Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Programming IT

Study Finds 58% of Tech Employees Feel Like Frauds (cnet.com) 224

Posted by EditorDavid from the imposter-syndromes dept.
"Feeling like a hack is more common than you might think," writes CNET: In fact, 58 percent of people with technology-focused careers suffer from Impostor Syndrome, according to a new informal study from workplace social media site Blind... Blind's user base includes 44,000 Microsoft employees, 29,000 from Amazon, 11,000 from Google, 8,000 from Uber, 7,000 from Facebook, and 6,000 from Apple, just to name a few. From Aug. 27, 2018 through Sept. 5, 2018, Blind asked its users one question in a survey -- "Do you suffer from Impostor Syndrome?" A total of 10,402 users on Blind responded.

Blind found that 57.55 percent surveyed experienced Impostor Syndrome. Seventy-two percent of Expedia employees say they experienced Impostor Syndrome, the highest among companies with at least 100 employee responses. On the lower end of the spectrum, only 44.45 percent of Apple employees experienced impostor syndrome.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Study Finds 58% of Tech Employees Feel Like Frauds More

Study Finds 58% of Tech Employees Feel Like Frauds

Comments Filter:

  • article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by religionofpeas ( 4511805 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:40AM (#57275728)

    I clicked on the link to figure out what they were talking about, but it was such a mess that I had to close it before getting a chance to read a single sentence.

    • TFA is an imposter too?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tom Bauserman ( 5448904 )
        We're all impostors. Just do whatever it is you think you can do the best you can. If people like it great. If not, do something else.

    • Re:article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:10PM (#57275882) Homepage Journal

      It's when a person doubts their accomplishments and has a fear of being exposed as a fraud.

      What they're basically saying is that 57.55% of IT workers from the named companies are suffering from psychological trauma you'd more likely expect to find in a war zone, a kidnap situation or a maximum security prison.

      You should not be finding it in a 9-5 office job.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Alternatively, many are actually impostors to some degree. But I agree, there is something severely wrong if you find it as often as here.

        • But I agree, there is something severely wrong if you find it as often as here.

          Then how high should it be? What is a "normal" level of imposter syndrome?

          Do you have any evidence that other skilled jobs have lower levels?

          Also, is it possible to have both Imposter Syndrome and Dunning-Kruger Syndrome? Or are they mutually exclusive?

          • One is a syndrome, the other is an effect that you don't quite understand as well as you think you do. ;)

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by rtb61 ( 674572 )

              I would tend to go with the same idea. A lot of employees at companies are quite unproductive, even more just barely so. The most productive ones, tend to slack off down to the pace of the less productive and just let it slide with regard to the impact on the company. The Peter principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] definitely seems to be at work at work and can cut in much earlier than people realise, right at initial employment.

              I have known companies where the staff developed a reputation for gangin

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zmobie ( 2478450 )

        Its a bit misleading though on the numbers. They had a little over 10 thousand responses, which for their overall user base is probably statistically significant, but not for individual companies registered on there. They did a break down of the registered user-base's companies, but not a break down based on the respondents from those companies outside of a percentage. They have 6 thousand Apple employees and say at least 100 responded. They could have 44 out of those 100 say yes and they have their perc

        • Re:article (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @01:53PM (#57276370)

          Its a bit misleading though on the numbers. They had a little over 10 thousand responses, which for their overall user base is probably statistically significant, but not for individual companies registered on there.

          This is a common misunderstanding about statistics. You do NOT need a lot of samples for statistical significance, and the number of datapoints needed is usually far below what people intuitively expect.

          If you want to improve predictions, it is generally far more important to improve the representativeness of the samples, and design the questions to elicit a proper response. Increasing the sample size does little.

          Then finally, what is the rate of imposter syndrome among other profession?

          Very good question. Without knowing this, the results of this survey don't really mean much.

          • This is a common misunderstanding about statistics. You do NOT need a lot of samples for statistical significance, and the number of datapoints needed is usually far below what people intuitively expect.

