Your comment is an example of a logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent." Borrowing from Wikipedia, a good example of affirming the consequent is:
1. If an animal is a dog, then it has four legs.
2. My cat has four legs.
3. Therefore, my cat is a dog.
The problem is the conclusion is the result of a reversal of the conditional statement. Similarly, you've said, essentially,
1. If I am an imposter, then I will not feel like an imposter.
ETA: If your comment was a joke, then forget everything I wrote – which does not mean that if you forget everything I wrote, then your comment was a joke. :-)
There is a subtle difference though, in that imposter syndrome exists based on an individuals beliefs, which could be altered by reading about it regardless of whether or not that thought process is rational. So it could be reality created by a fallacy in a way.
That being said it was probably just a joke and now we’ve both overanalyzed it lol
Well, sort of - but we use "if" in day-to-day as a different thing to the material implication in logic. I've yet to run into a person using 'if and only if' in a way that doesn't map to the material equivalence, though, but I'm sure it must happen
yes, "if" statments in proofs are the "p->q" forms from logic, if you have p you also have q (therefore if no q then no p). If you imagine the set of all possible logical propositions as nodes in a graph, p->q tells you that q is reachable from p. If you prove that q is not reachable from whatever axioms you have (i.e. false), then p is false too by necessity, because otherwise q would be reachable and we know that's not the case. But if all you have is that q is reachable, that's not enough to assert that p is also reachable. Because you have no reason to believe that the road from p to q is the only one, it might very well be that p is false but q is reachable from another statment s or something.
"if and only if" is "p->q and q->p" (also equivalent to "p->q and not(p)->not(q), the more intuitive sense of the phrase), it basically establishes equivalence: any proof that requires p also requires q and vice versa, any proof that guarantees p also guarantees q and vice versa.
Agreed! I considered writing something along the lines of what you wrote, but I don't think most people would understand it who haven't already studied at least some logic.
I don't really agree. I find the long-winded version confusing, and as I am not sure if there is a gotcha somewhere in there, I have to read the whole thing and follow the whole argument. You don't necessarily have to use math symbols, but it really helps to be terse.
For anyone with even a passing knowledge of symbolic logic, what you provided is clear. But the explanation wouldn't be required for those people who are going to be familiar with that Fallacy anyway. It's for those who aren't aware of it. In that case, the symbolic version is of no help and the longer verbal explanation is important.
I reckon the point of the comment was to illustrate how the article's premise is rooted in the logical fallacy you describe, and how said fallacy then results in an inability to determine whether oneself is an impostor.
Most of us have worked with the person who thinks they know everything. Part of being a good engineer/software developer/scientist is knowing it’s impossible to know everything and being open to new ideas.
The real question is why sociopaths aren't more common. Bonobos and naked mole rates are often described as eusocial, but their "communities" are built around matriarchies of sisters, which means there's a strong and simple genetic affiliation. Other proposed examples invariably turn out to have similar orthodox--from a genetic viewpoint--explanations. Humans are an exceedingly peculiar species. But we really understand very little about the origins and fundamental dynamics of our sociality. Our understanding is pre-scientific--lots of analogies, metaphors, and rationalizations, which can get you pretty far, but very little in the way of concrete, biological science that explains how empathy, guilt, etc emerge and are maintained pervasively evolutionarily.
Maybe that'll be an use for a proper AI. Maybe a human cannot take a dispassionate look at humanity and we'd need an eye with an outside perspective. We are afterall made out of meat.
Hate to admit that this has appeared in some of my social bios before...
Anyways, what would the objective of this dispassionate perspective be? Is it possible to have an objective, dispassionate perspective without it being so constrained as to be useless, or optimizes the wrong thing?
That's called group selection, which despite 50+ years of effort is an unproven theory that doesn't fit well (though isn't necessarily contradictory) with Darwinian genetic evolution. Every time someone proposes a case example, someone else invariably identifies a simpler, genetic explanation. Humans, of course, are still an enigma.
A sadly passed HN denizen wrote the "The Psychopath Code"
which I strongly recommend to everyone.
First to recognize the Hollywood villain you describe is not the typical case and that an appreciable fraction of the population will be blind to various hues of of the emotional gamut most of us (I hope) are aware of.
The evolutionary pressure is to not cycle through hundreds of complex, cascading emotional states before deciding to act.
I think it comes down to knowing what you don’t know and thinking it’s a limitation or ignorance of the unknown thus assuming you know it all.
If I get asked how good I am at something I try to elaborate on how I was able to use it to solve all my problems but I’m aware there are components that I have never had a reason to touch. With reason, I could probably figure it out like I have before is my mindset.
I guess I just don't really believe this. It sounds nice, and it might even be a good falsehood to tell yourself for personal motivation—but that doesn't make it true.
Yes, of course if you're an actual fraudster intending to commit fraud, you're probably comfortable with committing fraud. But feeling "impostor syndrome" colloquially means second-guessing whether you're good enough to deserve your position.
There are absolutely lots of people who are better at their jobs than they think they are. But I have to imagine there are also lots of people who are just as bad as they think they are, if not worse.
Agree, specially because everyone has above average IQ. That being said this conversation always feels to me like "are soldiers afraid before a battle" type discussion. Either they are or they aren't has no bearing on what they do. They have to be brave and get out there. Same here, just realise everyone has doubts, and instead of spending time making a big thing of it and "dealing with it", just put your head down and work hard. Everyone has doubts, focusing on them is pointless.
The issue in these cases is that you have a hard time not focusing on them. These intrusive thoughts come all the time, take up mental energy and time. It would be best to just focus on actually building things, but it's not always as simple.
It may alleviate the thoughts if you knew for sure that you are not an impostor from a source you can trust or perhaps it will require therapy. Or maybe you can actually push through it, as you said. Anxiety, depression and low self esteem however can take a strong enough toll that simply pushing through and dealing with it may be too difficult without help.
