I think it is about validation. Acceptance. There are people with more self-confidence, yes. But also can it be that regular self-doubts are coming from the very nature of coding? And the way we are (the self-taught ones, the career-switchers) teaching ourselves?
I’ve read many advices on how to cope with Impostor Syndrome and the last one made me writing this post. That article said, you may combat with Impostor Syndrome with learning more. While the article also said about the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that professionals have more doubts in themselves while less trained people tend to have more self-confidence. If I take these, the logical conclusion comes that you train more and may have more doubts and stronger Impostor Syndrome. And what is Impostor Syndrome? It is when you realize by what you’ve learned what you still don’t know, the tools you haven’t used, and you think all you've done and achieved happened due to pure luck and you faked everything. I’ve spoken to people from different professions and yes, you may sustain your Impostor Syndrome for years and years.
I also have Impostor Syndrome and it ruins my problem-solving abilities. I used to be a good problem solver so what happened? Why am I so stressed?
I have switched my career to software development, taught myself coding on bootcamps, tutorials, courses, reading documentations, Stackoverflow and reading other’s stories also, as many others do. More and more people start learning programming on their own, participating bootcamps and then entering into the job market with their new skills. There is a tendency that people with diverse background start coding. And it is not easy to prove that these skills are possessed in this rapidly changing and challenging profession. And without strong fundamentals, one my find oneself in a chaos. And these strong fundamentals come with time and experience. So there can be a „gap” until you are there. And what you need during this gap - in my opinion - are validation and acceptance. Validation on what you’ve already achieved and acceptance on your way while learning.
It practically means you need to ask more feedback if you experience strong Impostor Syndrome in your job. You can ask for regular assessment meetings. It is also helpful if your company has development process that contains regular feedbacks, management tools for creating small subtasks so you can have more checkups. In my experience feedback is the thing that helps. From those who really know what you do at your job.
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