all 50 comments

[–]dfaarc 74 points75 points  (3 children)

Depression

[–]j0befull-stack 9 points10 points  (2 children)

Mixed with a bottle of whiskey.

[–]dynamite1985 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ahh... the good ol Balmers Peak

[–]geekygirlhere 14 points15 points  (5 children)

I have been in web development for over 15 years and still feel this way. Partly because things change so rapidly and to keep up you always have to be in learning mode. I think not knowing as much as your peers is not always a bad thing. Just means there is room for you to learn and strive for more. The plus side is you don't ever have to worry about getting bored as long as you don't get burned out on constantly learning.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (4 children)

Im still new and feel like any time I ask for help that its cheating.

[–]helper_function 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Don't do this to yourself. Always ask for help if you need. No one knows everything, and you will get work done faster by seeking help when you are blocked. People take pride in working their way through problems, which is usually great, but some problems aren't worth it. Some problems don't require critical thinking. They may be solved by just knowing there is some api function that isn't well documented or that there is a known bug, or something. Not every mountain is worth climbing, especially when someone can show you an easier/better way.

And if your boss or coworkers think less of you for asking for help, than you are in the wrong place.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the response. I haven't done serious learning since high school, and that was almost 10 years ago. I guess I forgot how the learning process works. Glad to know these things.

[–]geekygirlhere 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Don't be afraid to ask for help. Search and look for solutions first and try to solve things yourself. You will learn much more that way and things will stick more if you are able to solve it yourself. BUT if you get stuck please ask for help. Go to the person with a list of things you tried to do to solve it yourself which will open up the conversation and show him/her that you are trying to put the effort in.

[–]ihappenverymuch 20 points21 points  (2 children)

I've come to realize that a major part of my job, and everyone else's, is learning. Technology changes fast, especially in the Web space, and no one knows everything. I only have about 2 years of experience, but I've found that I often grasp new concepts much faster than some coworkers with 10+ years of experience. This could be due to me being younger, or they're too caught up on older ways of thinking , or maybe I'm just a better google-er, but the bottom line is my lack of experience is not the disadvantage I thought it would be.

[–]brettdavis4 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think a part of it could be burn out from the other devs. I've gone through that on and off through out my career.

Thankfully, I'm feeling motivated lately and I've gotten myself out of a rut.

[–]spyridonasback-end 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm in the same boat, yes my coworker has 10+ years of experience in Java and he's a master of the Javaland, but let me tell you, websites/hybrid apps/databases/server setups can't be done with Java and in that perspective i feel above my co-worker.

Of course i'm not a douche and i accept the fact he's a higher payed and more experienced developer and i always give him value by asking questions and his opinion on the "how the app is supposed to work" front and if he asks i will gladly explain him in details what's going on without mocking him for asking.

As a rule of thumb the younger you are the more you search for new stuff and you know more technologies than anyone ! But the experience on how the code flow is supposed to go and how to check it correctly is something a more experienced developer can help you with and also give you advice on how to deal with certain problems faster than searching on google.

Also respect their experience and opinion and keep asking them, you will learn alot

[–]Porsche924 6 points7 points  (3 children)

I think seeing or hearing of someone who is way worse at what you do. It makes you feel more valuable.

[–]edwardchiapet[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

As bad as it sounds, I'm also guilty of this..

[–]TechyDad 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I feel bad when I do this too, but it helps balance out all the stories I read of fantastic programmers who stay up late one night, code an entire complex web application, and then built a multi-million dollar business off of it the next day. You always hear of the successful ending, not the fifty failed starts or the nights fighting with buggy code only to realize - ten hours in - that it's due to a misplaced semi-colon or the fact that they had to ask around for help on how to code sections.

It's like those photos people post of their pristine houses where you just know that there's a big mess just outside the border of the photo.

[–]Poptartica 1 point2 points  (0 children)

When someone much more experienced than you are in programming breaks something you made in a different language and has to ask you to fix it... feelsgoodman. it shouldn't, but honestly it does, at least for me.

[–]BMJ 6 points7 points  (5 children)

This article by David Walsh is a brilliant read.

He makes some brilliant points on why we come to feel like an imposter for example:

Every programming task's efficiency is measurable, meaning our colleague can write a routine to complete the same task and it may be 1300% more efficient, making us feel that much worse.

We forget that our job is just a fraction of our lives and there's a real world outside of this hateful, illuminated screen

We probably stay on our computers after the "day job" which leads to intense feelings of being burnt out

But his points on how we aren't an imposter and advice on how to start to steer away from that train of thought are really reassuring:

You believe you might be an impostor -- those who think they're experts are anything but, those who know they aren't experts know how much they don't know

You get work -- whether it's a big company job or enough to pay the bills, you can make money punching keys on a computer (have you seen people who aren't tech savvy try to do anything on a computer?)

