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impostor syndrome: the hottest of takes
The phrase "impostor syndrome" has made me bristle for a long time, and I think I'm finally able to articulate why:
Say a new hire says that they feel like they don't fit in, that their skills don't feel up to snuff, or that they can't possibly learn the all things they need to do their job.
By telling them "don't worry, it's just impostor syndrome," you are not really fixing those problems. You are telling them "just tough it out; it gets better."
There are times when this makes sense. There are gun-shy new grads who just need an extra nudge to get the courage to push out their first design document. There are people who get temporarily overwhelmed when they're staring down the barrel of a 900-page spec that's about as comprehensible as Egyptian hieroglyphs. So, sure, tell those people that they are qualified and they can do it; a little nudge is fine and reasonable.
But if you're sending this message all the time, if you're saying "oh it's just impostor syndrome" with any regularity, what you're telling the person is that there's only two possible reasons for their organizational discomfort:
1: they are, in fact, bad at their job
2: it's "all in their head" and they just need to be more confident
And both of these put the responsibility squarely on them.
Which means "impostor syndrome" can be used as a dumbass excuse for all kinds of things that are actually organizational problems.
If it takes a long-ass time for the average reasonably-sharp new hire to figure out what the fuck's even going on with your team's processes, maybe you need to fucking document that shit, or have less insane processes.
If someone says they're afraid they don't know anything about Fancy Technology X, maybe offer to just pay to send them to a training on Fancy Technology X, so they have a nice Official Base Set of Knowledge to work with, instead of just muddling along for a few months.
If someone constantly feels like they don't "belong", maybe your team culture is full of domineering asshats who are constantly jockeying to be the "smartest guy in the room," and you should get them to cut that shit out.
If you're a huge company, honestly, you can probably absorb a lot of the time wasted by such organizational problems. People can get used to anything, given enough time. But why would you want that? Wouldn't you rather strive for an organization where people feel empowered and capable, rather than just offering some feel-good messages and a bunch of confused, disoriented people "toughing it out"?
End rant.
Say a new hire says that they feel like they don't fit in, that their skills don't feel up to snuff, or that they can't possibly learn the all things they need to do their job.
By telling them "don't worry, it's just impostor syndrome," you are not really fixing those problems. You are telling them "just tough it out; it gets better."
There are times when this makes sense. There are gun-shy new grads who just need an extra nudge to get the courage to push out their first design document. There are people who get temporarily overwhelmed when they're staring down the barrel of a 900-page spec that's about as comprehensible as Egyptian hieroglyphs. So, sure, tell those people that they are qualified and they can do it; a little nudge is fine and reasonable.
But if you're sending this message all the time, if you're saying "oh it's just impostor syndrome" with any regularity, what you're telling the person is that there's only two possible reasons for their organizational discomfort:
1: they are, in fact, bad at their job
2: it's "all in their head" and they just need to be more confident
And both of these put the responsibility squarely on them.
Which means "impostor syndrome" can be used as a dumbass excuse for all kinds of things that are actually organizational problems.
If it takes a long-ass time for the average reasonably-sharp new hire to figure out what the fuck's even going on with your team's processes, maybe you need to fucking document that shit, or have less insane processes.
If someone says they're afraid they don't know anything about Fancy Technology X, maybe offer to just pay to send them to a training on Fancy Technology X, so they have a nice Official Base Set of Knowledge to work with, instead of just muddling along for a few months.
If someone constantly feels like they don't "belong", maybe your team culture is full of domineering asshats who are constantly jockeying to be the "smartest guy in the room," and you should get them to cut that shit out.
If you're a huge company, honestly, you can probably absorb a lot of the time wasted by such organizational problems. People can get used to anything, given enough time. But why would you want that? Wouldn't you rather strive for an organization where people feel empowered and capable, rather than just offering some feel-good messages and a bunch of confused, disoriented people "toughing it out"?
End rant.
no subject
If your first-ever female or black CFO or CEO is feeling it, that might not be the same thing as what a new hire experiences even in a shitty work culture. Part and parcel of Impostor Syndrome is that no matter how damn high a woman or person of color rises-- CEO, Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, President of the United Fucking States-- there's a whole chorus of people telling them they're not there by legitimate means. They got lucky. Something was rigged in their favor. They don't really belong there. They're the actual problem that warrants removal.
And that's not quite the same thing as Tech Co #1 having an unwelcoming culture.
no subject
i remember first encountering the term in some sort of sociology paper or something similar, and it didn't make me angry then. but basically all the big tech companies these days use it all the fucking time for just... mundane shit that should be figured out... so, yeah, in the past few years is only when i've noticed the term being actually irritating.
lo linguistics
no subject
At my organization I'm the only woman on my team. I'm also the most junior developer in terms of experience. My coworkers are great about helping me when I ask, but in part because part of me believes I don't belong there, I will in fact spend hours beating my face against a brick Google wall trying to solve problems rather than ask for help. If I ask for help, I get it immediately and without fuss; no one is shitty to me about asking for help, and when I apologize (because I can't breathe without apologizing), I am immediately assured that it is not a problem, that they are happy to help. But I am still aware, profoundly, that I don't belong there because I am new to this; because I have to Google things; because I'm still learning. This is straight-up pointless and stupid and yet. Every time I get something right I am so pleased with myself for an entire minute; and then I realize everyone will know in the next five minutes that I am a fraud, and the cycle begins anew.