Yeah, but this is depression and anxiety too. Constantly having to deal with negative thoughts. In theory, just change brain chemistry slightly and you will have fewer negative thoughts and more positive. Not everyone has similar amount of doubts.
So an outsider who says "just deal with it", won't know the ratio and magnitude of negative to positive thoughts, someone else might have.
Everyone has doubts, but frequency and strength may vary.
I also believe this. I think "imposter syndrome" has been associated with actual abilities not aligning with lower expectations, with the implication that if you match the description of someone with imposter syndrome, you're just overthinking things and will be just fine.
I cannot see how this logically follows in every circumstance that someone feels like an imposter. If you're expected to learn something by someone but don't learn it, because of motivation or other reasoning, but are then put in front of other people by your superior with the assumption that you have gained that knowledge in the meantime, you'd both feel like an imposter and actually be one.
My bias is to believe that if I don't feel that I'm qualified for something, then claiming that it will all be fine in the end is dishonest, and a fully realized version of the imposter syndrome with actual consequences for failure. The bias itself, as in most always feeling like an imposter no matter what your qualifications are, is what I would consider the intent of a concept like imposter syndrome. But it is still possible to go too far in the other direction and mistakenly believe you're simply worrying too much.
I feel that hiding behind a notion of imposter syndrome erases notions of personal responsibility when things actually go wrong, e.g. when one really is an imposter, or acted similarly without awareness or ill intent. The word "imposter" itself seems to imply that you must have ill intent to be a true imposter, which almost nobody actually is. "Unqualified" would probably be a more appropriate word, and would probably make people more hesistant to use this kind of terminology when discussing a lack of skills or confidence.
> I feel that hiding behind a notion of imposter syndrome erases notions of personal responsibility when things actually go wrong
Can you say where your sense of personal responsibility comes from? Did you have any personal influences or role models who taught you this protocol? Are there any examples that come to mind that you can succinctly describe here, in a way that shows relevance to the main points you are making?
I don't always feel that I have the necessary skills to make properly reasoned arguments in general, but instead tend to have a habitual drive to just say whatever is on my mind in the hopes that it will be heard but not necessarily challenged, maybe in the way some bloggers treat their content as a feed of stream-of-consciousness thought. When someone does want to discuss what I say, the dynamic for me changes and I feel the urge to respond more carefully, which wasn't usually something I considered when first commenting.
In many cases, I am tempted to just not respond because it is the easiest option, but I feel that would essentially mean not taking responsibility for my own words. Actually debating someone is not something I'm used to, and is at times frightening to me, but I still feel that I ought not to ignore it when I am the cause.
Also, I think that I have a tendency to try not to say things with the intention of starting arguments, leaving the more subjective statements to the people that happen to find something relatable in what I consider to have actually happened to me, regardless of value or intent. But, as in this case, there are exceptions.
So my sense of responsibility has a long way to go, admittedly. And I might or might not be justified in my anxiety in wondering if what I'm typing out right now makes enough sense in the context of my other comment, but the way I'm feeling right now, it's hard to tell.
This is also one of the reasons I'm rather disillusioned with journaling if what I journal isn't my lived experience, which so long as my memory is capable enough usually isn't something that someone else would question. If it's something that can be debated, writing down my thoughts or opinions and leaving them in the confines of my private journal makes it sound like I'm just agreeing with myself.
My guess for how I developed this way of thinking would be my upbringing. There were no labels I could use that carried any value as far as protecting my sense of self-worth went. I wouldn't even consider the people I knew to be role models. Success or failure was solely determined based on whether I did something correctly or not, not how I approached the problem. Even with the labels that I've been given today, ones that are in my mind much more justifiable than the ones I gave myself long ago, that mindset continues to rule a lot of my life. I tend to accept the mistakes I make as my responsibility to correct, but because I prevent myself from entering into situations where mistakes are likely (as in, areas where I feel unqualified), I'm less tolerant to getting over mistakes after they've happened, because I've insulated myself from mistakes and their impact.
If none of this supports my original points, my belief is that it would be because of my lack of knowledge, regardless of what I was thinking when I impulsively wrote my first comment. By commenting, I tend to think that whatever fears I have about speaking in a public space are outweighed by me contributing another viewpoint or experience to the conversation, so I look past my fears and decide to comment. If my expectation was to have my thoughts taken seriously by others, maybe I would feel more justified in believing that initial anxiety was actually warranted the next time I intend to press "reply", and I would be better off not trying to be a part of a conversation I myself am not prepared to take seriously.
Anyway, I hope that, in some sense, this response was worth listening to. And I don't intend to come off as condescending or unwilling to converse with you; that was just the first thing that entered my mind.
>second-guessing whether you're good enough to deserve your position.
Often with an element of "what will they do when they realise".
I've come to understand, though, that I'd been worrying about the answer to the wrong problem. I know I'm not as good as I could (maybe should) be, and I know that for any given metric I have peers who can and do outperform me. But the word "expectations" is a loaded one: when suffering from imposter syndrome it's important to stop worrying about what expectations I have for myself and instead look at the expectations set in the specification for my role.
I also remember that the company spends quite a lot of money on me every single month. So when they tell me that they're really happy with that arrangement and that they believe that I'm meeting their expectations, that helps me to set aside my expectations.
Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.
> Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.
But there may also be nothing you can do about it either. I think a huge part of the problem is that I suspect the typical experience of hearing "there's a problem" is that by the time anyone is saying that, things are already in motion you may not be able to fix anyway.
This. This actually hits the nail of my imposter syndrome precisely on the head. I've advanced to a pretty good position, and I'm definitely good at a fair number of things; but there are also things I am very much not good at, and I often worry that I got promoted to this point by "lucky" breaks that leveraged my strengths, but keeping the position will require me to do things that I don't even know how to develop.
What does this mean? What qualifies as "good enough"?