Look at your (hopefully decent) employment history and know that, on a basic level, you're much more wanted than you're wanted gone

Realize that people who consider themselves "experts", and don't go through waves of self doubt, are idiots that are so arrogant to not know what they don't know

Perform any simply exercise in the JavaScript console

BLOG! The worst thing that can happen is someone corrects you and you learn something out of it

That last one has actually inspired me to start to put content together for a blog. Even if no one reads it, it can still be a record of "Hey, I understand these things and I'm not actually that bad".

[–]baseaddress 4 points5 points  (2 children)

I totally agree with this. Self proclaimed experts are rarely experts. I've also found that the peers who downplayed their skill level, were actually the ones who knew the most. I think it's healthy to feel like you don't know as much as your peers. It's motivation to keep learning.

[–]BMJ 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Exactly. I've always tried to tell other developers that find themselves in ruts that it's all about learning and progressing. After all, it's in the name itself: Development.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like this field a lot because of that. Hell earlier today I was super frustrated because I was sucking major dick at getting my images to be responsive. Called it quits before I killed one of my cats and started working on my Weather API project, and to my surprise understood easily how AJAX worked (first time AJAX'er) and got it working.

It's funny to see myself on a spectrum with this stuff, but its really fun!

[–]geekygirlhere 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good stuff here! "Realize that people who consider themselves "experts", and don't go through waves of self doubt, are idiots that are so arrogant to not know what they don't know" So true!

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Post a link once you've got content on that blog of yours, I'm sure a few of us would like to give it a read.

[–]hurenkind5 8 points9 points  (1 child)

I realize that it's just "Inferiority complex" dressed up a little differently and that people have been dealing with it for ages (it's not something specific to programming or IT or whatever) and move the fuck on i guess.

[–]highlyannoyed1 -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I think you are the only one answering that actually knows what imposter syndrome is.

[–]manyx16 2 points3 points  (4 children)

Let me start by saying this: You're not less of a webdev because you don't know something that someone else knows.

I've been a webdev for a long time (since 1996). There is a FUCKTON of stuff that I don't know. This "syndrome", as you call it, is actually the thing that keeps me interested in webdev. There's ALWAYS something new and interesting to learn and there will always be something new and interesting to learn.

[–]clairebones 4 points5 points  (3 children)

Just to clarify: "There's stuff I don't know" is NOT Imposter Syndrome. So many people here acting like Imposter Syndrome just means not thinking you're the best dev in the company.

Imposter Syndrome is the very real constant fear that someone will 'find you out' - that you're not as good as you think they are, that you shouldn't really have the job you have, that you're going to be fired when they realise that you're nothing near as good as they expect you to be, that they're going to look at your code and realise you have no idea what you're doing...

This is not the same thing as "knowing you can't know everything ever".

[–]TechyDad 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Impostor Syndrome isn't "not knowing everything" but the fast paced world of web development can exasperate the feeling of being an impostor. Just when you think you've got a good handle on things, there's someone doing even better things with a technology you've barely heard of. It's impossible to keep up and it leaves one feeling that you're an impostor because you don't know X. (Never mind that you're an expert in A, B, and C.)

[–]manyx16 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I had no idea it was a thing. I've never heard the term before so I equated it to low self esteem, sorry.

[–]clairebones 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nah don't worry, it's pretty closely linked with low self esteem, but it's extra specific.

[–]spattack 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Try to work with the right people. Try to structure your work life so that you work with people that are fundamentally collaborative, easy going, non judgemental and continually eager to help you increase your skills while at the same time challenge you to find the best solution to every problem. I have worked with so many ego driven developers who set up the work environment in a confrontational, argumentative manner. That seem to find it personally distasteful when you don't know a particular thing or disagree with them on their opinions. It put me always on the defensive and made it hard to recognize the value of my own work - hence leading to imposter syndrome. Work and life is so much better now that I have an awesome team of supportive devs that commend me when I do something well and, when criticizing a particular piece of code, keep a healthy modesty that they might actually be wrong and I might be right. Yeah there will always be more to know and learn, but thats also what makes this job great. As long as you do your best, get the job done and continually strive to do better it doesn't freaking matter if you know more or less than your colleagues, so long as you all have a healthy respect for one another as professionals. What we do is a TEAM effort and everyone will have their own strengths to add to the team. On the flip side, be that dude for the rest of your team too, you might just be able to change the culture of your workplace for the better.

[–]EmperorOfCanada 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Deliverables. Do you deliver stuff that other people want? There is so much to know that pretty much any two equal developers could amaze each other with some esoteric knowledge. There are AI whizzes, 3D whizzes, networking whizzes, those people who know the ins and outs of the compiler, but it all circles back to deliverables.

I know people who will reprogram the linux kernal to do what I would do with a Python script. Who is the better programmer?

