Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
I was hired 4 months ago to work for a quite desirable software company. On my interview and first days I was quite confident and a bit cocky I must admit. I thought I knew more that I actually did, but at the same time was aware that I was lacking specific experience needed for that particular job, but was very willing to work hard to develop myself, and actually saw that as a desirable challenge! I thought that mentoring and time was given to ramp up and learn the missing pieces. Non of that happened.
My teammates have tons of experience, and there is a clear “every man for himself” mentality. Most of them have big egos and really rotten and bitter attitudes. They are stars, they know it, and treat people who are not at the same level like idiots (like idiot me).
As a result, I stress through the work days trying to decode what my co-workers are thinking, and trying not to say the wrong words (which keeps me silent for most of the meetings, work days and then bleeds out into my personal life). By night I have a quick dinner and bury myself in intense study. Honestly, its horrible. My self esteem plunged, I am ashamed to communicate with talk with other people. It is wearing me out. I question myself several times per day if this is really worth it.
Questions:
1. I feel I handled this wrongly, and started with too much confidence. If I am the least knowledgeable person, and a co-worker ignores, despises and almost makes fun of me for your lack of experience, how should I act in order to maintain my dignity but also be humble enough to acknowledge the co-worker's knowledge?
2. Is it normal to be hired as a junior and just being thrown to the lions, with no help or time to ramp up?
3. Do all star/ninja/rock-star software developers have rotten attitudes?
190 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 331 ms ] threadAssumedly every human being, given enough time, would be able to solve the same set of problems.
The thing is that we only have 80 years to solve them! And also, there are more problems to be solved than anybody can in this small time frame, even with a IQ of 1000 (speed of processing).
Now what does that mean for the slower minds, in a competitive environment?
You can still provide useful output, by restricting yourself to a small set of problems, and by employing more persistance and constance on solving a choosen problem.
The faster guys will often grow bored with a single problem and will have to skip from one problem to another (ADHD, etc). This is your opportunity: stay on the same problem longer than they can, and you will find solutions while they're busy approaching multiple other problems.
Yes, perhaps over a given period of time, they will be able to find ten solutions to ten different problems, but this doesn't mean that you cannot provide one solution to one problem, that they will have not approached and found.
People who are really great and competent at what they do, are usually very able and willing to teach (or at least give hints) to juniors and newbies, as long as you show signs of personnal studying and researching your problems. They don't like to spoon-feed lazy newbies. In general, you will also find this attitude on the Internet (irc, newsgroups, web forums), where you will find a lot of help, as long as you start by trying solving your own problems yourself, and are able to explain what you tried and where you're stuck.
If your professionnal environment doesn't allow you to learn with your colleagues, then you may consider changing it, because even if you were yourself a rock-star developer, you would still have a lot to learn.
In the immortal words of Richard Karn: “I don’t think so, Tim.”
There are lots of things that are out of scope for a given person at a given time, and no amount of study will make them tractable.
The biggest issue with respect to the OP’s Impostor Syndrome is that very few of those things are relevant to the typical work of a programmer in a startup.
This.
Companies need a balance between 'move fast and break things' and 'keep things stable so we can make money'.
Oftentimes intelligence translates into speed: speed of understanding new concepts; speed of doing things, but far from always. In fact the latter is typically just practice, no matter how smart you are.
Sure, raw learning ability, or memorization speed which is what you are talking about, matters. But as long as you don't have a learning disability it pales in comparison to context. And we all have pretty much the same learning ability. Also, those people that are really smart have put in thousands of hours to acquire lots of context. The genius who can absorb new material by reading any subject in a single pass is a myth.
On the other hand, IQ is steadily increasing on average. This may, however, reflect how as society develops better abstractions, it tends to increase our reaction time.
It's a mistake to assume that because someone is better than you at something, you are less intelligent. It simply doesn't follow, and as the OP is experiencing - leads to low self esteem.
Not all cultures are unhelpful and competitive. Take it for what it is - a tough culture rather than a group of unpleasant individuals.
You have little to lose by assuming that you are correct in your belief that you can learn and by being respectful but persistent in recruiting your colleagues to help with that.
This is non sense. Intelligence is not speed of processing.
But those guys like to eat their own poo.
You'll find that those on the spectrum who gravitate to technology jobs do so not because they can focus any better, but because they are more comfortable with systems that are predictable (computers) rather than capricious, condescending, noisy and random (humans).
I speak from personal experience. I've been studying the subject my whole life. My family has much AS.
Also, the discipline of meditation sheds much light on it.
I personally find the most difficult people to work with are the people who have trouble filling the gaps in their knowledge themselves AND are evasive when they don't know something.
Not implying this applies to OP, but in general.
What other holes in their skillset can you fit in?
2. As junior you learn and grow up into senior. Seniors don't grow on trees. Well it can be harsh sometimes when people around are unhelpful, you can give up and drown or swim hard and float up.
3. Happens quite often. I was one for once, i was nice to others. Then i changed company and became equal to who are around me, lost the attitude. We have stars too.
2. Sadly it's been the norm at both my jobs. It gets better after a while.
3. Yes and No. I've met some unbelievably smart people who are amazing teachers. "Rock Stars," however, are known for trashing dressing rooms. "Ninjas" are best known for backstabbing. And "stars" are divas.
People who sign up for those roles get rode hard and put up wet.
If you do decide to switch I'd make sure you're willing to stick it out a few years wherever you wind up. There's very little stigma (if any) to changing software jobs frequently, but more than one ultra-short-tenure job can look suspicious on a resume.
Assuming, however, that you want to stick it out at this "desirable" job, the above are my answers to your questions. Starting a new job is always hard. If you stick it out you'll learn a lot. If you don't no one will judge you for it.