            It is a natural mistake, because people presume that "significance" as technical jargon would be even more significant than the literary word, but actually it only means "probably not a math error." It tells you nothing about if your results are "significant" in the literary sense; the vast majority of scientific results that are "statistically significant" are still worthless and misleading, because math errors are not even the main challenge to overcome! The difficulty in predicting unknown explanations f

      • We're talking about people who suspect they may not actually be very good at their jobs, right? They feel like an imposter, as if the resume that got them hired included a lot. Of BS, right? If someone thinks their own resume is bull, maybe that's because they put BS on it?

        In my experience, most people in tech actually did bullshit their resume and truly aren't very qualified for their job. Perhaps this is because often the people who interview them are managers, who don't have the technical skills they a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jd ( 1658 )

          No, we're not. To qualify, a person must believe they're not competent with clear indication that they are in fact competent. It has to be irrational and baseless, and it has to negate actual successes not fake ones.

      • I normally feel like I am scamming my employer, because there is so much more I could do, but I keep on doing these simple things, and they are a like "Wow this is cool" However it is light years from what I would consider a proper solution.

      • What they're basically saying is that 57.55% of IT workers from the named companies are suffering from psychological trauma you'd more likely expect to find in a war zone, a kidnap situation or a maximum security prison.

        You should not be finding it in a 9-5 office job.

        Except that in today's world, the typical tech worker has to handle more information than we ever have in our past. Not surprisingly, this causes extremely high strain and mental trauma for a fair number of them.

        It may not be a war zone but it

  • And 22% or so have no realistic self-image (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:44AM (#57275752)

    My personal estimation is that we have about 20% people that know what they are doing, at least in IT. (Yes, I know that impostor syndrome refers to people that have external evidence that they are actually competent. But in IT holding a specific position does realistically not provide that evidence, even if a psychologist may believe it does.)

    • Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image (Score:5, Interesting)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:04PM (#57275856)

      My personal estimation is that we have about 20% people that know what they are doing, at least in IT. (Yes, I know that impostor syndrome refers to people that have external evidence that they are actually competent. But in IT holding a specific position does realistically not provide that evidence, even if a psychologist may believe it does.)

      It depends a lot on the organization, but are ~20% of people proper experts with the technology or product they're working on? Probably. That means a good chunk of the remaining 80% keep on running into the boundaries of their knowledge, thinking "hmm, I probably should know this, I bet Bob and Sally know it, it's important for me to perform this task, but it's kinda vague".

      Now a lot of them are probably still providing good value, and Bob and Sally might not know after all, but that continual experience sounds like a good recipe for imposter syndrome.

      The other aspect is productivity, if I were working 100% engaged for 8 hours a day my productivity would be at least doubled, but I just can't mange that. I kind of assume other people manage it, but they're probably hiding their distractions and lack of engagement the same as I am.

      • Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:38PM (#57276018)

        The other aspect is productivity, if I were working 100% engaged for 8 hours a day my productivity would be at least doubled, but I just can't mange that. I kind of assume other people manage it, but they're probably hiding their distractions and lack of engagement the same as I am.

        There are some very old systematic studies done by Ford and others as to what amount of work-hours provide maximum productivity. For manual work they found the peak at 8h/day, 5 days/week, for mental work at 6h/day, 5 days/week. For mental work, you can basically as 2h/day of stuff that needs not much focus, but that is it. If you work more, you are very likely below your maximum overall productivity, i.e. the additional hours make the overall result worse. There are a lot of idiots that do not know this though. As Ford is not in any way under suspicion to have wanted to do something nice for his workers, these numbers are pretty reliable.

        • There are some very old systematic studies done by Ford and others ...

          Citation?

          the additional hours make the overall result worse

          I can believe a productivity drop, but you are claiming NEGATIVE productivity after X hours. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you provide ... nothing.

          There are a lot of idiots that do not know this though.

          People that refuse accept assertions without evidence are not "idiots". Quite the opposite.

          • the additional hours make the overall result worse

            I can believe a productivity drop, but you are claiming NEGATIVE productivity after X hours. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and you provide ... nothing.

            He doesn't provide evidence... but it's not so surprising, you must have felt this? When you start making mistakes that you wouldn't have made earlier in the day? And in computing those mistakes tend to take longer to undo than if nothing had been done... ie negative work.

            • He doesn't provide evidence

              Indeed, and that is all that matters.

              you must have felt this?

              "Feelings" are not evidence.

