4 ms·

The perennial impostor syndrome problem is not so much worrying about asking questions, it's the lurking fear that asking questions means you don't already know

The perennial impostor syndrome problem is not so much worrying about asking questions, it's the lurking fear that asking questions means you don't already know and are therefore bad. At least for myself, this manifestation is not "oh i don't want to be a bother", it's "if i ask questions {my peers will sneer at the idiot, my boss will take note that i'm disposable ...}". This failure mode has, at many times over my academic career, been really vocally reinforced by my peers at the time. It's extremely damaging, really stupid groupthink that usually winds up with a silent classroom of people too cowed or proud to admit that they, the student, don't already know the material that they're here to learn. And it produces engineers who have to consciously force themselves to not do that, in industry. Like me.

tacitusarc 6y ago
I think this really hits the nail on the head. People naturally associate competence with a sense of self-worth, which isn't always a bad thing, but can become one. It's very strange to me because even when I know there's no reason I would be competent at a particular thing and it's perfectly fine for me not to be, I still struggle with fear that I'll be looked down on if I'm not good at it. I went skiing for the first time in my life recently, and even there I had a substantial fear around looking like an idiot, despite the fact there should be no expectation I would be any good at the sport, in fact I should be quite bad. It didn't stop me from doing it, but it did mean I needed to spend conscious and concerted effort reminding myself that it's okay to be bad at something when you're learning. Engineering and asking questions is no different. EDIT: a necessary addendum to this is that it's important to be cognizant of the time of the person answering the question. If you find yourself asking the same question repeatedly, or asking questions that were addressed by resources you had previously been directed to, or asking investigatory questions that would require the answerer to do your research for you, you may require a bit of self-reflection.
- swirepe 6y ago
  Have you read Feeling Good? It has a part about mastery vs pleasure, specifically how they are independent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_and_pleasure_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_and_pleasure_technique
- xmprt 6y ago
  The fear for me is less about seeming less intelligent or having low self-worth and more about seeming like I haven't looked hard enough. A lot of the time, I can find the answer after 3 hours at work just by trying a bunch of things but it's hard to know when it's better to stop looking and start asking questions to unblock me faster.
- yks 6y ago
  When I try to learn a new skill with the help of the professional, e.g. hire a ski coach, I usually get compliments like "you're learning it faster than most people". I often think that they probably tell that to every single customer but damn it feels great. Playing on insecurities is powerful.
Geminidog 6y ago
Yes this is real. We all like to think asking questions doesn't make you look stupid but the reality is, it does. That's why most humans (men especially) have an inborn fear of asking questions... it's actually an evolved trait. Think about it, you have this fear regardless of what kind of person your mentor is... All these little hang ups that humans have like biases and jealousy exist because they helped us survive natural selection. Ever wonder why evolution hasn't already put in place the behavioral idealisms we strive for? Possibly because that type of behavior didn't actually help us survive. You are a petty person who lacks self control and is too cowardly to ask questions because in certain ways these qualities can actually be good for you. It goes even further then this, because there's a huge possibility that asking too many questions IS actually a good metric for how stupid you are. If evolution evolved in you a fear of asking questions, it may be that this was an evolutionary response to another evolved trait of people accurately judging intelligence by measuring the amount of questions someone asks! Is there any data correlating IQ and amount of questions asked? I would like to know.
- playpause 6y ago
  > We all like to think asking questions doesn't make you look stupid but the reality is, it does. This is the opposite of my experience. I hear alarm bells when a junior engineer says they understand something without asking many questions. Conversely, those who ask the most questions stick out as engaged and intelligent. Even silly clarifying questions often reassure me that the engineer is diligent and doesn't want to waste time due to silly misunderstandings. That's not something I 'like to think' based on some theory I'm pushing. It's just the pragmatic outcome of years of experience of junior devs fucking things up or wasting time because they didn't make sure they understood something first. Even if you're right that somehow we evolved to find people stupid when they ask questions, I imagine that would play a tiny role compared to the intuitions we develop from actual experience on the job.
  - Geminidog 6y ago
    https://www.boredpanda.com/socially-anxious-girl-friendship-classroom/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic https://www.boredpanda.com/socially-anxious-girl-friendship-... The above is an example on how the entire school thought some girl was stupid because she asked too many questions. They were right in a way but also wrong. This is anecdotal evidence, but the fact that an entire school thought this way makes it pseudo statistical as the population of a school is quite large. The quality of the questions you ask matters and yes like all inborn behavior it can be overridden.
op03 6y ago
One thing I have seen work to get people to build up confidence, healthier interactions etc is to break up large groups into groups of 5 and give them a reading list, where one person every week is appointed to talk about a paper on the list. So 15 minutes present thoughts on the paper, 15 mins open for questions, doubts etc, 15 mins to go around the room where everyone talks about something they have learnt over the past week or some issue they have run into. The small group setting makes a big diff. I have seen lot of introverts feeling comfortable enough to open up and grow confident dealing with groups.
jrandm 6y ago
My favorite working situations are when asking "stupid" questions and/or burning 6-12 hours on a subject is normalized and endorsed. I don't expect to live long enough to transcend anecdote, but both are necessary to learn and that's almost always important. I certainly had this in academic environments but they were somewhat cloistered or the educators expected them to be. In jobs like sysadmin/programming 6-12 hours on a thing could be 1 day or 15. The 30-90 minute rule is to force people to search for answers themselves. If you don't know why that's necessary, I encourage you to spend several hours answering questions on sites you browse for answers (SO, HN, reddit, IRC, twitter, discord, slack, zoom, signal, mailing lists, GH issues, bugzilla, phpbb, anything) -- it'll take less than a week. People exist that don't do basic reading or research and will expect you to do everything for them. You'll get jaded. The downside to this environment is a sort of pathological self-reliance. That's when these rules become upper limits: to keep someone from chasing waterfalls ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKufWbP_L4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKufWbP_L4 ). Collaboration always helps, some personal research is always needed... when to mix them varies.
cafard 6y ago
Richard Feynman's account of teaching in Brazil talks about this.