If you're not fired, you're good enough for your boss.
There are billions of people from poor regions who would put in way more effort than you. Many of them are smarter too. You make $100K / year to spend 35 hours / week drinking coffee and writing JavaScript, they make like $10K / year to spend 60 hours / week physical labor and getting yelled at. You'll never be good enough for them.
Also, there are 7+ billion people in the world. That means there are millions if not billions more talented than you. You're probably not even the most talented in your group.
But why does any of that matter? Literally nobody is good enough by those standards.
There's no objective "good enough". Those people from poor regions who work their asses off deserve more, you don't deserve less. In my eyes, don't be an asshole, contribute to society in some way, and you're good enough.
Except maybe one objective "good enough": if you're not fired, you're good enough for your boss. Honestly, some bosses have unrealistic standards so even that doesn't count.
It means that the employee is able to fulfill their tasks firstly according to industry and then company standards.
Having a job or even launching a successful project does not mean that one is good enough - especially in software where having a job doesn’t convince anyone to offer one a job without grueling interviews and where most of the software produced is riddled with bugs and security holes.
If one considers the hiring practices of top companies, they are absolutely claiming that the great majority of applicants are imposters.
What if the industry doesn’t even know how that task should be fulfilled or the company. There are some many projects/experiments/products are companies that good be delivered in some many ways.
> If one considers the hiring practices of top companies, they are absolutely claiming that the great majority of applicants are imposters.
It’s a logical fallacy that leetcode is only to filter imposters. And separately, gamification of interviews can definitely lead to real imposters.
Impostor syndrome seems like it is seen in people who can self reflect. Now there are people who cannot self reflect, these people are always right and they can't ever make mistakes. They are blind to their own mistakes. If something wrong has happened like in relationship you must have done it. This is how they are wired inside to not see their own faults. These are narcissists.
This implies narcissist never gets impostor syndrome. In other words narcissists are impostors which is actually true.
They get so close to Dunning Kruger with this line:
> "Brilliant people tend to doubt themselves"
but leave out half the situation.
Yes, real imposters get imposter syndrome when they start to cross the line from "clueless newb" to "expert" in a field. How they react determines if they are an imposter or not.
If they stop and figure out what they do/don't know and what they do/don't need to know, they cross over into expert and hopefully get some humility.
If they don't stop and just plow forward, YES they are an imposter.
There's more than just two variables to this, can't really plot everyone on a XY-plane. Skill, confidence, self-awareness, honesty, etc. are all variables/features which can determine the outcome.
The basis of this claim is that the author knows many smart people who feel imposter syndrome, and met one fraud who seemed extremely confident. It’s not exactly the scientific evidence readers were hoping for
Worse, that one fraud wasn't really an imposter in the usual sense of being incompetent. He was actually highly capable at his job. Of course he was confident in his abilities when he was creating so much success.
This concept is so tired! If you grind for years to mastery under the tutelage of true masters, you feel no imposter syndrome - you feel confident and complete in yourself. Temet Nosce
I am usually fairly confident. But then I will come across something where I realize I have missed a whole field in what I do. That is when it kicks in for me. Then I realize oh wait I can do this just need to put some time into it. Just like the previous five thousand times...
I disagree with this article and most things I read about imposter syndrome. There's usually some good advice in there about self care. But, I think it ends up missing the mark because it leaves out half the story: It is healthy and normal to question if you're over-representing yourself.
A constant feeling of "Am I as good as people think and I say?" is only imposter syndrome if the answer is yes. Otherwise, yeah, you're an imposter.
I've spoken with and mentored many new software engineers. Some of them tell me they're struggling with imposter syndrome. Do I tell them they're wrong and they shouldn't feel that way, baselessly invalidating their beliefs? No! I look for evidence that they can write code. Some live coding, a project that's not a copy-pasted tutorial, just something.
Then, the conversation goes one of two ways. If they can code, then we have a talk about expectation setting. No one knows everything, everyone expects a junior to make lots of mistakes, googling stuff is fine, etc. If they can't code, it's more like "Yeah, you're right. Your feelings aren't just valid but pointing at a truth. Let's work on teaching you to code."
Let's say I'm race car driver, but I feel like I'm no good. Some day I'll be found out. Do I have imposter syndrome? Who knows! Let's look at the standings. If over a season, I sometimes crash, sometimes end up in the middle, and sometimes get on the podium, yeah I'm definitely a race car driver. My worries of being found out are baseless. But, if I'm always coming in dead last and I barely even race anymore, then these concerns seem pretty grounded.
The unfortunate reality is that most things aren't as clear cut as the standings of a race. You can still look outward for external evidence, instead of inward to your own feelings. What do I think someone in this position should be able to do? How good do people with similar experience (very important qualifier) in this role tend to be? How am I compared to that?
I don't think it's healthy and I don't think it's useful to just sweep these feelings under the rug. Which is what you're doing when you share them with someone else and they reactively tell you not to worry. I have never seen that work for myself or anyone else. You have to face these feelings honestly and openly, see if they match reality, and adjust accordingly.
>I've spoken with and mentored many new software engineers. Some of them tell me they're struggling with imposter syndrome. Do I tell them they're wrong and they shouldn't feel that way, baselessly invalidating their beliefs? No! I look for evidence that they can write code. Some live coding, a project that's not a copy-pasted tutorial, just something.
Soooo much this. The right response to "I feel like an impostor" should always be, "okay let's run over some heuristics to see if that doubt is justified". Some people actually are impostors, while some are just mis-judging themselves.
Reflexively dismissing all doubt as impostor syndrome is how you create the Elizabeth Holmeses of the world. Earlier comments on the point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214306
The key part of impostor syndrome is that you think you're bad at something, but somehow nobody else can tell. You keep getting compliments for the thing you're worried about.