              Of course I get less done per hour as I get tired. But do I fall further behind? No. I have never felt that.

              And in computing those mistakes tend to take longer to undo than if nothing had been done... ie negative work.

              If you are using TDD and regression tests, those mistakes should be caught as you make them. Even if you don't, you can alway rollback your Git repository.

              • He doesn't provide evidence

                Indeed, and that is all that matters.

                Yeah, well, neither do you.

                There are a whole bunch of ways of causing problems in codebases that you won't know about immediately, that can't just be reverted. Choices that gets buried and then it turns out to be badly thought through weeks later when other things are build ontop. TDD won't always save you because TDD doesn't help if the understanding of the problem is incorrect in the first place, or things that just aren't testable. Negative work isn't a new concept.

          • That's not an extraordinary claim, it is a mainstream 101-level claim that anybody claiming enough subject knowledge to demand a citation should already have.

            Take some responsibility for your ignorance and attempt to look shit up before you tell people it needs a citation.

            Because I refuse to do that for you, I'll instead give an anecdote: In my early 20s I worked at a plywood mill, and they often wanted to increase production seasonally. They would always (always!) over-work everybody. What they would do is

            • That's not an extraordinary claim, it is a mainstream 101-level claim

              Nope. It is complete BS. It is false.

              Take some responsibility for your ignorance and attempt to look shit up before you tell people it needs a citation.

              I did attempt to look it up. I found ... nothing. Because there is no "study".

              There is no evidence, and asking me to prove a negative is illogical and intellectually dishonest.

              • Look, Dilly Bar, if you're ignorant enough that you need a citation, that means you have no idea if it is a simple 101-level thing or not.

                That means it is up to you to collect basic knowledge about the subject first.

                And you didn't look it up, and don't have relevant working knowledge, so you have no ability to argue about the merits. When you attempt to look something basic up, and find "nothing," it just means you suck at research.

                If you failed at acquiring data, you're not in a position to argue with peop

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Wuhao ( 471511 )

                  > You can't argue from ignorance that the people who do have knowledge are intellectually dishonest

                  You claim knowledge but haven't demonstrated it, so why should anyone treat you as if you possess it? Citation or GTFO.

                • You're the one claiming ignorance

                  I am not claiming ignorance. I have searched for the "study", and have found nothing. A study of such profound economic and scientific significance would be cited a million places. It would be world changing. It would be trivial to find.

                  The only plausible explanation is that no such "study" was ever published, and it doesn't exist.

                  Therefore, I state my INFORMED opinion, with supreme confidence, that you are completely full of bullcrap.

                  You can prove me wrong with a single citation. Just a link. Put up or

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by gweihir ( 88907 )

                    You seem to be really stupid and incompetent to have failed to find anything. Here is a starting point for you, arrogant child: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                    Of course you will fail to make good use of it and claim that it does not demonstrate anything. That you are fundamentally dishonest you have already demonstrated though.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by gweihir ( 88907 )

                That's not an extraordinary claim, it is a mainstream 101-level claim

                Nope. It is complete BS. It is false.

                It is not. But your reaction nicely tells us that you are indeed stupid and unable to look up well-accepted facts.

          • I don't feel up to digging up studies, but, the point generally being made is not over a single day or even a week.
            It's that over time, 6 hour is the most productive amount of time to spend per day.

            When you push beyond that, you get slightly more tired and work slightly less efficient overall.

            Myself, I've noticed that a 12-13 hour day works fine when needed, with high results as long as you get to avoid annoying distractions.
            But the days after are slow-burning to compensate.

            Also, in reality, how many people

            • I don't feel up to digging up studies

              Everything you say after this sentence is meaningless. Once you dismiss the importance of actual evidence, you no longer have any credibility.

              When you push beyond that, you get slightly more tired and work slightly less efficient overall.

              Thanks for stating the obvious. But that is NOT what the GPP is claiming.

      • At first, I thought they were talking about my co-workers, but 58% is pretty low for the fraud in my area ;-)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vux984 ( 928602 )

        Yeah, I think there's more to it. And its interesting, because there are definitely people with a so-called 'syndrome' where no matter what they legitimately achieve they still feel like they really haven't.

