Finding your place

I'm an imposter, shhh.. don't tell anyone.

Until very recently this was something that concerned me a lot. There have been a few things recently that have changed this and I want to share what helped me overcome my imposter syndrome.

The first thing that helped was a lot of peer feedback, from my fellow engineers. This was a result of me talking to my very supportive manager about my worries of not being technical enough to jump back to the IC track. It was extremely insightful and I am very grateful to him and my peers for the feedback. Turns out everyone except my inner skeptic thinks I'm extremely technical. My default reaction to that has always been that they don't know I'm making it up every day. There is a tonne of stuff that comes up in conversation where I can add zero value because I just don't know it. It wasn't until very recently that I changed my view on this, and it was largely down to a book I read called The Imposter's Handbook by Rob Conery. 

There are two excellent forewords in that book by Chad Fowler and Scott Hanselman about their experiences on the topic. Chad points out that everything we know as humans is learnable, and that without practice and aptitude to support your knowledge you will not have the ability. As he says in the book "A university doesn’t magically anoint you with ability when you graduate." - So why is computer science such a high bar to reach, that I felt like I needed a university degree to get there? For me, this is where Scott's foreword helped. He points out that Computer Science and Software Engineering are completely different things. One focuses on maths, complex theory about computation and weird greek symbols, and maths, did I mention the math? The other, focuses on the process of shipping value, trade-offs, testing, documenting and operating the software. Yes, one builds on the work of the other, but in the day to day of what I do, it's the shipping and operating of software that actually matters. It's what creates values for the customers that pay my salary. This perspective has helped me immensely as I've always focused on what I didn't have from not doing Computer Science, and diminished the value of what I did bring to the table for Software Engineering.

Overcoming my imposter syndrome has been the realisation that the skills valued in what I do are more than the theory and math, and that what I lack can be learned. The proof of which was finishing the Imposter's handbook and realising that I had known some of it. Sure, some of it was new and exciting. Sure, there is this nagging feeling that I have gaps in my knowledge, but that's actually exciting, as there are new things for me to learn about.

To recap, I was an imposter and I felt that I didn't belong, which was a lie. It turned out I had the skills needed to do the job and gaps of knowledge are fillable. It's all about perspective, celebrate what you are able to do and seek the knowledge to fill gaps you find.