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I've given this a lot of thought. I went through this at Google, and in fact it was one of the things that prevented me from having a more "illustrious" career

I've given this a lot of thought. I went through this at Google, and in fact it was one of the things that prevented me from having a more "illustrious" career there (entirely my fault, not Google's). I felt that I was surrounded by people far smarter and more knowledgeable than me. All the time. My team [1] had amazing machine learning experts, C++ gurus, and so on. I felt inadequate. This hurt my career progression (mostly because of self-doubt) and my general happiness in life. Until I got my hands on this very interesting project that involved designing an instruction set for a custom CPU, implementing a VM, a code generator for the instruction set, a server that did all this on the fly, and some infrastructure around the whole thing. I have written CPU emulators in the past for fun [2], so this was not particularly challenging - it felt like a really exciting project to work on, but at all times I was confident in what I was doing. Then one of my teammates, whom I really looked up to, asked me how had I pulled that off. She was in awe, amazed - exactly how I felt about her incredible machine learning antics! And that's when I understood why I had impostor syndrome, and so did so many people at Google: Google hires really good engineers, but it hires them from very different backgrounds. So you're likely to be surrounded by people who make things you consider impossible black magic seem easy, but crucially, you don't notice that the things that feel easy to yourself are seen by them as impossible black magic! Understanding this actually let me get over my impostor syndrome pretty much entirely. I later left Google to join Improbable and had a fresh start, which I used to consciously avoid falling back into these negative patterns. Although I'm surrounded by the smartest people I've ever worked with, to the point where I still ask myself "how the hell did I manage to get here?" from time to time, I've largely succeded in avoiding falling in the impostor syndrome trap again :) [1]: https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/an-update-on-our-war-against-account.html https://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/an-update-on-our-w... [2]: http://gabrielgambetta.com/remakes.html http://gabrielgambetta.com/remakes.html [3]: http://improbable.io http://improbable.io

agumonkey 10y ago
Good point. It seems that lots of us are people who don't enjoy being in the dark. I too need to master tons of stuff to feel able to speak. Happy that you're cured of the curse.
BurningFrog 10y ago
When people around you can't do something you consider simple, you can think of it in two ways 1. "I'm a normal person surrounded by idiots" 2. "I'm really good at this, surrounded by regular people who I can help this way"
- user5994461 10y ago
  3. I'm really good at this, surrounded by idiots whom I've tried to taught but they couldn't understand a thing.
  - niij 10y ago
    4. I'm a bad teacher.
    - kabdib 10y ago
      5. Hmmm... they're right. I've been doing it the easy, wrong way the whole time :-)
      - contingencies 10y ago
        6. Why has nobody automated this repeated triviality such that it no longer wastes human brain time? Cue to mentally re-evaluate commercial utility of doing so...
    - user5994461 10y ago
      5. The 2 other seniors have tried teaching as well and it didn't go any better. Guess we really are surrounded by idiots unable to learn.
      - throwanem 10y ago
        6. Being a really good programmer may not correlate with being a really good teacher. Or even a good teacher. Or even not being a really poor teacher. This is not a simple problem. Calling people idiots does not make it simpler. It just feels like it does.
1_2__3 10y ago
> entirely my fault, not Google's No. Do not do this to yourself. Google is all about making you think that your job as an employee is to only solve billion dollar problems and everything else is failure. You are constantly told you need to do more, work faster, be better... But also you're entirely responsible for own career, and no one in leadership is there to help you. So no, it's not your fault. Google doesn't provide an environment for people to succeed, and I suspect it's by design. They think they're a meritocracy, and express that by not helping anyone.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  >> Google doesn't provide an environment for people to succeed I'm not sure why more people don't pick up on this. There's a bunch of development companies that I have interviewed at that mirror a lot of what Google does and as soon as I started hearing the same stuff, I just "noped" right out there. These places are designed to burn you out - the whole business model relies on people working themselves into a ditch and then taking a few weeks (or much less) off before starting all over again. The smart ones get out after one cycle, others take a few cycles before they figure it out. Either way, this business model is not conducive to your overall health and well being (even though they try to make you think they really care) and I've had several friends burn out epically; one was so bad he was hospitalized and spent 2 months in the psych ward.
  - xapata 10y ago
    Google doesn't work you into a ditch. I'm not sure where you got that impression.
- hoorayimhelping 10y ago
  >So no, it's not your fault. How can you possibly have the arrogance to tell a stranger that their analysis of their own behavior is wrong based on a paragraph they wrote about themself? GP laid out, very clearly, the insight they had in dissecting their own imposter syndrome and found it was from an incomplete model of the world. In your rush to slag Google and assure GP they're a good, valued person, you seemed to completely miss their entire point, and along with it, the feeling of success that I assume they felt after having grown personally and professionally.
stordoff 10y ago
> I felt that I was surrounded by people far smarter and more knowledgeable than me I had constantly feelings of this when I studied at the University of Cambridge. It never really bothered me, but there was just this nagging feeling of "should I really be here?". Weirdly enough, it was a drunken conversation with a medical student about calcium channel blockers, and realising I could understand the concepts quickly and have a reasoned discussion despite being a computer science student (and being about 4 hour into an event that had free-flowing Champagne...), that finally made me realise why I'd been invited to study there and the impostor syndrome feelings never bothered me again. I also had another realisation a year or so later when studying at different university - my supervisors at Cambridge were constantly pushing us (me and two other students from my college) forward, going far beyond what was actually needed for any of the formal exams, something which seemed far less prevalent at the other university (not to say the staff were poor - they would address happily issues beyond the syllabus if asked, just not actively introduce them). It suddenly made the feeling of never being on top of stuff at Cambridge make a lot more sense. I'm definitely glad to have had my time at Cambridge, but it was certainly not easy going.

