Impostor syndrome is a term I only learned after I started learning to code. In Silicon Valley it comes up in conversation a lot. New hires, minorities, and women especially will admit, often in group settings, that they are afraid they are the impostor in the room.

What impostor syndrome is

The term was coined in 1978 by clinical psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes, to describe something they kept seeing in successful people. Someone with impostor syndrome cannot attribute their success to their own ability. They live with the worry that one day everyone will find out they are a fraud. They are convinced their success came from luck, good timing, or other people overestimating them, not from their own effort or talent. Even when the evidence clearly shows they are capable, they still believe they do not deserve what they have achieved. Research suggests it is especially common among high-achieving women.

Why engineers are so prone to it

Every profession has this, but software engineering seems to breed it. On the one hand, technology moves so fast that engineers have to keep learning just to stay current, constantly adapting to new languages, frameworks, and tools. On the other hand, the industry is full of star engineers and founders who started coding as kids and had banked tens of thousands of hours of practice by college. Their skills look fully formed, and the products they build look effortless.

In Silicon Valley you are surrounded by this. You see god-tier ability up close, every day, and it can be discouraging. You start to feel you will never get there. Worse, you start to wonder whether you belong in this company, this industry, or this profession at all.

An informal, self-selected survey by Blind last year found that 58 percent of experienced tech professionals said they experience impostor syndrome.

As a career changer, I feel it too

I came to programming midway through my career, and I often feel behind. Other people started young, or spent four years majoring in this. They learned so much, and shipped such impressive projects as interns. How am I supposed to catch up?

At my company, many of my coworkers graduated from CS programs at Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, or Carnegie Mellon. Almost every engineer I know here has a bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD in computer science. Career changers like me are rare. Their resumes are so polished, so impressive. Then the questions start creeping in. Did I just get lucky in my interviews? If they figure out I am not qualified, will I be fired on the spot?

A prescription: growth mindset

There is a TED Talk about growth mindset that works almost like a prescription for people who feel this way. It is called “The power of believing that you can improve.”

The talk contrasts two kinds of people. Those with a fixed mindset believe intelligence is set at birth and can never change. Those with a growth mindset believe something different: talent is only a starting point, and success comes from your own effort.

The speaker is Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychology professor and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. After studying diverse groups for years, her conclusion is simple:

Anyone with a growth mindset who truly believes ability can improve, and acts on that belief, can move step by step toward a goal.

Why I am writing this

The honest reason I am writing this post is my wife. She is very capable, but she sometimes doubts whether she can stand out in a male-dominated tech industry in Silicon Valley, or reach the goals she has set for herself. She worries that she is not good enough, or that she has already missed her moment.

My view is that we are both smart people. We are good at different things, but if we set our minds on something and work at it, we can get there. I am actually pretty good at motivating myself. It is my blog’s tagline and my motto: “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

But let me be honest. I also know exactly how much room I have to grow. Even someone who is good at self-motivation has moments of real self-doubt.

Here is an example from work. I spent two or three days solving a fairly tricky problem, and I was quietly proud of my solution, so I sent my code out for review. At most tech companies, code has to be reviewed by peers before it can ship. A coworker immediately pointed out a cleaner, more elegant way to solve the same problem.

My first reaction was discouragement. The gap between us was still that big. But I have been in Silicon Valley long enough to recover quickly: we may not be at the same level, but we work at the same company now. I can learn from everyone around me, and I will keep getting stronger.

I also work at it. I currently have three projects going at once. Among the twenty-some people in my org, I rank near the top in code reviews done for coworkers, pull requests submitted, and code shipped.

You cannot judge an engineer purely by output volume. But reviewing other people’s code, discussing it with them, and shipping steadily is how I keep improving.

When an opportunity shows up

When an opportunity comes along, I try to say yes.

Of course we are all afraid the opportunity might be beyond us. We worry: what if I put in all this effort and still fail?

That is exactly when the mindset has to shift. Whatever the outcome, an opportunity that gives you a new vantage point and a different kind of experience has value in itself.

Last May, right after I came back from parental leave, the team was short on mentors, and I was asked if I would mentor new engineers. I hesitated for a long time. I was sleeping badly every night, I still had to ramp back up on my own projects, and mentoring takes real time and energy. More than that, I had never been trained for it, and I did not consider myself senior or impressive enough. I was afraid of doing it badly and hurting my own work in the process.

After a few days I thought: if the company is not worried that I am unqualified, what am I afraid of? So I said yes. I was fast-tracked into the next mentor-training cohort and finished the training in about a week. By now I have mentored two cohorts of engineers, and it has sharpened my people skills. Looking back, saying yes was clearly the right call.

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In encourages women to take on challenges and aim farther when opportunities appear. Honestly, that advice applies to everyone.

If you never try, you will never know how good you actually are, or what you are capable of.

One more motto I love: “If someone else has done it then you can do it too. If no one has then you can be the first!”

I hope all of us can get past impostor syndrome, remind ourselves that our abilities can improve, and move a little closer to where we want to be, every day.

Originally published on my former blog on October 27, 2018. The blog is now offline, and the original text is preserved via the Wayback Machine. Lightly edited for this site.