There is one consistent thought that has plagued me throughout my career thus far. The feeling of inadequacy. In recent times, I have come to learn that that feeling has a name, imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is often described as the unjustified feeling that you are not good enough to do something. Even when being told you are doing well, you equate it to luck, or a mistake on the person or persons who evaluated you. You constantly feel like the other shoe is about to drop and you are going to be found out for the fraud you are.
It is one of the most debilitating problems I have worked to overcome in the almost eight years that I have been in the software industry. In the beginning, it constantly made me think that i was doing poorly at my job and that I was about to be fired at any moment. That I would make some irreparable . Then, when I finally was promoted to software engineer, I constantly felt like a fraud. I constantly felt inadequate because I had not completed any boot camp or had finished my CS degree. The bits of software engineering I knew came from a few entry level courses and roughly five years of off and on programming trying to break into web development.
Luckily, I had a great manager at the time. One particularly bad mental health day, he called me out of the blue and I ended up confiding in him how I had been feeling. He laughed. He had actually been calling me to tell me that they where very impressed with my work and that I was actually being promoted out of my probationary status to full junior developer.
Sometimes, the stories we tell ourselves are fiction. Other times, they are factual. The trick is learning to tell the difference. I still have moments of fear and doubt. I have general anxiety to begin with, so this is often my default mode. Without a doubt I have improved as an engineer over the last four years. I was performing at the level that was expected of my for my position as a junior engineer, and now into being a mid level engineer. The anxiety I felt has lessened as I come to realize that I have my own talents that have emerged during this time. And while I may not excel at everything, there is nothing I can’t pick up.
Today, I look back at how far I have come. I am wrapping up a major project for the company. The CEO told me on a call that I had done a fantastic job (granted its a very small company but I’ll take it). There is always going to be growing pains and there are always new challenges. That means I’m still growing and not just laying still and complacent.
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