agumonkey 10y ago

Good point. It seems that lots of us are people who don't enjoy being in the dark. I too need to master tons of stuff to feel able to speak. Happy that you're cured of the curse.

BurningFrog 10y ago

When people around you can't do something you consider simple, you can think of it in two ways 1. "I'm a normal person surrounded by idiots" 2. "I'm really good at this, surrounded by regular people who I can help this way"

user5994461 10y ago
3. I'm really good at this, surrounded by idiots whom I've tried to taught but they couldn't understand a thing.
- niij 10y ago
  4. I'm a bad teacher.
  - kabdib 10y ago
    5. Hmmm... they're right. I've been doing it the easy, wrong way the whole time :-)
    - contingencies 10y ago
      6. Why has nobody automated this repeated triviality such that it no longer wastes human brain time? Cue to mentally re-evaluate commercial utility of doing so...
  - user5994461 10y ago
    5. The 2 other seniors have tried teaching as well and it didn't go any better. Guess we really are surrounded by idiots unable to learn.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      6. Being a really good programmer may not correlate with being a really good teacher. Or even a good teacher. Or even not being a really poor teacher. This is not a simple problem. Calling people idiots does not make it simpler. It just feels like it does.

1_2__3 10y ago

> entirely my fault, not Google's No. Do not do this to yourself. Google is all about making you think that your job as an employee is to only solve billion dollar problems and everything else is failure. You are constantly told you need to do more, work faster, be better... But also you're entirely responsible for own career, and no one in leadership is there to help you. So no, it's not your fault. Google doesn't provide an environment for people to succeed, and I suspect it's by design. They think they're a meritocracy, and express that by not helping anyone.

at-fates-hands 10y ago
>> Google doesn't provide an environment for people to succeed I'm not sure why more people don't pick up on this. There's a bunch of development companies that I have interviewed at that mirror a lot of what Google does and as soon as I started hearing the same stuff, I just "noped" right out there. These places are designed to burn you out - the whole business model relies on people working themselves into a ditch and then taking a few weeks (or much less) off before starting all over again. The smart ones get out after one cycle, others take a few cycles before they figure it out. Either way, this business model is not conducive to your overall health and well being (even though they try to make you think they really care) and I've had several friends burn out epically; one was so bad he was hospitalized and spent 2 months in the psych ward.
- xapata 10y ago
  Google doesn't work you into a ditch. I'm not sure where you got that impression.
hoorayimhelping 10y ago
>So no, it's not your fault. How can you possibly have the arrogance to tell a stranger that their analysis of their own behavior is wrong based on a paragraph they wrote about themself? GP laid out, very clearly, the insight they had in dissecting their own imposter syndrome and found it was from an incomplete model of the world. In your rush to slag Google and assure GP they're a good, valued person, you seemed to completely miss their entire point, and along with it, the feeling of success that I assume they felt after having grown personally and professionally.

stordoff 10y ago

> I felt that I was surrounded by people far smarter and more knowledgeable than me I had constantly feelings of this when I studied at the University of Cambridge. It never really bothered me, but there was just this nagging feeling of "should I really be here?". Weirdly enough, it was a drunken conversation with a medical student about calcium channel blockers, and realising I could understand the concepts quickly and have a reasoned discussion despite being a computer science student (and being about 4 hour into an event that had free-flowing Champagne...), that finally made me realise why I'd been invited to study there and the impostor syndrome feelings never bothered me again. I also had another realisation a year or so later when studying at different university - my supervisors at Cambridge were constantly pushing us (me and two other students from my college) forward, going far beyond what was actually needed for any of the formal exams, something which seemed far less prevalent at the other university (not to say the staff were poor - they would address happily issues beyond the syllabus if asked, just not actively introduce them). It suddenly made the feeling of never being on top of stuff at Cambridge make a lot more sense. I'm definitely glad to have had my time at Cambridge, but it was certainly not easy going.