Hello blind, How do you guys deal with imposter syndrome? I feel like since there's so much to know and learn in our field, often times I feel like I am not good enough. I have this problem with even the knowledge I thought i fully understood. Because I want to stay on top of my Algorithms and datastructures, I have also been trying to do some leetcode questions everyday, but seeing myself not being able to solve any medium/hard without some help, I just get even more stressful and feel dumber. I think time will help since I am still fairly new to the field (2 years out of school), but I can't help myself from comparing myself to those people who are at bigger companies getting paid a lot more. This definitely worsens my imposter syndrome. So how should I deal with this? How do you guys deal with it?
Make a goal - and sacrifice everything around you (at balance ) to achieve it . I am dumbest but growth and drive helped me overcome all my fears and make it decent success
Fake it till you make it
Attack is the best defense
If you wanna be the president, you gotta become Trump. If you become a Bernie, you get backstabbed and destroyed. The world is wicked. Imposter is good. Keep it up. Everyone at the top is a faker.
Check out Reality Transurfing. 2006 Best Seller in Russia translated across YouTube where you can listen for free. Written by a quantum physicist (recommended to me by Jaron Lukasiewicz). I'm critical and skeptical of everything but it's a fascinating theory...especially now that simulation theory is all the rage. Surprisingly still under the radar but you might find it helpful.
You are probably right before or right after Mt Stupid, judging by your lack of confidence
This is actually really helpful and assuring. I did become over confident at one point haha. Thanks for this!
that's good, it means you've passed the critical, dangerous stage, can only get better moving forward. Some people stay there all their life, lol. Don't want to name names but think orange hair haha
Don’t feel bad. First tell yourself that you are great the way you. Also tell yourself that you will try to be better at things but it will take time. Coding is not everything. There are a lot of jobs in software that don’t require coding. Not suggesting that you give up but look at the other side as well. Also not everyone works at FAANG.
Dude are you kidding me? I can barely do LC medium/hard because I’m so out of practice and TC > 500. Don’t sweat it. LC has NOTHING to do with aptitude for the engineering profession. It’s just stupid monkey hoops they make us jump through.
Bighead did nothing wrong.
Just keep faking it
That's the thing though. Is that what everyone have to do in this field?
Yes, but when people say just keep faking it the often neglect to be specific on how to fake it. Here are some tips. Ask questions confidently when you don’t know something or are not sure of a decision. Ex. Can you expand on why you/we chose to use this library vs some other library When you see a pattern in code that you can’t quite follow, tap someone on your team that you feel is trustworthy and ask them to take a look at it with you to see if it’s the most efficient solution. Again, you are using their expertise against them in the sense that you are acknowledging that they would be able to help find a more optimal solution to anything. Spend time studying. If you see code that doesn’t make sense to you try and track down how it’s working and why. Break it into small pieces if possible and walk through the operations in your head. This is good practice to start reasoning about your code. Don’t just stick with the new hotness. Whatever new stuff is out is fantastic but if you feel like an imposter start looking at the basics of the language you spend your time with. Don’t ever be afraid to go back to the beginning. You can always learn something new. Last but not least. Have a bit of fun with something. Give yourself an hour every couple days when at home and just make something. It doesn’t matter how simple of it it’s even useful. Just make something to get in some more practice with making decisions. Hell it could be a message prompt. How could you put something together that can display a simple message. Then expand that to how can you make sure it’s flexible and scalable. How would it handle typing a custom message? What would it do with invalid message types? Are there any invalid message types? What if you needed n message prompts to appear how would they be managed. Stuff like that. Following good practice means that you will always learn, and while learning you will always feel like you don’t quite know enough. The key is balancing that out by always knowing a bit more than you did yesterday. Keep the imposter syndrome strong. Once you feel like you know everything you have just graduated to being an asshole.