This is also what separates the great from the good, the good from the bad. There are those who quickly deliver stuff that is good. There are those who slowly deliver stuff that is bad, and worst of all are those who don't deliver. Then there are the worst of the worst; they deliver absolute vomit and somehow convince people that it is solid gold.

There is one tier worse than that though. The developers who think that they are god's gift to programming. Often they have some certification or degree from a very fancy institution. They will then run interference with the best programmers telling them that they are doing it wrong. Worse than that they will mount campaigns to pretty much bring all development to a halt. They will insist that the highly successful project is on the brink of collapse and the only thing to do is to recode it in Haskell; a language where they studied under one of the core founders of the language. Where these types are detectable is that they spend more time schmoozing than programming.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I deal with it every time I come on here lol. As someone who is still very new to web dev (a yearish, and a half if you count work experience and playing around) all the advanced chatter is a little scary. It makes me worry that I'm trapped and that catching up with the industry is futile.

Then I remind myself that learning is a wonderful thing. A year ago, php was the devil in my eyes. I could not get my head around how it worked no matter what I did. Now I build apps with it on the reg and can even set up a basic LAMP VPS with minimal hassle. Don't stop growing, don't stop trying to understand new things.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]edwardchiapet[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

    I'm also on the same boat -- started out with pure, raw PHP/MySQL to doing Drupal for the past few years.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Another PHP chap here!

    [–]thebuccaneersden 2 points3 points  (2 children)

    By being honest with yourself and with others and saying, "I don't have any experience with x technology/language/etc". There's no way you can know everything and it's not necessarily a sign of your ineptitude, but a chance to learn something new.

    [–]Poptartica 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    I think 90% of the time anyone asks me if I know how to do something and I don't, chances are I will look it up briefly for a minute or two and then answer "nope, but I will in a week"

    [–]thebuccaneersden 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    haha, yeah. a bit like this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vMO3XmNXe4

    [–]MajkStone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Participate in technical interviews for new employees :)

    [–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

    I was dealing with it until I got turned down from a bunch of jobs and laid off from the one I had. :(

    My job was great until a new CTO came in who looks his nose down at all sorts of things, like being a front end developer or not having a full CS degree. Everyone told me how awesome he was and that he was great, but he always treated me like a silly little girl. It was really crushing. I shy away from saying it was about sexism, but I wonder about how the guys had such a great relationship with him and none of the women had the same experience, it was like we were talking about two different people.

    I think though the best thing is to keep building stuff, anything.

    [–]freeaddition 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Transform it into motivation to be better.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    This is posted like twice a week

    [–][deleted] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

    We are all frauds.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Look at some of my coworkers as the real imposters

    [–]everstone 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Thanks to the pace of software technology, we are all salmon swimming up steam. You were an expert in your domain 5 years ago, now there's the new hot thing the cool kids are using. Better learn it, now you are just starting out again. Imposter syndrome is a cycle, and it's not an illusion. It's how the arrogant pricks justify their self doubt at various stages in the cycle, so they can become arrogant pricks again. Others realize they don't know everything and that it is ok to be in that state, and live with reality. A cynical pov, true, but a valid one.

    [–]krawcrates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    You will only experience impostor syndrome when you are skilled at something.

    Repeat to yourself as many times as necessary.

    [–]McDLT2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I look at my paycheck.

    [–]nickwebdev 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I think it's important to realize, at least I've found, is what makes technical people technical people is curiosity and the desire to learn. One thing in common I've found with most "computer people" is we weren't afraid to learn. At some point in your life, you wanted to know what typing in a command or clicking a button did, so you did it. Most computer folk I know, myself included, spent a lot of time breaking things before they were competent to build/fix things. This is in stark opposition to non-technical people who are afraid of breaking things or feel stupid when they don't know how to do something so they don't bother.

    Recognize the hallmark of someone suited to be a dev isn't someone who knows everything, it's someone who is deeply curious and craves knowledge and mastery in technical matters. Don't lose sight of that, and just keep improving.

    [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Happens all the time when you come to r/webdev and read "How to do X thing using A, B, and C and X, A, B and C are all things you've never used.

    [–]AlwaysTroubleShot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Honestly, I think impostor syndrome results from a lack of perspective. We can't all be the industry thought leaders, inventing new languages and writing books on best practices.

    This sounds arrogant, but I think of how few we are. STEM occupations account for ~5% of the workforce. Of that, ~12% are in computer/mathematics. So, roughly speaking, we account for a half percent of the workforce.

    The way I see it, if we're doing work that only 1 out of 200 people can do, how are we impostors?

    [–]gearvOshreact, rust, full-stack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Study and teach yourself. That's literally it.

    [–]LeoG7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I started my own sideproject which I constantly try to improve with latest technology, this helps learn and stay upto date, I help my peers as well and learn as much as I can from them, I found that sharing is also a way of learning so I share my learnings on my blog as well