        But there's also lot of people who have really achieved things, completed projects, delivered code, configured a firewall, setup a windows domain, managed a company's backups, performed a security audit, etc who *correctly* know that they they did a shitty job, know that they're just lucky it didn't expl

    • Worse, in medicine it's 10%.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      20% of people are in the top 20%.

      Part of the problem is that there's no good metric for ability. Certifications are glamour items that say more about disposable wealth than ability.

      We don't really know who is competent, and as IT is a very big field, we don't know what they're competent at.

      • Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image (Score:5, Insightful)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:41PM (#57276032)
        We all generally know who is competent, or at least more competent. There's always someone that's getting asked to put out the fires or to help fix things or to look over something to make sure that it's okay. That's the competent person, or at least the person more competent than everyone else. Management might not realize this person exists, but that's their own failing. Worse still, management probably undervalues this person because they just look at some metrics that really penalize anyone who's spending a considerable amount of their time helping other people out even though that person is adding the most value to the company.

        It might take a while for people to figure out, but if you actually took a step back and monitored a company, there are going to be a few people that have everyone else beating a footpath to their door when they need help. And then there's the other side of the coin, the people that are never going to get asked to do something because everyone knows that they'll screw it up or do a shoddy job of it. It's just that capturing this as a metric so that middle management doesn't make a mess of things is hard to do.

        • "There's always someone that's getting asked to put out the fires or to help fix things or to look over something to make sure that it's okay. That's the competent person..."

          Not necessarily. I've definitely had the experience of working with a reputed development "star" for whom all the fires were their own making. Management would ask, "Hey, we need X now!" and the gentleman would make it happen by smashing everyone else's code and leaving a wake of destruction and technical debt that was invisible to mana

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jd ( 1658 )

          Someone who helps fix things can be seen as competent or a busybody, depending on politics and the phase of the moon.

          Besides which, I'd argue that helping makes a person look big and indispensable, which is not the same as being either. Politicians can look indispensable, they're great at it. What they are not is useful. And yet they're the ones called on. If being useful meant anything, Linus Torvalds would run Google and a write-in vote would have made Richard Stallman president. Neither happened because

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        I agree that metrics do fail here. This is a personal estimation from looking at our customers. I do a lot of evaluation and fixing their work, so I see a lot. It is not a precise measurement though and it is quite possible my estimate on the competent ones is too high, because I see more critical things, not regular work results.

  • Dunning-Kruger effect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:44AM (#57275756)

    This is just the Dunning-Kruger effect. Tech employees who have moderate to high levels of experience are knowledgeable enough to "know what they don't know" about their field, and this makes them concerned that they don't know enough. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about the employees who are over-confidence in their abilities.

    • It would really be interesting to see a study on the more confident individuals and their reason for confidence. It could be an ego type of thing, which I think you are implying, but I think there could be a couple of other possibilities as well. Maybe they intrinsically value hard work more than intelligence and consider that to be what makes them not a fraud, or maybe they have enough life experience to realize that the Dunning Kruger effect is real and compensate for that in their assessment, effectively

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        You will end up at what the Dunning-Kruger curve says: About 5-10% of the confident ones are actually really really good, the rest is "incompetent and unaware of it". Now, I will readily admit that I am pretty confident of my abilities and that I think they are pretty exceptional. (I know it is impolite to state this, but it serves the discussion at hand. Still, I apologize.) But I have a lot of external evidence that I am actually right, such as complex systems I designed working well, problems I predicted

    • Re:Dunning-Kruger effect (Score:5, Insightful)

      by robocord ( 15497 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @01:32PM (#57276284)

      It's exactly this. Anybody above the level of "unconscious incompetence" will sometimes feel like a fraud.

      Conscious incompetent: "I don't know what I'm doing. Why did they hire me?"
      Conscious competent: "I sometimes know what I'm doing, but there's so much I don't know. Why haven't they fired me yet?"
      Unconscious competent: "All this shit is so easy. Why are they paying me so much to do this high school stuff?"

      Unconscious incompetent: "I'm fantastic! I'm the best ever! Why aren't they paying me more?"

      • I know for sure I haven't memorized all the stuff I'm supposed to "know" to do the job; and I'm planning from the start to do the whole job with the manual open.

