Dealing with the Imposter Syndrome as a self-taught developer

“Why am I in this room, I don’t even know anything?”, “They probably see right through me.”, “I’d rather not be here, I’m sure they feel the same way.”

These are some of the whispers you’d have likely heard in the back of your mind at some point in your social or work life.

You tend to feel you’re not the right person for the job, or you feel like you are only pretending to be a professional, and you really think you are just a nut trying to hammer a screw in using a wrench and somehow gets the job done.

If you didn’t know already, such thoughts are known as the ‘imposter syndrome’.

It is defined as the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.

It should be no real surprise to hear that the imposter syndrome is prevalent among the developers and project managers, particularly if they are self-taught. I know this for a fact because I am one.

Why do we feel like imposters?

To deal with a problem, we need to understand it first.

Now, imagine you visit a workshop or a hackathon, you’ll find a lot of people involved in the available activities. If you were to talk to one of them and if you’re like me, you’d feel out of place; focused on compensating for what you lack, whereas the person you are talking to might give you the impression that they know exactly what they’re doing there and what they’ll be doing 10 years from now.

This is where you are likely wrong. Most often our focus is on masking our flaws that we don’t notice others are doing the same to some degree. We believe in their edited descriptions of themselves and secretly compare them to our flaws of which we are overly familiar. This leads you to imagine a gap in the level of competency between you and other people.

This gap is what causes you to feel out of place, it is this gap that you feel you are trying to compensate, and in doing so makes you think you’re an imposter.

You feel like an imposter not just because you are flawed, but because you fail to see that other people can be flawed too. Let me be very clear: This is not to say other people can’t be more competent than you. They very likely are, but they would have gone through what you are going through right now, made the same mistakes or worse. But in the end, they learned from it and grew.

“Don’t compare your chapter 1 to someone else’s chapter 24” – Wise man in the YouTube comment section

The self-taught imposter

Being self-taught automatically cranks up the dial on the imposter syndrome. Because a lot of us believed for the most part of our lives that most doors are closed unless you have a particular piece of paper from a university.

This makes you think you need people to believe that you are a CS graduate to get a job. Had this been true, I’m afraid us self-taught folks would’ve truly been imposters.

But fortunately, companies prefer skill and competence as much as if not more than a university degree and this is only becoming truer by the day. You doubt your abilities when you’re self-taught and this lingers for a while.

I imagine these would be the FAQs we ask ourselves.

“I’m bad at math's, can I still be a programmer?” “Am I smart enough?” “There is a lot to learn, is this beyond me?” “Do I really want this; did I choose the right track?” “Is it too late for me to become a developer?”

The way I see it, the only way to get a truly satisfactory answer to all these questions is to immerse yourself into your studies for a couple of months and find out for yourself if this is within your grasp or interests. I doubt anybody can give you an answer tailor made for your strengths and weaknesses but yourself. But to be fair, programming and development jobs are not exactly easy, so don’t be in a rush to see results. It takes time.

Once you decide you want to continue on this path, I believe finding yourself a mentor is the next big important step. You will be able to progress much faster with guidance than without it. You won’t be teaching yourselves bad habits, your path becomes more defined. Most importantly, you will be made aware of where you stand in terms of skill level. This self-awareness of where you stand, dramatically improves your immunity to the effects of the imposter syndrome. Your mentor can point out your mistakes and you’ll get a clear picture as to what you need to work on to improve upon them.

In a mentorship program, everyone is on the same boat. We are all there to learn, there is no fear of judgment, and it is here that you find most liberty to make mistakes and learn from it, so join one, and participate in the presentations, meetings, get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Make sure to improve your communication skills, because it opens more doors than your technical skills alone ever can. The lack of judgment removes the possibility for there to be an imposter syndrome altogether that you can learn without its hindrance.

Every developer you’ll ever meet had to go through the process, the same one you’re going through now. No one was ever born CEO of Facebook. So try not to be too hard on yourself, and power through to be better today than you were yesterday.

“Every master was once a beginner” – Robin S

I hope my blog helped you in dealing with imposter syndrome.

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Goodbye have a nice day!