I'm Jake Cahill. Lifetime Pythonista, web scraping and automation expert. Enjoy books. Love my wife, dog, and cat, and think AI and Julia are pretty nifty
Location
Maine, USA
Education
A Master's patient mentorship and insatiable curiosity
TLDR: Yes, imposter syndrome definitely is a type of anxious delusion that falls wholly into this discussion. Stay strong!
Full Response:
Yes it most certainly does! Imposter syndrome is a form of Anxiety (capital A 😉) that can lead to severe Depression. I've struggled mightily with Imposter Syndrome because I'm self-taught and have received a ton of flak from the "Yah, I've never met a self-taught dev that is any good." crowd. But, when you think about it, imposter syndrome is to our successes, what body dysmorphia is to our health routine. We get so obsessed with the pursuit of perfection that we cannot stop driving for it for fear of being a failure. This drive gets so strong that we don't realize two cardinal truths:
1) Total, 100% perfection at any pursuit is impossible
and
2) We don't even realize when we have gotten closer to that impossible goal than pretty much everyone who came before us
This kind of thinking is a textbook delusion. It is a belief in the achievability and merit of a goal that is lofty beyond health or has little value outside of what we personally assign to it.
Where imposter syndrome is different is that our employers and customers usually love it for the simple reason that it is a powerful negotiating weapon. They know that all they need to do is pretend to be dissatisfied with our work to get us to dump as many hours as they want into the "fixes", for $0 extra pay. "Because it was your mistake after all. I don't see why I should have to pay more for your incompetence".
Stay strong and realize this: the system we live in is driven mostly by greed. While this is a bad thing, it also means that our employers and/or clients do not want to spend money for nothing. If they have hired you, and are paying you, they have seen enough from you that they are convinced you are a good investment worth peeling their iron fingers from their money for. The world we live in never, ever, EVER does that out of pity because it's too expensive. If you're on the payroll or on a team at a nonprofit or OSS team, you belong there. And, at the very least, the hiring decision-makers believe that.
I have been combating this for a many years, im passionate about web development but cant find an entry to this barrier, so I switched to support engineering to at least be close to the field. However for many years now, I have not been hired in either for a full-time position, despite positive phone screens and follow-ups, I just get ghosted and stone-walled.
This only furthers my mentality and eats at my energy and mood. I want to be succesful in either position but I cant seem to get hired locally in SF for entry-level positions
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Does this play a role in the imposter syndrome as well?
TLDR: Yes, imposter syndrome definitely is a type of anxious delusion that falls wholly into this discussion. Stay strong!
Full Response:
Yes it most certainly does! Imposter syndrome is a form of Anxiety (capital A 😉) that can lead to severe Depression. I've struggled mightily with Imposter Syndrome because I'm self-taught and have received a ton of flak from the "Yah, I've never met a self-taught dev that is any good." crowd. But, when you think about it, imposter syndrome is to our successes, what body dysmorphia is to our health routine. We get so obsessed with the pursuit of perfection that we cannot stop driving for it for fear of being a failure. This drive gets so strong that we don't realize two cardinal truths:
1) Total, 100% perfection at any pursuit is impossible
and
2) We don't even realize when we have gotten closer to that impossible goal than pretty much everyone who came before us
This kind of thinking is a textbook delusion. It is a belief in the achievability and merit of a goal that is lofty beyond health or has little value outside of what we personally assign to it.
Where imposter syndrome is different is that our employers and customers usually love it for the simple reason that it is a powerful negotiating weapon. They know that all they need to do is pretend to be dissatisfied with our work to get us to dump as many hours as they want into the "fixes", for $0 extra pay. "Because it was your mistake after all. I don't see why I should have to pay more for your incompetence".
Stay strong and realize this: the system we live in is driven mostly by greed. While this is a bad thing, it also means that our employers and/or clients do not want to spend money for nothing. If they have hired you, and are paying you, they have seen enough from you that they are convinced you are a good investment worth peeling their iron fingers from their money for. The world we live in never, ever, EVER does that out of pity because it's too expensive. If you're on the payroll or on a team at a nonprofit or OSS team, you belong there. And, at the very least, the hiring decision-makers believe that.
I have been combating this for a many years, im passionate about web development but cant find an entry to this barrier, so I switched to support engineering to at least be close to the field. However for many years now, I have not been hired in either for a full-time position, despite positive phone screens and follow-ups, I just get ghosted and stone-walled.
This only furthers my mentality and eats at my energy and mood. I want to be succesful in either position but I cant seem to get hired locally in SF for entry-level positions