Imposter syndrome is a term that has garnered more growth over the last few years than Dogecoin.
Bad analogy.
Imposter syndrome is very common in the tech industry, but it can happen absolutely anywhere, to absolutely anyone. So while I may be speaking with more regard to working in the tech sector, what I'm saying here will apply to everyone everywhere.
Almost 2.5 years ago I left my place of work for something new. I had been at my previous gig for 7 years and established myself as a hard worker. Everyone knew me, everyone trusted me, and they all (acted as if they) were sad to see me go.
For the weeks leading up to my start date I was convinced that I was going to run this department. I would be able to handle everything they threw at me. Everyone would love me. You'd see my face as the poster child for efficiency and diligence.
Ron Howard Voice Over: He, in fact, was not the poster child for efficiency or diligence.
Beginning again was a huge change for me. Just a few days in it became clear to me that everyone working here, whether on my team or otherwise, was an expert on what they did. And me? I was just a schlepp that came from the IT department of a school district. In no way was I qualified to work on $10,000+ servers, all scattered across the globe. I had to study before my interviews, and I pretended to be smart and friendly. All that did for me in the end was screw me, though.
I got the job.
No longer was I someone that could handle everything my job threw at me. I had to go back to learning, being trained, and hiding my lack of basic math skills from my coworkers.
Just to make a new job harder, I learned the downside of accepting a position where you work directly with friends. Friends do not always make the best coworkers. Sometimes those friends forget that they have years of experience over you, and beat you down for not being an A+ employee on day one. What I'm getting at here is...this was not the best environment for me to inflate my floppy ego.
As the next few months dragged on I began to feel worse, and worse, and worse. Any mistake I made instantly made me feel as if I didn't belong. Every time this happened, I made sure I plastered it all over Slack before someone else could call me out. Every person would know how low-quality of an employee I was. Self sabotage was earned.
The salt in the wound was having a stranger come to the rescue to fix all of my mistakes.
This all continued for several months. There I was, an imposter. An idiot. How did I ever even make it into the industry, let alone to a cloud infrastructure company with a global footprint? Maybe I peaked when I worked in the school district, and failure was my only destiny here? They'd come to regret the salary we'd agreed upon very soon.
Before my first day I played a lot of mental gymnastics to tell myself I'd love the job. My new role would be taking a small portion of what I was currently doing and fleshing it out into a full 40 hours a week, and onto a global scale. I'd also be working with two good friends, and handling a lot of very cool, very new, very expensive equipment. For the first couple of years that my friends worked there I recall being incredibly envious of the environment they were in. They regularly got to put their hands on the latest and greatest equipment. Individual machines that would put my current team's entire yearly budget to shame. But once I started the work for myself I very quickly learned something: most computers are just nondescript, heavy boxes, covered in der blinkenlight. 10 petabyte storage arrays? Looks the same on the outside as a 1GB storage array. Network switch pushing 400Gbps of traffic simultaneously? Looks just like a switch pushing 400Mbps. As it turns out, the expensive stuff is no more fun than the cheap stuff when your only job is to just plug it in.
During the interview process my friends/future coworkers talked me up a lot. We had worked at previous gigs together and they knew what my capabilities were, as well as my work ethic. My other friends, as well as family, have always considered me their personal tech support; the guy that really knows about computers. Finding myself in an environment where people had to teach me, where I didn't have all the answers, where I had to be the one to ask questions, is what really began that imposter syndrome spiral.
The secret to escaping imposter syndrome though, is that it only exists if you believe in it.
Now...there ARE imposters in the work place, but it's pretty unlikely that most people can get through their entire career by pretending they know things but never actually learning them. These people exist, and they often end up in positions that they don't deserve because reality can be unfair, but in my experience they rarely get to keep them. You can kiss up to management all you want, but if you're costing them money in the end, you'll find yourself looking for a new ego to stroke.
Let's talk about you though. You're going to work every day. You're working with your team, doing your best to learn so that no one finds out you know nothing. Trying to be a contributing member and blend in. You rarely take time off, and you volunteer to assist with work so that, at the very least, you have your name on something and can hold off on getting fired.
Welp, guess what. You're not an imposter; you're a contributing team member.
Read that last paragraph again. These are all things that regular team members do. They assist each other, they teach, they learn on their own and from one another. These are the basics of being a good coworker and a good employee. So congratulations, you're not an imposter, you're just like everyone else!
I won't pretend that I have 40+ years of experience working jobs, and have tried every position. Here's the experience I can offer you though: I started in food service at 16, worked through several retail jobs, then computer repair, help desk, network and systems administration, data center engineering, and now InfraOps. My experience in working is with tons of other people, from technical to non-technical roles. All in a modern environment. The people I have experience with are the same people that are still in the workforce now, and will be for a few more decades. You will absolutely meet people during your career.
So let me tell you the story of an imposter:
I work1 on a team for a global internet infrastructure company. My team is well rounded, experienced, and generally pretty awesome. Our manager came from the team, but has been out of the game for so long that it might as well be a different job now. His manager though, had only ever managed the team, he never once did the job that we were paid to do. Just for simplicity's sake, let's call him Clark. In an incredibly unfortunate twist of fate, when the director left the company Clark was promoted. Clark earned this promotion through years of stealing credit for the work of his team. Now, over a year after Clark was promoted he is...still in this position.
I bet you're thinking "Joe, why are you telling us this story? It totally defeats the point you're making!"
Well, stop thinking. You're on a blog. Keep reading!
In his time as director, Clark has made several multi-million dollar mistakes.
In his time as director, Clark has made the same multi-million dollar mistake at least twice. Right now the company is doing poorly, his team specifically is losing tenured engineers, and they're all stating him as their primary reason for jumping ship. So Clark is continuing to make ridiculous amounts of money to do nothing, but just like they tell you when you cheat on a test in high school: he is only cheating himself. In the end he'll ruin his credibility, be left with no team, and will have to hope he can find a new job that will hire someone too inept to actually do the job.
So, now that I have made my point, let me give you one more anecdote just to really sell it:
About two weeks ago I left my job. If you're wondering – yes, I did state Clark as one of my reasons getting out. I started an InfraOps position at a similar company. My salary is about the same, the benefits are the same, but the potential for growth, both for myself and for the company, are significantly higher, and my new position is right at the heart of it. When I applied for the position I knew I was rusty on some of the qualifications, or even completely lacking in some. Two weeks later, after I finished the hard part of the third interview, my future team members were asking me "What's stopping you from accepting the offer?" I didn't even have an offer yet, and they wanted to know why I wouldn't take it. Two days ago I finished my first week, and I am blowing them away with how quickly I made it through the training (supposedly!)
I show up to work a little early, I stay a little late, I'm asking to help where I can, and most importantly – I am pretending to be confident that I can learn to handle the position with the right training. Just like everyone else that works there.
Every article you'll read on dealing with imposter syndrome will tell you the same things; establish a growth mindset, record your successes, etc. These are all great tips, but I'm here to tell you the truth.2 Imposter syndrome does not exist. There are actual imposters that know they're faking it, and then there is you. The dedicated, hard worker, that made it where they are today because their forte was just what their team needed.
1At the time of the story, and when I started this post, I worked at this company. If you read the whole post you'd know that has changed. :)
2Something something, grain of salt.