Being an Impostor

Everybody at some point in time we heard about the Impostor Syndrome and how hard if to deal with it.

Stress, anxiety, and depression are the most common symptoms when we talk about feeling like an impostor. Like many people, I suffered and I'll suffer in the future, in this article I want to share with you a couple of my experiences dealing with this hard stage in my career as a Software Engineer.

Me as an Impostor

First of all:

Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which one doubts one's accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud". - Wikipedia

For me, 2019 was a complete adventure. I didn't only start working for an amazing startup like Taxfix, 2019 marked a point of change in my life; I achieve my dreamed job and move from my home country (I'm from Mexico) to an amazing place like Germany, all of that with only 23 years (I'm a child, I know 😅).

In the beginning, everything was like a dream, everything was amazing and I was so excited to achieve one of my life goals. But after I while, I started to feel like I didn't deserve any of these things.

You may wonder, why? Was because, seeing around and looking at a group of amazing people from so many different countries, with different experiences and a lot of knowledge became to be really stressful for me.

With thoughts like you're just a lucky guy or you're not soo smart like anybody else here started rounding my mind. Just ask a couple of questions like where is X service or what are flow to deploy something? make me feel like the most naive person in the world.

It was a hard time for me, but worth it.

Is not easy, but give it a try

What did I do? Just learn the following...

Learn to rest
Your health is more important than anything else in this world. In my forced way of trying to be better and not understanding my limits, I spend too much time reading articles and contributing that most of the time sleep really bad (or I didn't sleep at all).
Take rests, do exercise, eat healthily (junk food is valid but not all the time 😅). Once you understand that more healthy you're, more productive and in better shape, you will be.

Lose the fear to ask
If you don't know something or your stuck, ask. We're lucky that most of the people who code are really friendly and happy to help you. From junior to senior, everybody asks questions.
If you are in an environment where if you ask, somebody complains or just doesn't help, is better if you leave ASAP. Believe me, you will thank me for it.

We don't know everything
We're incapable of know everything, we're just humans and we have more in our mind that only machine code, design patterns or data structures. It is completely fair. Where you're right now, a Senior dev was, and if you understand this point and agree with yourself that you're in a constant learning path, you will be where the Senior dev is right now.

and...

The most important thing about all of this

Don't compare yourself with anybody

It is not fair for you, it is not fair for all your sacrifices, all your time invested learning by yourself or going to the University. Nobody knows all the things you did to be where you are right now. Only you understand better than anybody what are you capable of and how important you're. Be proud of what you achieve and be happy with the path you're walking of, only you know where you're and where you want to be.

Even with that, be careful

Impostor Syndrome could appear at any time, at any level, at any seniority. It is something that most of the time we don't expect, but we should be aware and capable of understanding why this happens and make a small stop in our lives to re-negotiate with ourselves and make a deal to keep moving improving ourselves.

Feel free to share your thoughts and experience dealing with Impostor Syndrome, will be nice to read you! 😄