Name: Video recording for How to overcome imposter syndrome in tech - Codementor Events
Uploaded: 2022-02-07
Description: Rahul, a tech lead at Facebook and a Stanford lecturer, will talk about how to overcome imposter syndrome in tech.


## About the talk
  
  Whether you've just joined a new company or have been in a company for years already, new people, tools, and code will continue to emerge. Every time something new pops up, you're faced with a new challenge. Are you really cut out to be a software engineer? The answer is yes, and the feeling of being lost is something that every engineer faces, regardless of years of experience.
  
 ### This talk will cover
  
  Tactical ways to mitigate the impacts of imposter syndrome, specifically:
  
  - How to think about imposter syndrome in a new, or old, company
  - The “cold-start algorithm” to quickly ramp up on a new role
  - How to help others overcome imposter syndrome
  

non-technical events about soft or workplace skills like communication skills

Essential Skills

### What is imposter syndrome?
Imposter syndrome refers to this feeling that you don’t belong or believing you’re not as competent as people perceive you to be. For instance, you may wonder if you can really add value to a company with the limited information you know. The fear of judgment is something that can paralyze you. 


Imposter syndrome in tech is a major issue. 58% of tech employees experience imposter syndrome, and the majority of people have experienced imposter syndrome in one form or another. This feeling will often coincide with milestones such as job switches and promotions. Ironically, when things are going well, that’s the time this fear of judgment and feeling like you don’t belong will be amplified. Even though you earned the promotion or the job switch, and should have more confidence, this is something that plagues many people in tech. Additionally, women and underrepresented groups in tech feel imposter syndrome oftentimes to a greater degree and the result is that advocating for yourself is something some people are more hesitant to do. This results in a lack of diversity of background or thought on the team and company.


The impacts of imposter syndrome include being sensitive to any criticism, fear of failure, working harder than necessary, and lacking initiative or self-advocacy. What happens is you’re not able to properly calibrate how you’re perceived or what your strengths and weaknesses are because you’re so afraid of criticism or failure.
### How do you think about imposter syndrome?


Now, how can you reframe imposter syndrome so it’s less harmful to your day to day working life. The first thing is you have to be ok with imposter syndrome. Everyone feels inadequate at times and it’s not a good representation of how skilled you are, or how much confidence you have. Even if you’re the most confident person in the world, you’ll feel inadequate at some point or another because change is constant in tech. Whether it’s tools, frameworks, or programming languages, the speed of change is so rapid that you have to be comfortable with being inadequate and that someone will always know more than you do. 


So the main thing here is you really want to reframe your attitude towards discomfort. Whenever you feel discomfort, train your brain to say “hey, this is now a wonderful opportunity for me to learn something new and grow as a person.” 
### What are some practical tips to overcome imposter syndrome?
First off, when people are given a new task, they often don’t know what they have to do. What happens is, if you have imposter syndrome, you will have anxiety around not being sure if you can achieve the outcome that’s desired. And the anxiety can be paralyzing, to the point where you don’t even start on the problem. Identify the next physical action you can take to make progress on the problem. How you do that is to go deep and decompose the problem and get started. When you have a lot of clarity on what exactly you need to do, that is what will lead to action, and action will lead to progress. And progress is how you fight imposter syndrome.


Finally, ask questions. Sometimes you may be afraid to ask questions like ‘What does this acronym mean?’ ‘Can you explain the architecture here or code change here? I don't really understand it.’ But instead of asking, you’d rather stay silent because you don’t want to expose your ignorance or what you don’t know. But the upshot of that, in the longer term, you will remain a fool. So being ok with maybe looking foolish in a meeting, locally, will help you gain more global context. 


The last thing to keep in mind is that asking a question is always better than being stuck. If you’ve been stuck on an issue for more than 15 minutes, you should stop what you’re doing and document what it is you’re trying to achieve, what you’ve tried, and what is the current behavior and pull in someone for help. It’s much more productive to pull in someone who you can lean on for advice or help.

Tech Lead at Facebook, Stanford Lecturer, and YouTuber with 24K+ subscribers

Rahul Pandey

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Rahul, a tech lead at Facebook and a Stanford lecturer, will talk about how to overcome imposter syndrome in tech.

Video recording for: How to overcome imposter syndrome in tech

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