If you think you're bad at coding, and people can tell right away in a short coding interview, then you're not an impostor, you're just bad at it. If you're coming in last in every race, then you're not an impostor, everyone knows you're bad. If you're consistently on the podium but you tell yourself you don't really deserve it and those races were all flukes, that's imposter syndrome.
It is healthy and normal to question your own abilities and how you represent yourself, but it's not healthy to question to such a point that you ignore all positive evidence. If you mentor someone who's great at coding, and you tell them that, and they still think to themselves that they're actually bad and just got lucky this time, that's impostor syndrome.
tldr: "Am I bad at this" and "am I a fraud that has everyone fooled" are very different.
To further your example, when the mentor gives the feedback that the programmer is _good_, they don't take it as evidence they are good, instead it is rationalized away. "The mentor only told me I was good because they didn't want to hurt my feelings, but of course she knows I'm really not," Or "The mentor only told me I was good because they don't really see how much time I spend googling things. Real Engineers should have their code jump from their heads like Athena from Zeus."
Part of the problem is that the standard to say something is "good" can vary wildly, and often does end up becoming quite low. See inflation of grades, video game reviews, Yelp ratings, etc. If I see a 3 star restaurant I'm highly skeptical of it, even though 3 stars should be considered perfectly acceptable by intended definition.
On Google performance reviews scores could range from 1 to 5, with 2 being "meets expectations". A 2/5 sounds pretty bad, but the description sounds like the person is doing their job fine and is not an impostor. So what does it actually mean? But that depends from manager to manager anyway. IME many of them end up inflating and "exceeds expectations" loses meaning.
Point being, I think you need a lot more context to determine what "good job" actually means. If feedback is sufficiently detailed you can make a pretty good estimate right off the bat, but unfortunately people are bad at giving feedback in general. So especially when new to a team and you don't have any priors for how they use language, it makes sense to have some doubts.
I'm sure this can become pathological, but is the unhealthy version actually as prevalent as all the talk about impostor syndrome?
It is entirely possible to feel like an impostor and actually be one. Apparently, if you suffer from the syndrome (although I hesitate calling it that), then you’re not really an impostor. However, the symptoms would presumably feel the same.
The author provides an incorrect definition of the term “impostor” to work around this problem.
A lot of tech interviews screen for the ability to quickly solve whiteboard problems.
But the problems you solve on the job rarely if ever resemble those problems.
Perhaps we have a lot of impostor syndrome because we have a lot of people who aren't the right fit for their job. (This has been my personal experience.)
There are people who are impostors who don't get impostor syndrome, impostors who do get impostor syndrome, non-impostors who get impostor syndrome, and non-impostors who don't get impostor syndrome.
The first category is often full of narcissists, who think they know more despite evidence, or literal cons like described in the post.
The second category is people who are unfortunately correct about their situation, but perhaps they should be happy they've got the job they've got. If they detached their sense of worth from their work they might be a lot happier.
The third category is people who think they're in category 2 but are more competent than they know. They underestimate their own abilities, either because of a belief that their skills are misplaced and they won't transfer to what they're doing now, or they have some unresolved anxiety issue, or something traumatic happened in their past, or they're out of place in terms of culture and fit, or a dozen other reasons.
The final category is where we all want to be. Sometimes people in category 1, in service of helping category 3 and hurting category 1, try to make it seem like they actually don't know what they're doing. I don't think this is healthy though. If you know something, you should be proud of knowing it. Furthermore, if you have power, you should recognize it, if only because you should know before you hurt someone else.
IMHO this is why we've ended up in a society where no one takes responsibility for their own lives. Everyone wants someone else to take responsibility - usually either a company or a politician. Everyone wants to stop climate change but no one will stop eating meat or flying on planes. Everyone wants a more equitable situation but most people donate hardly any part of their salary at all, even if they could. People want privacy, and to use social media services for free, with an unending list of features. I could go on and on about what people will do to shift the blame onto someone else.
I don't want to say there's no such thing as structural issues, there are economic issues and political issues which legitimately need solutions that are global/social/political. Just because someone flies somewhere once a year doesn't mean that they should die from heat stroke. It also doesn't mean that a company should be allowed to pollute 1000x that single flight every minute of every single day. It's just that these are the logical consequences of a society where no one takes responsibility.
Deciding to not take responsibility because you think that you are not capable of being responsible sounds responsible/good/morally correct - but it isn't if you actually are capable of being responsible. And I guess that's my gripe with impostor syndrome, it feels a little like a dodge or like an excuse. I'm never sure how to evaluate that excuse, and compare it to other excuses, and which excuses are real and which ones are fake. I'd like to live in a culture where people with impostor syndrome were helped, but the condition wasn't glorified, so I could always presume the excuse was real. Maybe our culture should just be more clinical about these sorts of things.
The final question then would be, how to create a culture that is more clinical, or more objective about certain conditions. How do you talk about performance in an objective way? How do you talk about (mental) health in an objective way? We're really far off from being able to do that, but at least it puts everything into context. It also gives a fairly simple actionable plan to those with impostor syndrome - how can you objectively measure your results? How about other peoples results in a similar position? What metrics would even make up an objective evaluation? This is where you have to be very careful, after all, if you are in category 3 you are likely to design metrics that punish you at the benefit of others. ...
Some constructive criticism: this comment was useful and on-topic up until this part...
> IMHO this is why we've ended up in a society where no one takes responsibility for their own lives.
I'm not going to comment on this sentence and the many lengthy paragraphs after it, because I find it to be a distraction from the core theme and purpose of this comment page.
throw149102 -- I'd like to see you discuss your thoughts somewhere where you can get good engagement. I don't think this thread is a very good place.
Thanks! I appreciate that you read any part of that gigantic wall of a comment. I actually have a blog, but I don't have anything on it yet. Maybe I'll write something longform on that instead.
I think your criticism is good - I think there is something I want to express between the relationship of a society that takes responsibility for itself and a person who takes responsibility for themselves, but what I wrote is off from what I'm really trying to express.