        And yet, I'm expected to communicate with others using strong, certain language, that might imply I already "know" everything I need to know! But really, I only know what the sources of information are that are needed to acquire the knowledge as I do the work. Oh, I know lots of stuff about the work, I've done very similar work before; but I sure di

      • Anybody above the level of "unconscious incompetence" will sometimes feel like a fraud.

        I don't agree.

        Many of us define ourselves in terms of process, which does not require having all the right answers, all the time, but rather a general-purpose methodology to move in the right direction.

        Some of us don't demand the very last dollar in salary we can reasonably justify on our best day.

        Furthermore, this is largely a scholastic effect: the 100% benchmark that defined your life through to the end of graduate sch

  • Google (Score:3)

    by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:44AM (#57275760)

    Given Google's recent history, I think the 44% that identified as Imposter is FAR too low. That should be closer to 80%.

  • took the question in a way those that asked it did not account for?
    "as a feeling of phoniness in people who believe they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement."
    and this
    "despite degrees, scholastic honors, high scores on standardized tests and professional recognition from colleagues and respected authorities"

    Maybe they feel that they have "high achievement" in in spite of what others think?

    Just a thought that popped in to my mind. And maybe I am not presenting
    • Got it!

      nothing here is evidence of productive high achievement in the real world?
      "despite degrees, scholastic honors, high scores on standardized tests and professional recognition from colleagues and respected authorities"

      Just my 2 cents ;)

  • How many are frauds though? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:48AM (#57275776)
    How many are frauds though?

    There are plenty of times I've felt out of my depth, and sometimes it's because I legitimately was. I think the issue comes down to what people do about it. It's not a sin to realize you lack the required knowledge to accomplish something, but it's pretty damned foolish to remain in that state when you've become aware of it.

    I also suspect that people's susceptibility to this is directly related to their belief that everyone (or maybe even anyone) else knows what the hell is going on. Once a person comes to realize that almost no one has the right answers and that most people just operate as best as they're capable of doing, it's kind of hard to feel like a fraud if you're at least trying to get better.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jd ( 1658 )

      A fraud would be someone who is out of their depth and doesn't look things up.

      A competent person is someone who is also out of their depth but does look things up.

    • Ever since OS programs began running into millions of lines of code, we've all been out of our depth, I sincerely believe. It used to be one could study and memorize the OSes; those days are long gone!

      Knowing 90% to 100% of any program today is an awesome undertaking!

      • I'm pretty happy when I feel like I understand a single interrupt routine 100%, even when it is only a few lines and I wrote it!

        Especially because it is usually in C, and who knows what the compiler actually did! If I had time to "understand" what actually happened to 100%, I'd have time to write all my code in ASM to begin with. Actually, that would be quicker for that goal...

        And even then my understanding is only an approximation; all hardware is analog under the hood, after all!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Junta ( 36770 )

      Your comment does remind me of someone who is so clearly an impostor. Says the wrong thing all the time. Claims to understand something in the same breath they totally prove they have no idea but throws out vaguely related terms to sound it anyway in ways that are wrong to anyone knowledgeable in the area. However it's good enough to the decision makers who have no idea, at least for a short while (he also works to move on from team team, basically before his charade can fall down to even the most oblivi

  • 57.55 percent surveyed experienced Impostor Syndrome

    I don't know who it was that filled out my copy of that survey, but it wasn't me.

  • Also (Score:2)

    by Kohath ( 38547 )

    Man up and stop being wish-washy. If you think you've succeeded beyond your merit, then be better. If you don't know, then look at the situation objectively and decide one way or the other. The last thing the world needs is a bunch of angsty nerds.

    • Re:Also (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipakNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:19PM (#57275924) Homepage Journal

      No, I disagree.

      Angsty nerds are likely to check their work, apply good methodology, document and test, because they know they can make mistakes. Those are GOOD programmers.

      What you don't want are the Microsoftists who check nothing, who get fixated on this better crap and who end up endangering lives (and killing everyone on board the occasional airliner) because they absolutely have confidence and fixes will be in the next patch anyway.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by novakyu ( 636495 )

      Yeah, seriously. Real men don't have problem problem with imposter syndrome. Just stop being such a woman [wikipedia.org]!

