Imposter syndrome and the antidote
Perhaps you never heard of the word imposter syndrome. But if you frequently question your talent and skills, attribute the successful job interviews to luck, and fear of being discovered one day by the workmates that you’re not really qualified, you’re suffering from it.
As you can imagine, the perfectionists are the easy target for imposter syndrome because they have a much higher standard for themselves. Due to their personality, the perfectionists are hardly satisfied with themselves even they already got many compliments from others. For many others, however, the over-competitive work environment and way of working nowadays play a crucial part in imposter syndrome.
As I was still a developer in the Internet industry, I was troubled a lot by the imposter syndrome. Software engineering is complex and hard to manage. It was also well known that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.”¹ So the success of the software heavily depends on the individual talent and skills of developers. “One great developer is ten times more productive than a mediocre one” was a wide-spread view (and still true), and many companies claimed that they only want to hire “the top 1%” developers.
Living every day under such a circumstance, I regularly felt that I didn’t deserve my job. I passed the interview just because I happened to know the answers, and they failed to discover that I lacked in-depth knowledge. Although I could get my tasks done, my code was not elegant comparing to some rock star developers in the industry. I started to practice more and read more blogs after work to improve my skills, but it only worsened the situation because the more I read, the more I felt I was just an imposter who can never be good enough and always struggles to stay calm to keep the job.
At that time, I thought it was only my problem and didn’t know it was quite a common phenomenon in the industry. Unfortunately, now more people, not only developers, are suffering from imposter syndrome as the software industry gets more sophisticated. How can we deal with it? In my opinion, the crux of the imposter syndrome is the loss of meaning in our work. We can’t get rid of it if we can’t rediscover the meaning.
Many years ago, when the software industry just emerged, the developers had to do everything on their own. There were no Agile, no Design Thinking, and not many best practices. You had to try your best to make everything work. It was demanding, and the product quality was sometimes not so good, but you have a holistic view of what you’re doing and whom you’re serving. You got the feedback from the user directly and will be sure you’re helping somebody in the world. You got a sense of fulfillment not because you’re more talented than somebody else, but because you’re helping other people.
Then software started eating the world. To improve productivity and software quality, many methodologies were introduced to the industry, and many new job categories, such as Product Owner and UX Designer, were created. The companies got more efficient due to the division of labor. However, many workers, include developers, lost the holistic view of product development. Developers merely get the instructions from the workmates in the upstream and don’t know why those things have to be implemented. After finishing the tasks, they don’t know if they truly helped the customers because now only the Support team deal with customer feedback.
Similarly, UI Designers only know about interfaces. QA engineers just get the tasks list and test what has to be tested. Almost everyone works as a cog in a machine. Few know how their work is helping people. How do they feel safe or get a sense of fulfillment then? Many start pursuing all the abstract (and crazy) metrics in new job descriptions and consistently comparing oneself with other talented peers, which leads to stress, zero-sum thinking, and imposter syndrome.
Yes, productivity is important, and every worker should specialize in his/her field and know when to stay focus. Yet the human being is not a cog. People suffer less from imposter syndrome and work better if they know they’re contributing to something helpful to the world. To keep productivity in the organization, companies should encourage the employees in the upstream of the process, like the Product Owner, to explain why the requirements are valid and useful when assigning tasks so that the colleagues in the downstream could have a holistic view as well and are aware of how meaningful their work is.
On the other side, as an employee who is a victim of imposter syndrome, one should try to understand the whole process and knows how to contribute to it. The workload could be heavier because you have to take a look at what others are doing, but you can get the meaning from your work and become much more motivated and also healthier.
Anyway, we get paid not because we can beat others on many metrics, but rather because of our contribution to the organization. As long as your work is helping the customers and you’re sure about it, you deserve what you got and won’t see yourself as an imposter.
[1]: The Mythical Man-Month https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month