My suggestion would be to look for another gig. You learned a hard lesson about being humble and not inflating your ego during the crucial hiring process, but don't prolong this pain any longer.
1) Your coworkers really are douchebags. In which case, you should find another job. Working with douchebags is never worth it.
2) Your coworkers are OK people (I think it's safe to assume they're not nice), but afflicted with all too common terrible tech industry inter-personal skills. Being more experienced and knowledgeable than you, they recognized your over confidence right away and it turned them off of wanting to be too friendly with you. They assumed you are the douchebag, not entirely wrongly.
The second case might be fixable, if you talk to them honestly. Ask for some advice or help. I wouldn't just come to them teary eyed with your heart on your sleeve, but try being friendly. Most people will take it as a compliment if you ask them for help.
Of course if they react badly to your inquiry, then yeah, they really are awful turds and you should find a new job. This time try to find one with a better environment.
On the other side of the spectrum; I began a contract job about this time last year...and I gave it 4 days before jacking it in. The job was just awful, but the people weren't the problem; it was the system we were working on (their revamped mobile website). It was already a year late (and still unreleased to do this very day) and architected from scratch by another contractor in a weird and unorthodox way. It was painful to work with, and as a contractor you feel like you should "know your shit"; it's embarrassing to have to keep asking the permies how the hell something works. Fortunately for me IT contract jobs are plentiful in the UK at the moment, but I'm guessing you're not in quite such a cushy situation.
This is not a place you want to work, these are not people you want to work with. Even if you are their equal. A truly desirable employee doesn't have these qualities, you can't use ability to make up for being a bad person.
Also, if management are OK with your work, screw your coworkers opinions.
You landed the job you wanted! That's awesome. That's success. In all seriousness everyone has a lot of holes in their knowledge. Nobody knows all these things, we don't live long enough.
The youngest/newest person on the team always has the advantage when it comes to the newest technology. You don't have as much to unlearn, so you will pick it up faster.
If you can get yourself a niche, become the expert/specialist in a particular new technology that the team needs (or could use), but has little experience with you can suddenly make yourself very valuable.
6 month + hands-on experience should get you very close to level playing field.
It been said that 1 year is enough to become an expert in any field having enough focusing and persistence.
What important in this is not their attitudes. It's your attitude on stuff that surrounds you.
If you believe that you need to call yourself dumb and punish yourself with thoughts and feelings of guilt while being surrounded with people who has more experience in certain fields - that's your belief/attitude.
It does not need to be this way - but it's your decision whether it is something that you are benefiting from and whether it make sense to change your attitutes|belief|definitions toward certain things.
In this case I'd agree with you because the company probably does specific things and learning to do those well enables you to do your job well. But I don't think it's generally true that you can get an expert in any field within a year.
You can learn anywhere, why work with a bunch of people who are not going to build you up and encourage you to improve yourself and by extension, the team/project. What are you really getting from these guys if it's "every man for himself" anyways?
1. Forget that, be confident. Just focus on improving yourself and on things that can make you better at your job.
2. No. I expect my junior guys to learn on their own but am always willing to step in and provide guidance.
3. There can be some rough people in IT. If they're rotten they are probably less confident than you think they are, probably more so than you, but don't want you to realize it.
Lastly, I can tell you from experience, if you don't think it's worth it, it's not. There are fun jobs out there, go and get one.
But isn't this a spiral down? and impact your confidence with signs of quitter?
Say OP is in a startup currently , this downgrade will mean a jump to a big MNC to a services offering to a outsourcing company. The issue at hand has to be handled at some point right?
"Signs of a quitter" should never be used as an excuse to continue with a toxic company. You should also not be surprised at working 70-80 hours a week, going "above and beyond" then being let go for a Sr. management bonus :)
Loyalty is pretty illusive now days on the side of companies it seems. It is still an employers market, despite the "we can't find talent" laments.
On top of all that, the "every man for themselves" mentality is a way to make sure that developers look out for themselves instead of the company as a whole. This is of no benefit to the company, and the leadership should recognize this and act accordingly.
What good can come from behavior that ensures other teammates don't improve at the rates they should be?
I heard a quote recently:
"What if we teach them everything and they leave?" "What if we don't, and they stay?"
There's no lack of dignity in asking questions and trying to improve oneself.
I've seen very smart and respected people asking basic questions during meetings (where I was trying to hide my ignorance... and thus not learning anything, which make things worse).
Remember you're a junior, so you're expected to know less than your expert colleagues.
My advice (looking back at my experience), be honest, if I had just dropped my act and accepted that other people were ahead of me and stopped the measuring I would have found out that there were others that felt just like me and there were lots of people that were more than happy to help (I found this out way too late!). You will also find that the stress will be relieved and your days will become easier. Just keep up the self study and still have hard goals set. If you take this advice and things don't get easier at work - then I would take a long look at the environment at whether or not I would want to continue working in it.
My advice (looking back at my experience), be honest, if I had just dropped my act and accepted that other people were ahead of me and stopped the measuring I would have found out that there were others that felt just like me and there were lots of people that were more than happy to help (I found this out way too late!). You will also find that the stress will be relieved and your days will become easier. Just keep up the self study and still have hard goals set. If you take this advice and things don't get easier at work - then I would take a long look at the environment at whether or not I would want to continue working in it.
Now if Bush had posted the same questions on here I am pretty sure we wouldn't be seeing any of the responses we have seen so far.
So I'll just end by paraphrasing from the Gita - You have freedom only to take action
You have no claim on the reward of that action
Whenever you take a risky action keep those (including yourself i.e. be self aware) that might get effected in the loop
If your actions are good rewards will come.
If your actions are misguided you will sooner or later suffer. And others will too.