Imposter syndrome (sometimes referred to as impostor phenomenon) is an experience that can occur to anyone, but has recently been getting a lot of discussion in the tech community. One having this experience often feels that they are a fraud or a fake, and fears that others may expose this deception to detrimental effect. Applied to being a developer, this feeling is often tied to one’s perception of their skill-set and the breadth of their knowledge.

In a competitive and fast moving field such as ours, it’s easy to project to others an image of yourself that is far more ‘perfect’ than you actually are. And most people do this naturally, whether in that job interview you’ve worked so hard to land or in the office with your peers. The problem is exactly the source: most people do this naturally. Meaning that when you are conducting that interview or speaking to that peer who is talking up their prowess it’s very easy to start making comparisons. “Wow, they’ve done so much more than me!”, or,”I just barely heard about [insert_flashy_tech_toy_here] a month ago, you’ve been using it for 2 years?!” You then start to feel that you’re below these people, that those around you are far more skilled and knowledgeable than yourself. You begin to experience the gnawing sensation that you don’t deserve to be here, that you must have “gotten lucky”. Or you might start thinking, “I can’t fail, if I do then others will know I’m not as good as they are”.

I’ve been in exactly this position so many times, especially when I first stepped into the tech space. I had started college as a biochemistry major, and had never really had any formal education or outside exposure to programming. I took an intro course taught in Python, and knew immediately that I was in the wrong field. I switched to computer science that semester and I’ve been loving that decision ever since.

But soon followed a problem. Most people in a computer science degree at a major university have a background from earlier education. Some of them started programming when they were in elementary school, and most have taken some form of coursework in high school such as an Advanced Placement Computer Science class. I soon found myself working shoulder to shoulder with these students, and started to feel that I was always “behind” them somehow. It was as if they just knew so much more than me from their experience that I would never catch up.

The happy news I have to report today is that this was simply not the case, and that you’re absolutely not alone if you’ve felt this way yourself. The reality is, the peers I was feeling inadequate against were likely feeling the same way. You quickly start to see the pattern; a web of uncertainty, comparison and competition. And once you see it, it’s just like seeing a maze from an aerial view. You realize that it’s not as bad as you might have thought standing on the ground.

The realization is step one. Step two is understanding what you’ve now realized. The truth is there are always going to be peers around you who know things you do not. But equally as important, you will know things that they don’t. Everyone has their own twist on the general skillset of their field. They might have a different set of related interests. They could have a slightly different background. It could even be as random as the fact that they once faced an obscure problem or challenge that they had to overcome in a previous project. Whatever small differences they are, these differences quickly add up to make each individual unique.

This uniqueness can be seen in two ways: 1) that you are in a constant race to “catch up” with those around you until you know everything they do. Boo.

…or

2) that everyone has something different to bring to the table. If you look at it this way, you tend to stop worrying about keeping up and competing. Instead you start to appreciate that you can learn something from most anyone, and that you have things to show others. Rather than a bunch of individuals competing in an intellectual battle of epic proportions, you have a community working together to build each other up. Ultimately the latter mindset means a better experience for everyone involved, which in turn leads to more cooperation, faster individual growth and better software.

Have you experienced imposter syndrome? What were your experiences and how did you work to overcome it? I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.