    • Man up and stop being wish-washy. If you think you've succeeded beyond your merit, then be better.

      OK, now define "merit."

      You can do that, right? You're not some sort of impostor, are you?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kohath ( 38547 )

        It’s up to individuals to judge their own merit.

        Dictionaries aren't as interesting as you seem to think they are.

        • OK but that definition doesn't work in your claim above. You're claiming you're supposed to do it objectively, and then your definition is 100% subjective.

          I asked for an obviously impossible thing; but instead of understanding the point, you just charged ahead and jumping into a well-mapped hole.

  • If you're new to any company... (Score:4, Informative)

    by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @12:05PM (#57275860) Journal

    ...you'll feel a bit overwhelmed the first year, this is completely natural.

    I work for a huge corporate with IT, and in the beginning I asked myself several times "What am I doing here?", the workload and assignments are so overwhelming that I thought I couldn't even learn this the next 10 years. The truth is, the company is completely aware of this, and most likely - so are your manager.

    But corporate knows, you're there because they saw the potential to shape you. Sometimes you can get a job where you have NO initial qualifications, but as long as the company do in-house training, and you're willing to learn - then you're already a valuable asset to the company, at any age!

    If you have a competent manager, he/she will have seen the likes of you 10 times over and then some. They know from experience how their learning curve is, and what most of us battle with on a day to day basis. If they're worth their salt, they'll slowly but surely learn from you, observe you, and introduce you to the things you need to qualify yourself over the years, over time you become an invaluable asset to the company, and will feel somewhat more competent as you progress.

    I got hired in my late 40's, I was totally clueless. But I fought hard to learn and adapt. Years later - I still feel inadequate sometimes, but I am nowhere NEAR as inadequate as I was years ago, and I now tutor many of our own new trainees - and believe it or not, I learn from them as well.

    The trick is actually just to take up challenges, lead yourself. If you sit idly by, chances are that you can get by unnoticed, unremarkable in any way - still you'll have some value to the company as you're not fired yet, they would fire you on the spot if you don't bring anything to the table. Trust me - successful corporates aren't a bunch of clueless fools, they got there for a reason, they found people like you - and you might just be more valuable than you might realize.

    I've talked a lot to my managers, they often speak of other values like how well you fit in with the rest of the teams, how you can "empower" others to feel better about their efforts, and how social you are. It's all about the team.

    I have had numerous discussions with colleagues that feels EXACTLY like those 58% we're talking about here. I have a female colleague that has no personal interest in IT, and constantly mentions how little she knows and how hopeless it all seems, but I see it differently, she's older, but quite awesome, always nice to those she helps, and if she can't figure it out - she already have figured out those WHO CAN, and she observes when they work, and learn.

    She's become quite adept at helping people with IT tasks now, but she still feels like the 58%, I prefer to call that "staying humble" rather than being safe in your position of knowledge, because in IT the knowledge change ALL the time as we get new software solutions every 6 month, and you need to stay focused on new solutions and know how to make things "fit" together, aka - the bigger picture.

    If it wasn't for my colleagues constantly accepting my failures by helping me out, I'd be totally lost today, but it turns out that over some time - you become that mentor to someone new as well.

    • Re:If you're new to any company... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @02:20PM (#57276466)

      The trick is actually just to take up challenges, lead yourself.

      This is one of the big lessons I learned going from school to the work force.

      In school the assignments always have a solution, the teacher always knows it, and they have a pretty good idea of the best path for you to get there.

      In industry, good managers have an idea... but if the task were already solved then there wouldn't be anything for you to do. So if you're assuming the path as laid out will invariably lead to success you're eventually going to hit a brick wall. I've seen this a number of time with co-op students, they really struggle when a minor redesign comes up and changes some characteristic of the task they've been assigned. It's not so much the lack of experience, but they can't quite accept that their assignment as given was flawed.

      I've found two things that really help me. First, when I'm confused I start asking questions until things make sense. Sometimes I'm confused because I don't understand the area (and I would have screwed up if I didn't ask questions). But other times the project plan had some serious issue, and asking questions eventually exposed that issue and saved the company some serious money*.

