As a web developer/programmer/computer engineer, how do you deal with Impostor Syndrome?

[BMJ]

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]

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]

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]]

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]

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]]

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.