Imposter syndrome
Ever been hired at a new company with technologies that are less familiar to you? Also, did you get a feeling that people who have lower designation seemingly better than you? How did you overcome and grow? I am an engineer just a month into starting at a new company.
Settle down first. Observe and learn. Then you can master.
Your unique background matters more than your raw technical skills used on the team. I ended up saving months of effort and time to my team as an intern because I knew my way around Linux and knew how to troubleshoot. Coworkers were experts in C++, however it took them weeks to give up on a Linux problem I solved in 5 minutes because I knew where to look. During full time, worked with a guy my level who was savant-level at single-handedly designing and developing features that were insanely complicated. His problem was that he missed the big picture, he could make an amazing piece of software to solve a problem in 2 months, however I could write a simple shitty script that does 95% of the work in 1 day because I looked at the problem different and knew other ways of getting there. I don’t have a 1/10 of his patience or even 1/20 of his skill, but when we worked together and I channeled his skills in the right direction we were unstoppable. Moral of the story: your overall skillset and experience may be more important to the team than knowledge in certain technologies.
My first job was in w languages and frameworks I had never used. Took 3 months or so to stop worrying about being fired everyday. I did not know what I was doing. Good thing I'm a quick learner. I just spent everyday trying to make sure I knew more the next day.
I've been in this industry for 25+ years (swe, networking, dba, hardware, ops, em, owned small companies, worked in government) and in SV for 7. I'm not stupid and 95% self taught and come from an intellectually oriented family. Every single day I'm shocked that my badge still works even though I've never had a bad review at any company. My expectations for myself are so high that I've never felt successful and even understanding this on an intellectual level I can't seem to break the cycle. Based on conversations with various colleagues I suspect that many in SV deal with imposter syndrome.
I'm re-reading "the subtle art of not giving a fuck". Helped me a lot. Highly recommend it
I feel like the perspectives in that book are distortions and incorrect facts. Would recommend against it friends.
I have it allll the time. I’ve advanced so much in my career, been fortunate to have fantastic managers who invested in me, gave me opportunities to grow, mentored me, and I’ve always gotten great feedback/reviews. Had about 6 different roles over 10 yrs at Cisco and every time I start I feel completely lost and think they’re finally going to realize I don’t know what the hell I’m doing half the time. Started a new role 5 months ago and am right back in the middle of it. But I know eventually I’ll figure most of it out. I always do. But it would be nice to not feel it so regularly. Now I’m looking outside Cisco so it will start all over again. LOL Best of luck to you.
Take your time to learn and enhance your skills, but do it surely.
Every. Single. Day.
Impostor Confident Promoted, back to square one.
lol, never come to Google. almost an year in as a L5 and I have the constant feeling I have no idea what I'm doing and every L3 is more talented than me.
I'm a couple months in and I feel the same way. At my previous company I felt the same as well even though I was somehow getting promoted. I have to keep telling myself that I'm doing some important work that company values even though to me it seems contributions of some lower ranked engineers is just as important. I watched some talks about imposter syndrome a year ago and that helped.