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To paraphrase Groucho Marx: "He may look like a fraud and talk like a fraud but don't let that fool you. He really is a fraud." What I took away from that arti

To paraphrase Groucho Marx: "He may look like a fraud and talk like a fraud but don't let that fool you. He really is a fraud." What I took away from that article was that the root of the feelings of insufficiency, or fraudulence, stem from the individual's impossibly high standards or negative perfectionism. But to say that someone has 'impossibly high standards' is another way of saying that they have an inflated self image. The conflict, or sense of fraudulence, emerges when the gap between their self image and their actual achievements becomes too glaring to ignore. So, simply feeling like a fraud doesn't necessarily absolve the person from actually BEING a fraud. And although it may feel better to justify to yourself, in an ironic inversion, that only the person who acknowledges their fraudulence ISN'T a fraud, it doesn't actually solve the problem of impossibly high standards or negative perfectionism -- let alone the very real possibility that they ARE fraudulent and allowing their self-doubt to keep them fraudulent.

sdrothrock 11y ago
> But to say that someone has 'impossibly high standards' is another way of saying that they have an inflated self image. I would disagree. They're similar but different; one is internal and external, the other is internal. As someone with impossibly high standards, I sometimes find myself holding other people to those standards and feeling like they're frauds as well. I know many other people with similar exhibited behaviors. However, I feel like having an inflated self image would be different; it would only directly affect the person in question.
- marktangotango 11y ago
  I disagree with your disagreement; who says your or others 'high standard' is correct ie the one true way? I mean where does this standard come from? Suppose you were an advocate of TDD, and perfection to you is 100% code coverage? Guess what, TDD is not a universally accepted standard, there's a lot of great software written without tests (I use TDD as an example only, please bear with me). Another example; suppose one holds object oriented design and analysis and SOLID principals to be the ideal of software architecture, well there are many advocates of functional programming who would love to argue the merits of OOP with this person. So this appeal to 'high standard' is in effect egotistical masturbation in most all cases, in my opinion. But perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by high standard? Work hours, properly formatted commit messages? Code documentation?
  - sdrothrock 11y ago
    That's a good point; some "high standards" could simply be mismatches between personal priorities. > But perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by high standard? Work hours, properly formatted commit messages? Code documentation? For me, personally, it's thoroughness and attention to detail -- for example, seeing that someone's cleaned a bathroom but didn't bother picking up the seat and cleaning the bowl/underside of the seat.
    - argimenes 11y ago
      Those are all good points, but when programmers talk about feeling fraudulent aren't they talking about their level of knowledge and/or competence? I'm not saying that work ethic, tidiness, etc., aren't standards but I suspect that when a programmer fears that they're are a fraud they're not so much worried about the quality of their commit comments as they are, say, the breadth of their knowledge across the web stack, or their expertise in tuning databases, or their mastery of design patterns, etc. In other words, intellectual skills rather than good habits. I admire the integrity of those workers who own to feeling like a fraud, especially those who talk openly about it, and I'm not seeing that they are 'objectively' frauds, simply suggesting that something is out of synch for them to feel fraudulent in the first place. Denying feelings of self-fraudulence COULD discourage someone from taking actions to become an expert ... or it could have the opposite effect.
      - sdrothrock 11y ago
        For me, the (self-diagnosed) root cause of that feeling is an awareness that there's so much that I don't know. When I read about insightful things or neat tricks/pitfalls is a different person from a different background, but it turns into a mess of "wow, all these people know stuff I didn't know -- and there's so much more I don't know!" So even though I do the best I can, there's still a feeling of "Oh, geez, I bet someone else could do this way better. I'm probably missing so much or doing this in a fundamentally bad way."

sdrothrock 11y ago

> But to say that someone has 'impossibly high standards' is another way of saying that they have an inflated self image. I would disagree. They're similar but different; one is internal and external, the other is internal. As someone with impossibly high standards, I sometimes find myself holding other people to those standards and feeling like they're frauds as well. I know many other people with similar exhibited behaviors. However, I feel like having an inflated self image would be different; it would only directly affect the person in question.

marktangotango 11y ago
I disagree with your disagreement; who says your or others 'high standard' is correct ie the one true way? I mean where does this standard come from? Suppose you were an advocate of TDD, and perfection to you is 100% code coverage? Guess what, TDD is not a universally accepted standard, there's a lot of great software written without tests (I use TDD as an example only, please bear with me). Another example; suppose one holds object oriented design and analysis and SOLID principals to be the ideal of software architecture, well there are many advocates of functional programming who would love to argue the merits of OOP with this person. So this appeal to 'high standard' is in effect egotistical masturbation in most all cases, in my opinion. But perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by high standard? Work hours, properly formatted commit messages? Code documentation?
- sdrothrock 11y ago
  That's a good point; some "high standards" could simply be mismatches between personal priorities. > But perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by high standard? Work hours, properly formatted commit messages? Code documentation? For me, personally, it's thoroughness and attention to detail -- for example, seeing that someone's cleaned a bathroom but didn't bother picking up the seat and cleaning the bowl/underside of the seat.
  - argimenes 11y ago
    Those are all good points, but when programmers talk about feeling fraudulent aren't they talking about their level of knowledge and/or competence? I'm not saying that work ethic, tidiness, etc., aren't standards but I suspect that when a programmer fears that they're are a fraud they're not so much worried about the quality of their commit comments as they are, say, the breadth of their knowledge across the web stack, or their expertise in tuning databases, or their mastery of design patterns, etc. In other words, intellectual skills rather than good habits. I admire the integrity of those workers who own to feeling like a fraud, especially those who talk openly about it, and I'm not seeing that they are 'objectively' frauds, simply suggesting that something is out of synch for them to feel fraudulent in the first place. Denying feelings of self-fraudulence COULD discourage someone from taking actions to become an expert ... or it could have the opposite effect.
    - sdrothrock 11y ago
      For me, the (self-diagnosed) root cause of that feeling is an awareness that there's so much that I don't know. When I read about insightful things or neat tricks/pitfalls is a different person from a different background, but it turns into a mess of "wow, all these people know stuff I didn't know -- and there's so much more I don't know!" So even though I do the best I can, there's still a feeling of "Oh, geez, I bet someone else could do this way better. I'm probably missing so much or doing this in a fundamentally bad way."