What I did last year OR How to avoid imposter syndrome
I'm an imposter
Sometimes I really enjoy my geeky job looking after servers
Sometimes I spend half a morning writing a script to fix something, I forget what I'm doing and then suddenly think "ooh better stop this and do some work"
Then I remember that this is my work, for real this is what I do
Other times I am talking to clever clever people and they say "I'm learning Go but I don't quite understand pointers yet". And I start saying "Well, funcs are call by value..." and then I doubt that I am just the person to tell them this but then...
I remember, for real I have fixed projects, I've had live production code in Go
Of course, I'm not an imposter
How to remember
To remind myself that I am learning all the new stuff and that is actually what I do, I keep a list in a spreadsheet. It has 3 columns: datetime, area, winulation
"datetime" is just my way of saying when
"area" is the thing I've been working at. For 2018 the areas are
- golang
- kubernetes
- book
- conference
- github
- AWS
- public speaking
- javascript
- MOOC
"winulation" is the small achievement I've made in that area.
For example in the case of Golang, I had learnt the absolute basics of it late 2017
One aim I had for 2018 was to get good at it. Some winulations for Golang said "did tests for go-spacemesh crypto with 100% cover and submitted pull request", "used the runtime/trace to instrument a toy web server", "finished reading Donovan & Kernighan book" and "Soduku program finally works. Not terrifically fast :)"
As I'm sure you can appreciate from the above list, there is nothing earth-shattering there! But each thing filled me with a brief sense of achievement, and it's this sense of achievement that I am trying to capture with the spreadsheet
Next time I feel like an imposter, I just look at the sheet and see all the stuff I've done.
This year's new areas are ML (Machine Learning), Squirrel (I am doing a side project, this is the code name) and Prometheus (an interesting thing at work)
I'd encourage you to keep a list like this, it's a great way to build confidence without arrogance
Latest comments (2)
Oh yes, this is quite a good idea.
So many experienced developers get to a stage were doubt creeps in after some years.
For me it has a lot to do with constant learning, where we put ourselves on the bottom step of the knowledge staircase time and again. We are permanently beginners in something.
That's a really helpful outlook and one I would like to recommend to more than a few people I know - so many people cherish their imposter syndrome, like it's a good thing (or a "pet" vice) but if you really think it's a problem, then you ought to do something about it and this is a very practical solution.