Tag Archives: impostor syndrome

career, life

I Worry

I worry a lot lately about my career. Will I get another opportunity to be a developer and, more importantly, will it be a good one with fair pay and benefits? Or will I spend however long I have left living off my savings and random underemployed jobs?

I have a lot of challenges in standing out from other people going for the jobs I apply to. I’m at an age where people, especially in tech, often don’t want to give you a chance anymore. I’ve always been a bit specialized so while I have JavaScript skills in various libraries and frameworks I’m not very confident in my skills. I have to always double check my syntax or look up what exactly it is to turn the algorithm I know into something that it will run. That lack of confidence shows in phone screenings and interviews unfortunately. Finally I’m very socially awkward which throws people off until they get to know me better.

So I worry. That even though I know I have valuable skills, I won’t get a good opportunity. I’d like to say it’s impostor syndrome but the longer I go between jobs the more I worry that maybe the data is validating my doubts. 

I try to draw from the evidence of my career for confidence. The dozens of heartfelt, kind, and generous recommendations colleagues have given me over the years on LinkedIn. The fact that I’ve worked for a half dozen companies from startups with less than a dozen people to Fortune 100 giants. That code I’ve written has powered sites from freelance brochure sites getting hundreds of visitors a month to ones getting millions. 

I look at the length and breadth of my career. From working on sites that used tables for layout and had hacks for IE6 to the birth and growth of responsive web design and device agnostic sites to flex and grid and JavaScript frameworks. And everything in between. 

I know my heart and that I’m still passionate about solving interesting problems and helping users get done what they need in as simple and intuitive ways as possible. That I enjoy making sites that are accessible and responsive. That I’m driven to work with other smart, talented, passionate people who I can mentor and learn from. That I believe I’m a good colleague willing to build people up, be kind and empathetic, and always understanding that while we love what we do it’s a job and that life is more than just work.

But still I worry. That I won’t be seen in an ocean full of so many candidates, including a lot of fake AI ones. That my networking and social skills will be lacking to get me that crucial second look. That with everything going against me I’ll have to be perfect at every step and even one mistake will doom me.

I often see how confident some of my peers and colleagues are and wonder if they ever feel the same. If they never ask “why me?” but always think “why not me?” I wish I could be like that. A long time ago in what feels like another life I sold Cutco and my managers there always pushed the concept of “acting as if”. Acting as if you’d sold a million dollars of it, that the sale was a given it was just a question of what they’d decide to get, that the person you were calling with just a name of a friend as a way in would give you their time and not hang up on you. But I never really could then either.

I feel like I’ve spent my whole life grinding but never really breaking through to that, perhaps mythical plane, where you’re successful, respected, and looked up to. I’ve always felt like I had to prove myself every week or every day and that eventually someone would figure out I’m a big fraud and it would all come crashing down. Lately it feels like that’s happened.

I try to have hope. I fully realize how lucky and blessed I’ve been to have had the career I’ve had and have always been very careful to secure myself as best as I could in case it did end unexpectedly. But it’s disappointing to feel like you have so much more to offer and so many goals that seem just within reach, yet you just can’t seem to get traction. It reminds me of a quote from a movie I like, “You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can’t move… you can’t breathe… because you’re in over your head. Like quicksand.” I feel overwhelmed and discouraged and hopeless.

So I worry. And I pray to the universe. And I try to stay ambitious and driven about learning, reading, and staying up to date on what’s going on. Even when it feels utterly pointless. When you spend a half hour making an account in Workday to apply to a single job that is exactly what you’ve been doing for the last decade… and less than five minutes later you get an auto rejection that basically says you’re unqualified. Even when you know that it’s not true, but it’s hard to keep the faith in that belief.

I don’t know what’s next or what I’m going to do, and that possibly worries me the most. I try to focus on what I can control. I try to remind myself that I’m not defined by my job or my career. That I’ve sold knives and cleaned cages and stocked shelves. And while I might want more than that there is always that if I have to. That pride doesn’t get you very far and often causes more problems than it solves.

So I worry and I write and I dream and I hope. Tomorrow the Universe may listen and care. But for today all I can do is live the best I can in this precious gift called life.

programming

Impostor Syndrome

Let me start this by saying I’m not writing this for me. One of the blessings of my career at this point was being able to advise and mentor colleagues as they progressed through their own career. Using my experience and privilege to be vulnerable – to share the doubts I still had and mistakes I made so they had space to feel more comfortable about similar feelings they may have been experiencing. It was something I wished I’d had early in my own career.

Recently my position was eliminated. So for only the second time in my career I find myself unemployed. As I’ve slowly begun the process of refining my resume, searching and applying for jobs, and the inevitable string of rejections it’s been – understandably – very humbling. It also has validated those thoughts long in the back of my brain that many developers feel. Developer friends and I had joked about how your career is often an oscillation between moments of bliss where you feel you can conquer any problem and moments of despair where you sit head in hands wondering why anyone trusts you to build anything at all.

Any job search is humbling and demotivating. It’s a lot like dating where it’s 99% rejection (or perhaps I’m just inadvertently revealing how bad I was at dating). Yet you have to have a short memory. Almost like a quarterback who throws a pick six then has to go out in the next series only thinking ahead, never back if they want to succeed.

As someone who is admittedly much more of a specialist I find it especially difficult. Years ago I lamented that it didn’t feel like anyone needed someone with my skills, even though I found myself hired over and over again for exactly those same skills. Reading job descriptions today I find those same feelings rising up. My JavaScript skills have definitely progressed a great deal since when I originally wrote that. But still when I see UX Developer positions asking you to be an expert in React (or Vue or Angular or etc) I feel those doubts rising again. Yes, I’ve built React components and written a lot of React, jQuery, CoffeeScript, and even just plain old vanilla JavaScript. But I would never consider myself an expert and have never felt really confident in my skills there. I’ve always felt like a hacker – piecing solutions together by looking at examples or Stack Overflow posts and adjusting it to what I need. Much more a MacGyver than a NASA engineer.

Sometimes, late at night like when I write this, I wonder if those feelings of impostor syndrome are getting validated. That I really was a fraud all those years despite all the contributions I’ve made to numerous companies / repos and the recommendations I get on LinkedIn. Why would anyone hire me when there are so many more talented developers out there?

While it’s true I’ll never be one of those “10x programmers” I still think I can provide value to a team. I believe I have strong communication and empathy skills, the data combating my doubts. I know how to write accessible, responsive, semantic, and modular components which are necessary and valuable – even if I might struggle to manage state or pull from an API. I’ve been told I’m good at discerning what the real problem we seem to be trying to solve, rather than just building the solution asked for – which can often save frustration and valuable time. Or as a friend recently told me when I talked about my doubts “You can do a lot of meaningful work.” – which is kind and gracious of them to say, even if the more cynical part of my mind wryly thinks it’s something you might tell Grandpa so he’ll behave and stop annoying people.

I don’t think this will be an easy search. Going through my network there’s a lot of very talented people who are either also laid off or in threat of it. But I’m hoping both that someone gives me a chance and that I validate that show of faith. So I can still have my impostor syndrome, but with health insurance and a paycheck. 

Again, all that to say if I can feel this insecure and doubtful about my future with all the data accumulated telling me I’m wrong – if you’re at a very different point in your career and feel the same, those feelings are valid. Not that they’re right, just that it’s ok to feel them. But we still have to just keep swimming.