Don't confuse bad impostors who sabotage important project with their incompetence, like architecting buildings or bridges without a proper engineering degree, and coasters who get easy money in oil or ads industries. I'm totally fine with the latter category. I'd even argue that they are a net good for society because otherwise their salaries would just end up in the Bezos' pocket.
This blog post may not have imposter syndrome, but it is an imposter — an advertisement for the over-mentioned host domain, wrapped in an anodyne non-opinion perfect for sharing on your LinkedIn.
You don't have to be an actual impostor. It's well known that while the highly able tend to underestimate themselves, the less able tend to overestimate themselves.
I'm a bit tired of hearing about imposter syndrome, honestly. It's become trendy to claim you have it, and I feel like the actual number of people suffering from it is much smaller than the self-diagnosed sample.
Like a lot of things on the internet, it just seems like we like to find a sense of community by labelling ourselves or building an identity. And I'm sure there is an impostor syndrome support group out there somewhere.
In a deeper sense, I feel like there's also a growing desire to express vulnerability, and so hearing people talk more openly about this stuff doesn't mean it's a trend or that it's invalid in some form, it's instead bucking the trend of dealing in silence.
The truth would sit somewhere between those angles.
There has always been something extremely off putting about this term, "imposter syndrome" and I haven't been able to articulate it until now.
IMO it is a defense mechanism (as is having unchallenged confidence). Claiming you have imposter syndrome is a way people with a 'fixed mindset' to avoid confronting harsh realities.
Whenever they make a mistake or lack knowledge in something, their whole identity of being an expert, high performing individual or "winner" gets challenged and they experience a loss of their identity. Claiming imposter syndrome is an extremely self-indulgent way to keep their positive identity in tact by rationalizing that their bad feelings in light of failure are somehow false and that all competent people feel the same way. In some ways, someone with arrogant, unwarranted confidence is doing the exact same thing in a different way.
The original sin so to speak is tying success to one's identity instead of viewing it as the multivariate and stochastic process that it is. In order to achieve a goal or a result, you will necessarily have to be thrown into foreign situations where you know close to nothing and start off as a beginner. The outcome doesn't care about your self-righteous "imposter syndrome", you either get the thing done or get someone else to get the thing done. If this involves being humble and studying something, do it. If it involves putting your ego aside and deferring to people who demonstrably know more and learning from them, do it. This calculus has no space to cry about imposter syndrome.
The people who harp on and on about imposter syndrome are more likely to justify insecure behaviors that don't move you closer to the end result in my experience. To iterate, the end result doesn't care about your feelings or self-identity, develop a growth mindset and focus on achieving the outcome in the most effective way possible instead of worrying about who is an "imposter". If you fail at a job and are unable to deliver, there are many factors at play, most of which were already probably predetermined before you accepted the role. The best thing you can do if you find yourself in this situation is to fix it instead of behaving defensively.
yes, it is the people who have unchallenged confidence who experience imposter syndrome, not the people who have work hard and encounter powerful "experts" pretending to know what they are talking about.
and who cares if your work environment or your boss or is bad. you either worked hard enough or you didn't. if it were me, i would have simply worked hard enough to overcome such challenges
Yeah people think it's like some kind of psychological illness like bipolar disorder just because it has "syndrome" in the name. It's not a syndrome. When you're feeling nervous at a job interview do you have "interview syndrome"? No. That is dumb. This is all dumb.
I feel that what has helped me a lot with any sense of doubt about my capabilities is assisting and mentoring junior/mid-level developers; you really get a reality check on how much you've learned over the years.
I actually had a conversation a few months back with some CS students close to graduating. I kinda felt that, but then the job market reverted that feeling real quick.
There’s that for sure, but also I’m probably at a 50% rejection rate having at the HR screening level, in fairness though the latter is somewhat my fault.
On that topic it is worth watching the TV show Dr Death. Horrible directing (Christopher Nolan-style random timeline), but good cast, amazing story and it actually happened. A neuro-surgeon as incompetent as over-confident that botched dozens of procedures, severely injured most patients, and killed some of them.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 330 ms ] threadWait, does that mean this is saying I am an imposter? Oh no, what if I am?
But wait, wasn't that thought imposter syndrome? That means I'm not an imposter.
Wait, now I'm back to not having imposter syndrome. Oh no.
*laughs in Sinhalese*
These people
1. If an animal is a dog, then it has four legs.
2. My cat has four legs.
3. Therefore, my cat is a dog.
The problem is the conclusion is the result of a reversal of the conditional statement. Similarly, you've said, essentially,
1. If I am an imposter, then I will not feel like an imposter.
2. I do not feel like an imposter.
3. Therefore I am an imposter.
The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
ETA: If your comment was a joke, then forget everything I wrote – which does not mean that if you forget everything I wrote, then your comment was a joke. :-)
But how are zebras on topic? Am I missing something
That being said it was probably just a joke and now we’ve both overanalyzed it lol
Actually, this wikipedia article for has got a specific section about that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_conditional
Edit: I also just learned abou the 'Wason selection task' from that link. Cool stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task
"B if A" or "If A, then B" interpreted as
A -> B
The fallacy would then be to do the following
A -> B
B
------------
A
On the other hand, iff is interpreted as A <=> B
i.e. A -> B and B -> A
So you can get A or B if you have B or A respectively.
"if and only if" is "p->q and q->p" (also equivalent to "p->q and not(p)->not(q), the more intuitive sense of the phrase), it basically establishes equivalence: any proof that requires p also requires q and vice versa, any proof that guarantees p also guarantees q and vice versa.
For anyone with even a passing knowledge of symbolic logic, what you provided is clear. But the explanation wouldn't be required for those people who are going to be familiar with that Fallacy anyway. It's for those who aren't aware of it. In that case, the symbolic version is of no help and the longer verbal explanation is important.
