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There's an element of class consciousness because low-confidence tends to be the outcome of an impoverished and unprivileged upbringing. Compare with an upper

There's an element of class consciousness because low-confidence tends to be the outcome of an impoverished and unprivileged upbringing. Compare with an upper class upbringing which tends to come with a sense of confidence and entitlement. Reality often responds accordingly. Generally we seem bad at noticing and rewarding genuine competence and much better at noticing and rewarding confidence, even if it's wildly unrealistic. And even if it comes with a spectacular record of failure or obvious evidence of limited integrity. So imposter syndrome may not be so much about an unrealistically low feeling of competence, but about not having internalised the performative social signifiers of confidence - to the point where someone can navigate them without having to second-guess them consciously. In other words there are two different games being played, and being good at something is only one of them.

fxtentacle 6y ago
Fully agree. I believe this is also one reason why it's so difficult for successful managers to get honest feedback. Over time, they become more confident, which makes their (sometimes faulty) statements much more convincing.
bigwavedave 6y ago
> Compare with an upper class upbringing which tends to come with a sense of confidence and entitlement. > So imposter syndrome may not be so much about an unrealistically low feeling of competence, but about not having internalized the performance social signifies of confidence. Well... I don't know if imposter syndrome is so black and white. All I have is anecdata; I grew up upper middle class, went to some great schools, and held some really wonderful jobs (especially my current job, which is my dream!) - but each day I wonder if today is the day they realize just how little value I bring to the team. The frameworks I've built always need some kind of improvement and when my coworkers look at code, they just debug it in their minds almost instantly. Me? I need to manually step through the debugger with most of the bugs I work on. Management will discuss new features with our team and I'm still trying to figure out fixing the technical debt from the last feature. I've held this job for quite a while so I guess I'm doing something right but holy cow there's no way I'm in the same tier as my coworkers. I dunno, I'm not saying that I disagree, all I'm really saying is I think there could be more that goes into imposter syndrome than class upbringing. It's a dissonance of knowledge and belief: I know I bring value, but I sure don't believe that I do.
- darkerside 6y ago
  And trying to make you feel that you are as good at debugging as your peers seems like the wrong path. Know and appreciate the value that you DO being to the table. That's really ask there is to it. All the impostor syndrome stuff is just overcorrection in trying to find that essential balance.
- dmoy 6y ago
  > when my coworkers look at code, they just debug it in their minds almost instantly Woah back up, this is a good thing. Easy to understand good is better. Writing code in a simple way means that the next person having to go back and fix bugs / etc won't have as many issues.
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    No one said it was a negative thing...
PeterisP 6y ago
It's a bit tricky, as the "privileged upbringing" also often involves heightened expectations of confidence (part of entitlement) and most of the life, especially early, is within a peer group who have similar privilege or lack of it. What would be an achievement for a less privileged family would be expected as table stakes for a more privileged one - you won't be compared (and won't compare yourself) with people who succeeded despite all the hurdles, the comparison is against what other people with similar (or more) privilege did by exploiting every advantage they had. So this creates a systematic exaggeration of your confidence and competence combined with the fact that you're always seeing everyone else's exaggerated competence and entitlement so that your actual competence does not compare favorably. Such a situation can easily lead towards imposter syndrome and low actual confidence combined with a faked posture of high confidence - even if actual competence is expected to be good compared to poorer classes as socioeconomic status does (on average) lead to better skills due to better opportunities and other aspects.

fxtentacle 6y ago

Fully agree. I believe this is also one reason why it's so difficult for successful managers to get honest feedback. Over time, they become more confident, which makes their (sometimes faulty) statements much more convincing.

bigwavedave 6y ago

> Compare with an upper class upbringing which tends to come with a sense of confidence and entitlement. > So imposter syndrome may not be so much about an unrealistically low feeling of competence, but about not having internalized the performance social signifies of confidence. Well... I don't know if imposter syndrome is so black and white. All I have is anecdata; I grew up upper middle class, went to some great schools, and held some really wonderful jobs (especially my current job, which is my dream!) - but each day I wonder if today is the day they realize just how little value I bring to the team. The frameworks I've built always need some kind of improvement and when my coworkers look at code, they just debug it in their minds almost instantly. Me? I need to manually step through the debugger with most of the bugs I work on. Management will discuss new features with our team and I'm still trying to figure out fixing the technical debt from the last feature. I've held this job for quite a while so I guess I'm doing something right but holy cow there's no way I'm in the same tier as my coworkers. I dunno, I'm not saying that I disagree, all I'm really saying is I think there could be more that goes into imposter syndrome than class upbringing. It's a dissonance of knowledge and belief: I know I bring value, but I sure don't believe that I do.

darkerside 6y ago
And trying to make you feel that you are as good at debugging as your peers seems like the wrong path. Know and appreciate the value that you DO being to the table. That's really ask there is to it. All the impostor syndrome stuff is just overcorrection in trying to find that essential balance.
dmoy 6y ago
> when my coworkers look at code, they just debug it in their minds almost instantly Woah back up, this is a good thing. Easy to understand good is better. Writing code in a simple way means that the next person having to go back and fix bugs / etc won't have as many issues.
- bigwavedave 6y ago
  No one said it was a negative thing...

PeterisP 6y ago

It's a bit tricky, as the "privileged upbringing" also often involves heightened expectations of confidence (part of entitlement) and most of the life, especially early, is within a peer group who have similar privilege or lack of it. What would be an achievement for a less privileged family would be expected as table stakes for a more privileged one - you won't be compared (and won't compare yourself) with people who succeeded despite all the hurdles, the comparison is against what other people with similar (or more) privilege did by exploiting every advantage they had. So this creates a systematic exaggeration of your confidence and competence combined with the fact that you're always seeing everyone else's exaggerated competence and entitlement so that your actual competence does not compare favorably. Such a situation can easily lead towards imposter syndrome and low actual confidence combined with a faked posture of high confidence - even if actual competence is expected to be good compared to poorer classes as socioeconomic status does (on average) lead to better skills due to better opportunities and other aspects.