DEV Community

Cover image for How to deal with imposter syndrome?
Bart Zalewski
Bart Zalewski

Posted on

How to deal with imposter syndrome?

Do you feel like you're doing something wrong as a programmer? Do you think that you're not good enough? Don't you worry now, because in this post I'll make sure that you will feel good again!

What is imposter syndrome?

It's the constant feeling of not being good enough or knowing enough to do your job well. Every developer has experienced these emotions at some point in their career.

If you want to relapse to your flow, you need to apply or understand the following tips.

The six ways to deal with imposter syndrome (and make your life better):

1. You're not alone

If you think that you're not good enough to code, you won't get your first job, or you are not that successful as others, congratulations! You are like every single one of us.

Every programmer has thoughts similar to these. It doesn't matter if you are successful or not.

Why is that happening?

Programming is a path that never ends. It's hard to set goals in here. When you're a driver, your goal is to drive from place A to place B, simple as that.

But, when it comes to coding, you need to take as small goals as possible, especially at the beginning of your journey. That could be to create a website with only HTML tags, then learn how to do it properly, then learn semantic tags, then CSS, and so on.

2. Say NO to precision

Perfectionism only freed into your imposter syndrome. If, as a beginner programmer, you're comparing yourself to experienced developers, you can feel disappointed that your code is not as "perfect" as their code.

No one can do everything superbly, and holding yourself to that standard is counterproductive and very harmful if you're learning to code.

You'll face problems all the time. If you have the wrong mindset, you won't be motivated to learn new things or when you'll try to create a Facebook clone when you just started to code a week ago.

Aim to learn new things, rather than wasting time on thinking if that border-radius should have 5px or 10px.

3. Compliment yourself

You have to compliment yourself in every possible situation. You'll see how your mindset as a programmer and overall as a human will change.

That means if you have lately learned new technology, you have to understand that you just increased your knowledge, and that means rising.

Plan your day. Write down a couple of goals every day, and when you complete them, you will feel like a boss.

4. Track your successes

Look at what you've done in the past and keep track of it.

What do I mean by successes?

It can be anything. From simple projects like a to-do app to works for your clients. Remember that every single piece of gold that you've created is valuable, and everything that you make means growth.

If in January you had zero projects in your portfolio, and in March you have three of them, you should be happy, because you're growing.

Even one commit can be a success. Just do anything every day, and get into the momentum.

5. Talk with devs

Many programmers suffer from imposter syndrome. If you think that if you said that you feel bad or you don't know what to do to be motivated again, feel free to share your feelings with others!

If you don't have any dev friends, you can always meet them in many ways, like on meetups, Discord servers, or social media.

When it comes to meetups, I would suggest giving a try to an app called Meetup. You can freely check upcoming events in your area, learn new technologies, and make new friends!

I love Discord, and I love Discord programming servers even more. You can ask for help, learn, have fun, and meet devs on available servers!

6. Find new opportunities

Don't just stay in one place and not go anywhere.

Web Development is a fast-changing niche in the IT industry, and if you don't want to learn new technologies, you won't get into the group of up-to-date developers.

You can always try something different.

Learn different programming languages, if you haven't already - try solving algorithms. There are many ways to grow here!

That's it!

I hope you learned something by reading this post. If you did, please feel free to share it with others that may suffer from imposter syndrome and don't know what to do with it.

Thank you so much for today, and have an awesome day!

Top comments (0)