But oh no, I think the edit window has closed for @ARandomerDude
It's more like a paradox where you start to loop. Similar to a sentence such as "I always lie".
Or it's kind of like a Dunning-Kruger where the premise would be that:
1. Smart people think they are dumb.
2. Dumb people think they are smart.
So you start to loop between those never being able to figure out if you are actually smart or dumb.
What I'd like to know is what the evolutionary reason for this is.
Hate to admit that this has appeared in some of my social bios before...
Anyways, what would the objective of this dispassionate perspective be? Is it possible to have an objective, dispassionate perspective without it being so constrained as to be useless, or optimizes the wrong thing?
Tribes without sociopaths get killed by other tribes' sociopaths.
First to recognize the Hollywood villain you describe is not the typical case and that an appreciable fraction of the population will be blind to various hues of of the emotional gamut most of us (I hope) are aware of.
The evolutionary pressure is to not cycle through hundreds of complex, cascading emotional states before deciding to act.
[0] https://hintjens.gitbooks.io/psychopathcode/content/
If I get asked how good I am at something I try to elaborate on how I was able to use it to solve all my problems but I’m aware there are components that I have never had a reason to touch. With reason, I could probably figure it out like I have before is my mindset.
Yes, of course if you're an actual fraudster intending to commit fraud, you're probably comfortable with committing fraud. But feeling "impostor syndrome" colloquially means second-guessing whether you're good enough to deserve your position.
There are absolutely lots of people who are better at their jobs than they think they are. But I have to imagine there are also lots of people who are just as bad as they think they are, if not worse.
It may alleviate the thoughts if you knew for sure that you are not an impostor from a source you can trust or perhaps it will require therapy. Or maybe you can actually push through it, as you said. Anxiety, depression and low self esteem however can take a strong enough toll that simply pushing through and dealing with it may be too difficult without help.
So an outsider who says "just deal with it", won't know the ratio and magnitude of negative to positive thoughts, someone else might have.
Everyone has doubts, but frequency and strength may vary.
I cannot see how this logically follows in every circumstance that someone feels like an imposter. If you're expected to learn something by someone but don't learn it, because of motivation or other reasoning, but are then put in front of other people by your superior with the assumption that you have gained that knowledge in the meantime, you'd both feel like an imposter and actually be one.
My bias is to believe that if I don't feel that I'm qualified for something, then claiming that it will all be fine in the end is dishonest, and a fully realized version of the imposter syndrome with actual consequences for failure. The bias itself, as in most always feeling like an imposter no matter what your qualifications are, is what I would consider the intent of a concept like imposter syndrome. But it is still possible to go too far in the other direction and mistakenly believe you're simply worrying too much.
I feel that hiding behind a notion of imposter syndrome erases notions of personal responsibility when things actually go wrong, e.g. when one really is an imposter, or acted similarly without awareness or ill intent. The word "imposter" itself seems to imply that you must have ill intent to be a true imposter, which almost nobody actually is. "Unqualified" would probably be a more appropriate word, and would probably make people more hesistant to use this kind of terminology when discussing a lack of skills or confidence.
Can you say where your sense of personal responsibility comes from? Did you have any personal influences or role models who taught you this protocol? Are there any examples that come to mind that you can succinctly describe here, in a way that shows relevance to the main points you are making?
I don't always feel that I have the necessary skills to make properly reasoned arguments in general, but instead tend to have a habitual drive to just say whatever is on my mind in the hopes that it will be heard but not necessarily challenged, maybe in the way some bloggers treat their content as a feed of stream-of-consciousness thought. When someone does want to discuss what I say, the dynamic for me changes and I feel the urge to respond more carefully, which wasn't usually something I considered when first commenting.
In many cases, I am tempted to just not respond because it is the easiest option, but I feel that would essentially mean not taking responsibility for my own words. Actually debating someone is not something I'm used to, and is at times frightening to me, but I still feel that I ought not to ignore it when I am the cause.
Also, I think that I have a tendency to try not to say things with the intention of starting arguments, leaving the more subjective statements to the people that happen to find something relatable in what I consider to have actually happened to me, regardless of value or intent. But, as in this case, there are exceptions.
So my sense of responsibility has a long way to go, admittedly. And I might or might not be justified in my anxiety in wondering if what I'm typing out right now makes enough sense in the context of my other comment, but the way I'm feeling right now, it's hard to tell.
This is also one of the reasons I'm rather disillusioned with journaling if what I journal isn't my lived experience, which so long as my memory is capable enough usually isn't something that someone else would question. If it's something that can be debated, writing down my thoughts or opinions and leaving them in the confines of my private journal makes it sound like I'm just agreeing with myself.
My guess for how I developed this way of thinking would be my upbringing. There were no labels I could use that carried any value as far as protecting my sense of self-worth went. I wouldn't even consider the people I knew to be role models. Success or failure was solely determined based on whether I did something correctly or not, not how I approached the problem. Even with the labels that I've been given today, ones that are in my mind much more justifiable than the ones I gave myself long ago, that mindset continues to rule a lot of my life. I tend to accept the mistakes I make as my responsibility to correct, but because I prevent myself from entering into situations where mistakes are likely (as in, areas where I feel unqualified), I'm less tolerant to getting over mistakes after they've happened, because I've insulated myself from mistakes and their impact.
If none of this supports my original points, my belief is that it would be because of my lack of knowledge, regardless of what I was thinking when I impulsively wrote my first comment. By commenting, I tend to think that whatever fears I have about speaking in a public space are outweighed by me contributing another viewpoint or experience to the conversation, so I look past my fears and decide to comment. If my expectation was to have my thoughts taken seriously by others, maybe I would feel more justified in believing that initial anxiety was actually warranted the next time I intend to press "reply", and I would be better off not trying to be a part of a conversation I myself am not prepared to take seriously.
