to development meetups.

I can't write a few lines of code without being 100% concentrated first, and afterwards I get distracted by everyday life events only to find myself at the end too tired to do anything productive and then surrender to sleep.

I'm getting depressed. How can I fight this? How can I push myself to work and be an actual developer?

I can't tell if my team actually thinks I'm a competent dev or just blowing smoke up my ass.

Just purchased a new domain and decided to once again design my website personally (Fuck wordpress man) but...

I absolutely hate working with HTML and JS at the same time (I actually love JS on its own), its like bloody Stockholm syndrome!

HTML may beat me senseless.. But i love it too much to stop!