I am a generalist, so I can do a lot of things reasonably well, but nothing with particular expertise. So when I'm working alongside specialists -- people with

I am a generalist, so I can do a lot of things reasonably well, but nothing with particular expertise. So when I'm working alongside specialists -- people with extraordinary depth in one particular aspect of technology -- it can be easy to feel like, "I shouldn't even be here. They're going to figure out I'm a fraud." In those cases, I try to remind myself that my breadth is just as important as their depth. I have sat in on job interviews where the candidate was asked questions that I felt confident I wouldn't have been able to answer if I were the one in the hot seat, and that definitely triggers feelings of imposter syndrome. But in many cases, the best response to that isn't "Oh my gosh, I shouldn't let anyone discover that question is too hard for me" but "Could our hiring process be screwed up? Is this really the right question to be asking? Is it more of a gotcha question or does it have real relevance to the position?" Over time, having been in many job interviews as both a candidate and an interviewer, I've come to see how much of a difference it can make to say to yourself, "Even if you're completely right that you're an imposter, let's just pretend that you're not and see how far you get." I'm now at a point in my career where I have enough successes under my belt that it's a little easier to reassure myself, but whenever I hop into a meeting, I still feel like I'm jumping into character, pretending to have confidence even if I don't. I have mixed feelings about that strategy, though, because pretending to have a level of confidence in my abilities greater than I actually have might be a contributor to other people's imposter syndrome. But maybe the solution to that is to be willing to "take off the costume" in frank conversations, to clear up any misconceptions.