On Imposter Syndrome

Posted On: 2023-06-10

Because why wouldn’t there be a post on this from a software engineer?

I’ve felt imposter syndrome multiple times in my career. I might even be feeling it right now! Usually this creeps up when I’m working on something new and the internal conversation goes like this:

• I’ve been working in this space for X years now and I still don’t know how XYZ works?! Do I really belong here?

• Why do I still have to frantically search up terminology when talking shop with my peers?

• I’ve been working with this code base for so long and I still don’t completely understand how it works :(

And then I see a coworker, a supposed fellow “experienced dev”, asking in Slack where an error can occur including a large block of code and stack trace pointing to where the error occurred. I think to myself: “How do some of these people even get hired?”.

There’s always going to be people better and people worse than you. It’s a waste of energy to dwell on feeling like I don’t belong and chances are most people feel that too. You don’t have to belong, you just have to get the job done :)