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> I don't think widely considered experts experience the impostor syndrome in the same way that I see it explained. Experts on postgres internals don't wonder i

> I don't think widely considered experts experience the impostor syndrome in the same way that I see it explained. Experts on postgres internals don't wonder if they're experts on postgres internals... Um. I'm an expert on PG internals. And I get impostor syndrome on stuff related to PG internals.

hardwaresofton 8y ago
But you don't get impostor syndrome on PG internals itself do you? If you do, could you expand on the parts of PG internals that you know the best (I assume that's what you've written/hacked on the most), and the parts that you feel you don't know enough to be an authorative source on? A sub-point of my post was that maybe people should avoid statements like "I'm an expert at X" for a sufficiently complicated X. Maybe just say "I have a lot of experience using X's feature Y, and dealing with Z when it occurs".
- anarazel 8y ago
  > But you don't get impostor syndrome on PG internals itself do you? I do. > If you do, could you expand on the parts of PG internals that you know the best (I assume that's what you've written/hacked on the most), and the parts that you feel you don't know enough to be an authorative source on? I've hacked, and in some of the cases authored, on many parts of postgres (I'm a committer in the project), including physical and logical replication, durability, locking, executor, JIT compilation, good chunks of the planner, ... There's a few parts of postgres that I don't know as well (SSI, some of the PLs, gin/gist/spgist), but even there I know a good bit. But that doesn't really matter. Even on code that I personally wrote and committed I get impostor syndrome like feelings. I've learned mechanisms to cope and continue regardless. But I consciously have to do it. I don't think you should disregard the fact that other people get impostor syndrome quite so blithely.
  - hardwaresofton 8y ago
    Thanks for the feedback -- assuming you didn't mind, I've updated the post with the conversation here.

hardwaresofton 8y ago

But you don't get impostor syndrome on PG internals itself do you? If you do, could you expand on the parts of PG internals that you know the best (I assume that's what you've written/hacked on the most), and the parts that you feel you don't know enough to be an authorative source on? A sub-point of my post was that maybe people should avoid statements like "I'm an expert at X" for a sufficiently complicated X. Maybe just say "I have a lot of experience using X's feature Y, and dealing with Z when it occurs".

anarazel 8y ago
> But you don't get impostor syndrome on PG internals itself do you? I do. > If you do, could you expand on the parts of PG internals that you know the best (I assume that's what you've written/hacked on the most), and the parts that you feel you don't know enough to be an authorative source on? I've hacked, and in some of the cases authored, on many parts of postgres (I'm a committer in the project), including physical and logical replication, durability, locking, executor, JIT compilation, good chunks of the planner, ... There's a few parts of postgres that I don't know as well (SSI, some of the PLs, gin/gist/spgist), but even there I know a good bit. But that doesn't really matter. Even on code that I personally wrote and committed I get impostor syndrome like feelings. I've learned mechanisms to cope and continue regardless. But I consciously have to do it. I don't think you should disregard the fact that other people get impostor syndrome quite so blithely.
- hardwaresofton 8y ago
  Thanks for the feedback -- assuming you didn't mind, I've updated the post with the conversation here.