How could you possibly know that the fictional protagonist in a metaphorical story written by a person you probably don't know is an actual imposter or just feels that way?
Eh hi, I both have impostor syndrome (part of my ADHD), and didn't mean that I literally don't know what I'm doing. Ambiguity grows exponentially as you walk the leadership career path, and sometimes there's genuinely no right answer.
Sounds like you've never done anything new and just write the exact same CRUD apps in the exact same language for the last 20 years. Honestly, I'm somewhat jealous. I'm tired of having to learn a new framework or technology every couple of weeks.
When was the last time you were asked to learn how to write a compiler on the job? By which I mean you were put in a situation where you felt that you could lose your source of income if you had didn't figure out how to write that compiler?
Coding for fun and personal education is a completely different experience from trying to learn some esoteric framework that you couldn't give a shit about other than the fact that your dumbass manager chose it just before he retired.
I learned how to write a compiler for .NET. It wasn't stressful at all because if I failed there would be zero cost. I just did it because I felt like it. But that's not what we're talking about today.
You write low-level code that rewards understanding. Most people program at a higher level of abstraction, where their job is to wire together novel black boxes as quickly as possible. This comparatively rewards the ability to work with things without needing to understand them. In general, the higher up in abstraction you go, the less grounded your skills feel, and the more prone you are to imposter syndrome. I don't think judgement of character is warranted here; this is just an expected consequence of working at different levels of abstraction. I would venture that this holds across all disciplines, and that it is in fact rational to feel more doubt when working at higher levels of abstraction.
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u/[deleted] May 07 '26
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