On a different site, someone posted the question "hey, what's the opposite of impostor syndrome?" and listed off a situation they'd found themselves in, where they were actually quite excellent at a thing, and found it very easy. The conversation went on for some twenty or thirty Twitter-length comments, until someone finally hit on the word "confidence," and then we all just sat there going :o
....anyway. Yeah. my impostor syndrome at work isn't culture-based; it's "I am the only woman" "that one coding class in college convinced me I was literally too stupid to learn how to code so I don't know how I weaseled my way in here but someone will take it away from me because I don't belong here" and also a lot of good old-fashioned anxiety and self-doubt.
no subject
like, the west coast is very into the term "impostor syndrome". fuckin everybody talks about their impostor-syndrome-y feelings, from super-senior people on down to random grunt engineers. you get job rejections that are softened with "but we still think you seemed like a really cool dude" (not making that up). people can be weirdly passive-aggressive or bizarrely deferential relative to other places i've lived. everyone wants to "include" everyone but with the minimum fuss possible.
like, for me personally—barring a few hiccups, i've never felt like i didn't "belong" as much as the next guy where i work (and, of course, they're all guys). which is nice, and fortunate! but it then makes me irritated when i go to a meetup group or a meeting or whatever, and i'm talking about how i'm not sure how to take charge on a particular project or whatever, and the response i get back is "oh that's just impostor syndrome!" and other vague assurances. my problem isn't that i'm not believing in myself enough, it's that i have a specific problem and i'm asking if there's resources available to handle it. if the answer is "i dunno" or "uhhh just try some stuff" or "just tough it out", then i'd rather it just be said that way, instead of wrapping it in this weird diagnostic language that doesn't really apply to my situation.
i'm glad the term impostor syndrome has helped people! if people are able to become more confident in their work, by identifying that as the root cause, then that's rad. but from where i'm standing, it feels like the usage creep has tilted waaaay in the other direction, i hear it like every other day, mentees use the word "impostor syndrome" to describe situations that are actually your team is just fucked up, and i wish at least people would say "it could be impostor syndrome OR it could be that this is just confusing/crazy/whatever for unreasonable reasons" and let people figure out on their own if it's an occasion for working on yourself vs trying to pin down what's making you queasy.
no subject
I can see how it would get warped out of shape, though.
no subject
no subject
like, my work and drive speaks for itself (yours as well); that's earned. if it's not enough for the situation at hand, then there's something dangerously wrong with the org process/chain of command/etc. not everyone has the luxury of encountering genuinely amazing bosses early on in their career to establish that sort of early confidence in org quirks (and getting the feel for 'what is just quirky in this org or actually unhealthy' barometers) - and I actually feel like a lot of the 'why aren't the wimmenz in this industry' talk needs to re-focus around concrete way that early-stage bosses can feed them high profile projects and shield them from political bullshit that can destroy confidence before it's cemented. (RIP $chill_boss, you will always be a hero in my eyes for actually telling $other_department to shut it when i got too ambitious too fast.)
(edit: I wrote this comment before reading the comments and it's interesting seeing how vastly different my experience is, huh. disclaimer that I've been in east coast orgs?)
Howeverrrrr that being said - weirdly enough i've felt far more genuine imposter syndrome (as per the definition) from ~identity politics~ in groups that i definitely qualify in on paper. Are you enough of a ________ to really be a ________, kind of thing. Are you still deaf in terms of community if you have a CI. Are you still queer if you're bi. Which is bullshit. But it's interesting how those two examples are on opposite spectrum in terms of physical proof - i can prove i'm deaf with signed documentation from the audiologist, but i can't prove i'm bi, strictly speaking. And yet - even when I deliberately separate myself from the 'community' because of hot messes like that, there's clearly a ghost of wanting that validation beyond feelings. (Why, I wonder? Because there's no barometer of performance like work ethic? If you're shunned from the community, what barometer /do/ you have in a non-clinical way? Not like you can just go join a different organization that's sane with the processes.)
(I mean- I can go on about this for years, it's a thing, and it's a thing i feel like is a bigger problem in liberal circles than everyone wants to admit, but I've said enough heresy in this one post already. : P ) (Regardless - will touch on this tangent in a longer post about my complicated feelings on Pride that i've been picking over for the last few months; queue'd it for march since i didn't want it to fall awkwardly in Feb and bring connotations I didn't intend, oops.)
tl;dr feelings r weird
no subject
i've seen articles that describe this as sponsorship vs mere mentorship and i agree it's hugely undervalued. for the love of god, don't just feed all your gruntwork to whoever's obliging enough to take it; the folks with that kind of work ethic are the people who you want to actively sponsor for bigger opportunities!
re: the identity group thing: iiiinteresting.
i spent a while here typing up & deleting different theories for why those feelings might come up more in "identity"-type groups than professional-type-associations but i found myself mostly failing and flailing, alas! my vague hunch is that it's got something to do with how a lot of identity groups define themselves as oppositional in some way, and if the thing(s) they're placing themselves in opposition to include stuff that's actually another part of your identity, then it leaves the sour taste of being asked to deny parts of yourself. the closest comparison i've personally experienced might be "women in tech" groups, which tend to have a flavor of "we are women in tech [and thus find major parts of tech culture distasteful]," which leaves me feeling really awkward if i actually like huge swaths of tech culture! (like, that one time i went to a ladytech event where someone snarked about "dudes who are obsessed with weird Linux command line tricks", when i was just about to tell them about a weird command line trick—ahh!!! the worst!!!) i wonder if the groups you described fall into that sort of thing? (which honestly reminds me of one of the books i just reviewed, in terms of additive vs oppositional identity, lol)
ANYWAY
YEAH THAT WAS A RAMBLE
i look forward to your longer complicated post :P :)