      The other thing I've found is a lot of good features and ideas tend to get ignored, and pushing for those features to get implemented (or even doing them on your own if appropriate) can bring a lot of value. As a bonus those tasks tend to be the things you're better at, and you're building a little domain of your expertise into the project.

      * In one unfortunate experience I had with a technical manager was on a project involving some functionality I hadn't been exposed to. I didn't have a clear grasp of the concepts so I asked the manager to explain some points and he basically replied "You've been here X years! I don't understand how you don't know this already?" And so I accordingly shut up with my questions.

      After a week and a half of several people working on the project another technical manager came back from vacation and started asked me to explain the design, I got to the part that confused me and I explained that it handled it by the functionality working like X, he replied, no, the functionality works like Y, at which point we both realized the project was fatally flawed.

      Next day that project was abandoned.

  • We are all just making things up as we go along. That's life. The whole world is run on bull shit. Trump didn't know how to be President. Neither did Obama. Neither did Bush. Neither did Clinton. Neither did Bush Sr. Neither did Reagan. Neither did Carter. (How far should I go back?) All of their elections were based solely on complete bull shit.

    They just got enough people to believe that they could do it better than the other candidate and they were elected. They were best at bull shit and its all bull shi

    • As Socrates discovered long ago, no man is wise, and knowledge of that ignorance is the only Wisdom that is accessible.

      Unfortunately, when Plato decided to prove that to the world by claiming to have a lot of Wisdom, he used Socrates' voice! So even that one lesson is obfuscated. As expected, of course.

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @01:07PM (#57276164)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • To be expected... (Score:3)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @01:07PM (#57276168)

    The tech industry is filled with falsely grandiose claims about overwhelming awesomeness on so many fronts. Most people rather than calling things out for the way they are assume they *must* be wrong and smile and nod. As they go with the lofty words and in real terms see something they continue to not really 'get' despite using it for a long time, they have to decide is all the discussion and media coverage wrong, or am I personally wrong? A lot of people assume that if they called it out, *they* would be betrayed as the morons. So not only do they refrain, they'll actually jump in, to blend in.

    It's actually a supremely ripe segment for marketing people, who love manipulating this sense to their ends. There's a lot of subjective facets to things and a lot of vagueness to make it very difficult to confidently declare something either a fraud or a big self-delusion.

    So I'm not surprised most people are filled with self-doubt that runs counter to their outward behavior and a result feel like impostors.

    • They should implement their grandiose claims on the blockchain, that way their awesomeness is immutable!

  • .. 110% think they have Asperger. Or they say that they think that.

    I dunno, first you have the selection bias of people who respond to surveys, and then I think people often say what they think is expected of them, or what they "should" think ...

  • These numbers seem to jive with how many I feel are frauds.

  • Yes (Score:3)

    by Jfetjunky ( 4359471 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @02:56PM (#57276670)
    It has been nearly crippling at times. My manager has me reading "Mindset" by Carol Dweck because I'm pretty sure she could see it in me. There are some good insights in there. I suggest anyone suffering have a look.
  • It's not them. It's the job, the bullshit job [strikemag.org]. David Graeber has expanded the essay into a book and it is well worth reading [theguardian.com]. Perhaps at your bullshit job.

  • What do they call it when you know what you are doing is wrong, a cheap shortcut or just plain stupid, but that is what your client/boss wants ? I've finished projects and received accolades for what I know was a half assed kluge that was going to cause more pain in the immediate future. It has caused me to refuse a contract extension on more than one occasion, knowing that the project manager or boss was going to move on and leave a steaming pile behind as a tribute.

  • Did I learn everything by doing, rather than school? Yes. Did it take a bit longer and maybe I don't follow all the same processes and principles that are 'taught'? Yes. Do I feel like a fraud? No. Do I always know what I need to? No. Do I take the time to learn, and also the time to relax? Yes. Do I know how it all works, and is my manager aware of my base of knowledge? No, No. But we try, day to day, to keep it all going as best we know how, and if we come up with some great ideas, we try to consider if

  • That's funny... (Score:3)

    by mbeckman ( 645148 ) on Saturday September 08, 2018 @11:40PM (#57278378)
    I think 58% of studies are frauds. And 100% of this study is a fraud. And an imposter.

Slashdot Top Deals

Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

Close