Anyway, I hope that, in some sense, this response was worth listening to. And I don't intend to come off as condescending or unwilling to converse with you; that was just the first thing that entered my mind.
I think the dialog you describe would be familiar to other people from their own thoughts.
Often with an element of "what will they do when they realise".
I've come to understand, though, that I'd been worrying about the answer to the wrong problem. I know I'm not as good as I could (maybe should) be, and I know that for any given metric I have peers who can and do outperform me. But the word "expectations" is a loaded one: when suffering from imposter syndrome it's important to stop worrying about what expectations I have for myself and instead look at the expectations set in the specification for my role.
I also remember that the company spends quite a lot of money on me every single month. So when they tell me that they're really happy with that arrangement and that they believe that I'm meeting their expectations, that helps me to set aside my expectations.
Conversely, if your manager tells you that there's a problem and you're not meeting their expectations, they are definitely correct that there's a problem. They might not be correct in their diagnosis, but you can't simply ignore the issue.
But there may also be nothing you can do about it either. I think a huge part of the problem is that I suspect the typical experience of hearing "there's a problem" is that by the time anyone is saying that, things are already in motion you may not be able to fix anyway.
What does this mean? What qualifies as "good enough"?
If you're not fired, you're good enough for your boss.
There are billions of people from poor regions who would put in way more effort than you. Many of them are smarter too. You make $100K / year to spend 35 hours / week drinking coffee and writing JavaScript, they make like $10K / year to spend 60 hours / week physical labor and getting yelled at. You'll never be good enough for them.
Also, there are 7+ billion people in the world. That means there are millions if not billions more talented than you. You're probably not even the most talented in your group.
But why does any of that matter? Literally nobody is good enough by those standards.
There's no objective "good enough". Those people from poor regions who work their asses off deserve more, you don't deserve less. In my eyes, don't be an asshole, contribute to society in some way, and you're good enough.
Except maybe one objective "good enough": if you're not fired, you're good enough for your boss. Honestly, some bosses have unrealistic standards so even that doesn't count.
Having a job or even launching a successful project does not mean that one is good enough - especially in software where having a job doesn’t convince anyone to offer one a job without grueling interviews and where most of the software produced is riddled with bugs and security holes.
If one considers the hiring practices of top companies, they are absolutely claiming that the great majority of applicants are imposters.
> If one considers the hiring practices of top companies, they are absolutely claiming that the great majority of applicants are imposters.
It’s a logical fallacy that leetcode is only to filter imposters. And separately, gamification of interviews can definitely lead to real imposters.
Good impostors can fake impostor syndrome as well.
But now that you've let the cat out of the bag, we might learn how to fake it. ;)
This implies narcissist never gets impostor syndrome. In other words narcissists are impostors which is actually true.
> "Brilliant people tend to doubt themselves"
but leave out half the situation.
Yes, real imposters get imposter syndrome when they start to cross the line from "clueless newb" to "expert" in a field. How they react determines if they are an imposter or not.
If they stop and figure out what they do/don't know and what they do/don't need to know, they cross over into expert and hopefully get some humility.
If they don't stop and just plow forward, YES they are an imposter.
A constant feeling of "Am I as good as people think and I say?" is only imposter syndrome if the answer is yes. Otherwise, yeah, you're an imposter.
I've spoken with and mentored many new software engineers. Some of them tell me they're struggling with imposter syndrome. Do I tell them they're wrong and they shouldn't feel that way, baselessly invalidating their beliefs? No! I look for evidence that they can write code. Some live coding, a project that's not a copy-pasted tutorial, just something.
Then, the conversation goes one of two ways. If they can code, then we have a talk about expectation setting. No one knows everything, everyone expects a junior to make lots of mistakes, googling stuff is fine, etc. If they can't code, it's more like "Yeah, you're right. Your feelings aren't just valid but pointing at a truth. Let's work on teaching you to code."
Let's say I'm race car driver, but I feel like I'm no good. Some day I'll be found out. Do I have imposter syndrome? Who knows! Let's look at the standings. If over a season, I sometimes crash, sometimes end up in the middle, and sometimes get on the podium, yeah I'm definitely a race car driver. My worries of being found out are baseless. But, if I'm always coming in dead last and I barely even race anymore, then these concerns seem pretty grounded.
The unfortunate reality is that most things aren't as clear cut as the standings of a race. You can still look outward for external evidence, instead of inward to your own feelings. What do I think someone in this position should be able to do? How good do people with similar experience (very important qualifier) in this role tend to be? How am I compared to that?
I don't think it's healthy and I don't think it's useful to just sweep these feelings under the rug. Which is what you're doing when you share them with someone else and they reactively tell you not to worry. I have never seen that work for myself or anyone else. You have to face these feelings honestly and openly, see if they match reality, and adjust accordingly.
Soooo much this. The right response to "I feel like an impostor" should always be, "okay let's run over some heuristics to see if that doubt is justified". Some people actually are impostors, while some are just mis-judging themselves.
Reflexively dismissing all doubt as impostor syndrome is how you create the Elizabeth Holmeses of the world. Earlier comments on the point: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19214306
If you think you're bad at coding, and people can tell right away in a short coding interview, then you're not an impostor, you're just bad at it. If you're coming in last in every race, then you're not an impostor, everyone knows you're bad. If you're consistently on the podium but you tell yourself you don't really deserve it and those races were all flukes, that's imposter syndrome.
It is healthy and normal to question your own abilities and how you represent yourself, but it's not healthy to question to such a point that you ignore all positive evidence. If you mentor someone who's great at coding, and you tell them that, and they still think to themselves that they're actually bad and just got lucky this time, that's impostor syndrome.
tldr: "Am I bad at this" and "am I a fraud that has everyone fooled" are very different.
