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I'm confused on who or what misled you to believe that imposter syndrome only exists within the CS bubble. It's a human phenomenon. Sometimes it is purposefully

I'm confused on who or what misled you to believe that imposter syndrome only exists within the CS bubble. It's a human phenomenon. Sometimes it is purposefully fueled by junior developers being talked down to be senior developers who at best feel threatened of being exposed (do I really deserve to make double what a junior dev makes?) or at worst are simply misanthropic. Many of these senior developers are surely skilled at walking the DOM but due to their toxic attitude must be managed with kid gloves like so: https://hbr.org/2016/10/how-to-manage-a-toxic-employee https://hbr.org/2016/10/how-to-manage-a-toxic-employee

austincheney 8y ago
> I'm confused on who or what misled you to believe that imposter syndrome only exists within the CS bubble. There is a big difference between lacking confidence and feeling like an imposter versus a fraudulent qualification. This is solved in most industries through licensing/certification. If you want to practice medicine, law, or nearly anything else you need a license. You need a license to be a truck driver. With such licensing comes testing, a validation of experience, background checks of your professional employment. Software has none of this. That being said how do you identify if a potential software applicant is a fraud to the skills they claim to possess? You really don't. You interview them and hope to separate the capable from the incapable, but often it isn't clear until after they are hired and spent some time on the job. The second order consequence is when you hire only weak developers that weakness is the new (lower) baseline of acceptable competence. > Many of these senior developers are surely skilled at walking the DOM but due to their toxic attitude I think that is a gross generalization to suggest that somebody has enviable valuable skills they are therefore toxic. They could be, in fact, abrasive. It could also be that the people without the valuable skills are defensive and insecure. The best way to answer this is if everybody in that scenario had the valuable skills would the toxic nature still be present? In my experience toxic people remain toxic even when the environment changes.

austincheney 8y ago

> I'm confused on who or what misled you to believe that imposter syndrome only exists within the CS bubble. There is a big difference between lacking confidence and feeling like an imposter versus a fraudulent qualification. This is solved in most industries through licensing/certification. If you want to practice medicine, law, or nearly anything else you need a license. You need a license to be a truck driver. With such licensing comes testing, a validation of experience, background checks of your professional employment. Software has none of this. That being said how do you identify if a potential software applicant is a fraud to the skills they claim to possess? You really don't. You interview them and hope to separate the capable from the incapable, but often it isn't clear until after they are hired and spent some time on the job. The second order consequence is when you hire only weak developers that weakness is the new (lower) baseline of acceptable competence. > Many of these senior developers are surely skilled at walking the DOM but due to their toxic attitude I think that is a gross generalization to suggest that somebody has enviable valuable skills they are therefore toxic. They could be, in fact, abrasive. It could also be that the people without the valuable skills are defensive and insecure. The best way to answer this is if everybody in that scenario had the valuable skills would the toxic nature still be present? In my experience toxic people remain toxic even when the environment changes.