tacitusarc 6y ago

I think this really hits the nail on the head. People naturally associate competence with a sense of self-worth, which isn't always a bad thing, but can become one. It's very strange to me because even when I know there's no reason I would be competent at a particular thing and it's perfectly fine for me not to be, I still struggle with fear that I'll be looked down on if I'm not good at it. I went skiing for the first time in my life recently, and even there I had a substantial fear around looking like an idiot, despite the fact there should be no expectation I would be any good at the sport, in fact I should be quite bad. It didn't stop me from doing it, but it did mean I needed to spend conscious and concerted effort reminding myself that it's okay to be bad at something when you're learning. Engineering and asking questions is no different. EDIT: a necessary addendum to this is that it's important to be cognizant of the time of the person answering the question. If you find yourself asking the same question repeatedly, or asking questions that were addressed by resources you had previously been directed to, or asking investigatory questions that would require the answerer to do your research for you, you may require a bit of self-reflection.

swirepe 6y ago
Have you read Feeling Good? It has a part about mastery vs pleasure, specifically how they are independent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_and_pleasure_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_and_pleasure_technique
xmprt 6y ago
The fear for me is less about seeming less intelligent or having low self-worth and more about seeming like I haven't looked hard enough. A lot of the time, I can find the answer after 3 hours at work just by trying a bunch of things but it's hard to know when it's better to stop looking and start asking questions to unblock me faster.
yks 6y ago
When I try to learn a new skill with the help of the professional, e.g. hire a ski coach, I usually get compliments like "you're learning it faster than most people". I often think that they probably tell that to every single customer but damn it feels great. Playing on insecurities is powerful.

Geminidog 6y ago

Yes this is real. We all like to think asking questions doesn't make you look stupid but the reality is, it does. That's why most humans (men especially) have an inborn fear of asking questions... it's actually an evolved trait. Think about it, you have this fear regardless of what kind of person your mentor is... All these little hang ups that humans have like biases and jealousy exist because they helped us survive natural selection. Ever wonder why evolution hasn't already put in place the behavioral idealisms we strive for? Possibly because that type of behavior didn't actually help us survive. You are a petty person who lacks self control and is too cowardly to ask questions because in certain ways these qualities can actually be good for you. It goes even further then this, because there's a huge possibility that asking too many questions IS actually a good metric for how stupid you are. If evolution evolved in you a fear of asking questions, it may be that this was an evolutionary response to another evolved trait of people accurately judging intelligence by measuring the amount of questions someone asks! Is there any data correlating IQ and amount of questions asked? I would like to know.

playpause 6y ago
> We all like to think asking questions doesn't make you look stupid but the reality is, it does. This is the opposite of my experience. I hear alarm bells when a junior engineer says they understand something without asking many questions. Conversely, those who ask the most questions stick out as engaged and intelligent. Even silly clarifying questions often reassure me that the engineer is diligent and doesn't want to waste time due to silly misunderstandings. That's not something I 'like to think' based on some theory I'm pushing. It's just the pragmatic outcome of years of experience of junior devs fucking things up or wasting time because they didn't make sure they understood something first. Even if you're right that somehow we evolved to find people stupid when they ask questions, I imagine that would play a tiny role compared to the intuitions we develop from actual experience on the job.
- Geminidog 6y ago
  https://www.boredpanda.com/socially-anxious-girl-friendship-classroom/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic https://www.boredpanda.com/socially-anxious-girl-friendship-... The above is an example on how the entire school thought some girl was stupid because she asked too many questions. They were right in a way but also wrong. This is anecdotal evidence, but the fact that an entire school thought this way makes it pseudo statistical as the population of a school is quite large. The quality of the questions you ask matters and yes like all inborn behavior it can be overridden.

op03 6y ago

One thing I have seen work to get people to build up confidence, healthier interactions etc is to break up large groups into groups of 5 and give them a reading list, where one person every week is appointed to talk about a paper on the list. So 15 minutes present thoughts on the paper, 15 mins open for questions, doubts etc, 15 mins to go around the room where everyone talks about something they have learnt over the past week or some issue they have run into. The small group setting makes a big diff. I have seen lot of introverts feeling comfortable enough to open up and grow confident dealing with groups.

jrandm 6y ago

My favorite working situations are when asking "stupid" questions and/or burning 6-12 hours on a subject is normalized and endorsed. I don't expect to live long enough to transcend anecdote, but both are necessary to learn and that's almost always important. I certainly had this in academic environments but they were somewhat cloistered or the educators expected them to be. In jobs like sysadmin/programming 6-12 hours on a thing could be 1 day or 15. The 30-90 minute rule is to force people to search for answers themselves. If you don't know why that's necessary, I encourage you to spend several hours answering questions on sites you browse for answers (SO, HN, reddit, IRC, twitter, discord, slack, zoom, signal, mailing lists, GH issues, bugzilla, phpbb, anything) -- it'll take less than a week. People exist that don't do basic reading or research and will expect you to do everything for them. You'll get jaded. The downside to this environment is a sort of pathological self-reliance. That's when these rules become upper limits: to keep someone from chasing waterfalls ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKufWbP_L4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoKufWbP_L4 ). Collaboration always helps, some personal research is always needed... when to mix them varies.

cafard 6y ago

Richard Feynman's account of teaching in Brazil talks about this.