On Google performance reviews scores could range from 1 to 5, with 2 being "meets expectations". A 2/5 sounds pretty bad, but the description sounds like the person is doing their job fine and is not an impostor. So what does it actually mean? But that depends from manager to manager anyway. IME many of them end up inflating and "exceeds expectations" loses meaning.
Point being, I think you need a lot more context to determine what "good job" actually means. If feedback is sufficiently detailed you can make a pretty good estimate right off the bat, but unfortunately people are bad at giving feedback in general. So especially when new to a team and you don't have any priors for how they use language, it makes sense to have some doubts.
I'm sure this can become pathological, but is the unhealthy version actually as prevalent as all the talk about impostor syndrome?
The author provides an incorrect definition of the term “impostor” to work around this problem.
But the problems you solve on the job rarely if ever resemble those problems.
Perhaps we have a lot of impostor syndrome because we have a lot of people who aren't the right fit for their job. (This has been my personal experience.)
The first category is often full of narcissists, who think they know more despite evidence, or literal cons like described in the post.
The second category is people who are unfortunately correct about their situation, but perhaps they should be happy they've got the job they've got. If they detached their sense of worth from their work they might be a lot happier.
The third category is people who think they're in category 2 but are more competent than they know. They underestimate their own abilities, either because of a belief that their skills are misplaced and they won't transfer to what they're doing now, or they have some unresolved anxiety issue, or something traumatic happened in their past, or they're out of place in terms of culture and fit, or a dozen other reasons.
The final category is where we all want to be. Sometimes people in category 1, in service of helping category 3 and hurting category 1, try to make it seem like they actually don't know what they're doing. I don't think this is healthy though. If you know something, you should be proud of knowing it. Furthermore, if you have power, you should recognize it, if only because you should know before you hurt someone else.
IMHO this is why we've ended up in a society where no one takes responsibility for their own lives. Everyone wants someone else to take responsibility - usually either a company or a politician. Everyone wants to stop climate change but no one will stop eating meat or flying on planes. Everyone wants a more equitable situation but most people donate hardly any part of their salary at all, even if they could. People want privacy, and to use social media services for free, with an unending list of features. I could go on and on about what people will do to shift the blame onto someone else.
I don't want to say there's no such thing as structural issues, there are economic issues and political issues which legitimately need solutions that are global/social/political. Just because someone flies somewhere once a year doesn't mean that they should die from heat stroke. It also doesn't mean that a company should be allowed to pollute 1000x that single flight every minute of every single day. It's just that these are the logical consequences of a society where no one takes responsibility.
Deciding to not take responsibility because you think that you are not capable of being responsible sounds responsible/good/morally correct - but it isn't if you actually are capable of being responsible. And I guess that's my gripe with impostor syndrome, it feels a little like a dodge or like an excuse. I'm never sure how to evaluate that excuse, and compare it to other excuses, and which excuses are real and which ones are fake. I'd like to live in a culture where people with impostor syndrome were helped, but the condition wasn't glorified, so I could always presume the excuse was real. Maybe our culture should just be more clinical about these sorts of things.
The final question then would be, how to create a culture that is more clinical, or more objective about certain conditions. How do you talk about performance in an objective way? How do you talk about (mental) health in an objective way? We're really far off from being able to do that, but at least it puts everything into context. It also gives a fairly simple actionable plan to those with impostor syndrome - how can you objectively measure your results? How about other peoples results in a similar position? What metrics would even make up an objective evaluation? This is where you have to be very careful, after all, if you are in category 3 you are likely to design metrics that punish you at the benefit of others. ...
> IMHO this is why we've ended up in a society where no one takes responsibility for their own lives.
I'm not going to comment on this sentence and the many lengthy paragraphs after it, because I find it to be a distraction from the core theme and purpose of this comment page.
throw149102 -- I'd like to see you discuss your thoughts somewhere where you can get good engagement. I don't think this thread is a very good place.
I think your criticism is good - I think there is something I want to express between the relationship of a society that takes responsibility for itself and a person who takes responsibility for themselves, but what I wrote is off from what I'm really trying to express.
In a deeper sense, I feel like there's also a growing desire to express vulnerability, and so hearing people talk more openly about this stuff doesn't mean it's a trend or that it's invalid in some form, it's instead bucking the trend of dealing in silence.
The truth would sit somewhere between those angles.
http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
IMO it is a defense mechanism (as is having unchallenged confidence). Claiming you have imposter syndrome is a way people with a 'fixed mindset' to avoid confronting harsh realities.
Whenever they make a mistake or lack knowledge in something, their whole identity of being an expert, high performing individual or "winner" gets challenged and they experience a loss of their identity. Claiming imposter syndrome is an extremely self-indulgent way to keep their positive identity in tact by rationalizing that their bad feelings in light of failure are somehow false and that all competent people feel the same way. In some ways, someone with arrogant, unwarranted confidence is doing the exact same thing in a different way.
The original sin so to speak is tying success to one's identity instead of viewing it as the multivariate and stochastic process that it is. In order to achieve a goal or a result, you will necessarily have to be thrown into foreign situations where you know close to nothing and start off as a beginner. The outcome doesn't care about your self-righteous "imposter syndrome", you either get the thing done or get someone else to get the thing done. If this involves being humble and studying something, do it. If it involves putting your ego aside and deferring to people who demonstrably know more and learning from them, do it. This calculus has no space to cry about imposter syndrome.
The people who harp on and on about imposter syndrome are more likely to justify insecure behaviors that don't move you closer to the end result in my experience. To iterate, the end result doesn't care about your feelings or self-identity, develop a growth mindset and focus on achieving the outcome in the most effective way possible instead of worrying about who is an "imposter". If you fail at a job and are unable to deliver, there are many factors at play, most of which were already probably predetermined before you accepted the role. The best thing you can do if you find yourself in this situation is to fix it instead of behaving defensively.
and who cares if your work environment or your boss or is bad. you either worked hard enough or you didn't. if it were me, i would have simply worked hard enough to overcome such challenges