I am an impostor

Writing about it is very difficult, even harder than admitting it to yourself. I wrote a letter of resignation from my favorite places of work, ended the relationship, did not succeed in much and spoiled my reputation. But the feelings that I experienced because of this were temporary: at first it was very bad, but after a couple of months I left it behind and lived on. And yet there is one feeling that I never managed to get rid of in my entire career: the impostor syndrome .

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“Impostor” is a strong word, but this is how I feel throughout my career as a professional web developer. It seems to me that I, although I do not stop learning every day, still lag behind. It seems to me that I am perceived as an expert where I consider myself a hidden catastrophe. I am a complete impostor. Cheater

It is difficult to evaluate all this without knowing the path that I have gone through in order to be in my present place.

My way

Dear diary, I will not bother you with a detailed history of my life, but simply put it in several points:
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• I myself have been learning HTML / CSS / JS since I was 14
  
• I enrolled in a technical college to get an associate degree, and I graduated two years before my bachelor’s degree
  
• I found my first job in a profession before obtaining a bachelor's degree
  
• I started this blog in the second year of my first job.
  
• A year later, I was invited to the MooTools project team.
  
• In my first job I worked for almost five years.
  
• Working at my first job, I went to an interview at Mozilla, but I didn't get a job.
  
• I went to SitePen (Dojo Toolkit and prestigious workshops) with little money - just to get there (thanks to Ray Bango and Dylan Schiemann)
  
• I left SitePen two years later when I was called back to Mozilla (thanks to Mike Morgan)
  
• I have been working at Mozilla for three years now.
  
• All this time I, of course, kept this blog.
  
• I gave talks at conferences
  
• I performed in Brazil, London, Austin and Paris
  

At first glance, impressive. An ordinary American boy from the Middle West started from scratch and got into the international organization Mozilla in less than ten years. Not to mention that SitePen and MooTools are among the leaders of the JavaScript world. But honestly ... I never felt like something more than an impostor.

Why I convinced myself that I am an impostor

The funny thing is that it is really very difficult for me to explain why I am an impostor: I just know it. When I get any feedback on the request to include the code, do not hesitate to find out the opinion of a colleague, or fall into a stupor in front of a frightening task, there is always a voice in my head that tells me: “You have to be better; no other developer hangs like you. "

I have always had to struggle with the lack of faith in myself professionally. Is always. I started as a self-taught schoolboy when my life was as disturbing as all teenagers did. Programming in college began with the COBOL language, which for me was comparable to the ancient hieroglyphs and was given hard. My first job was an ordinary printing company, which just opened a web department where I ran into all the possible shortcomings and difficulties: overly demanding customers, low estimates, limited hosting services, lack of people’s desire to work, etc. It was a nightmare, although I am glad that I went through it, even if I learned too much in too short a time.

At that time I started a blog, and, even if I wrote here about something simple, they told me that you can do better. I was invited to join the MooTools team, but I was always known as David from Marketing. I was on an interview at Mozilla, but I didn't get a job. The jQuery legend Ray Bango introduced me to Dylan Schiemann, who after several interviews (and the feeling that I had failed them all) offered me a job. I asked to contact me with my future manager at SitePen on Skype and begged him to convince me to accept this offer - I did not think it was good enough (thanks to Eric Brown).

At the time of joining SitePen, I understood Dojo (and at the same time, probably, in JavaScript) exactly to the extent to pass the interview. And he was immediately cast on Perforce, advanced by Dojo Charting and the creation of interfaces with Dijit, which I perceived as a level clearly higher than my own (I am grateful for this: “baptism of fire” is where I succeed). Feeling like a newbie, I started teaching in-house courses on Dojo: I was comfortable with this topic, but I didn't have answers to absolutely all the questions. I worked with other developers who radiated confidence that I did not belong here. Sometimes, in response to questions from colleagues and even communicating on IRC, I got a sort of compromise between not answering and killing an answer.

After moving to Mozilla, I began to feel like a fraudster twice as strong. Partly because I did not get here the first time, but also because I worked not just with JavaScript experts, but with people who created some JavaScript API. And, for God's sake, my job placement and salary was claimed by Mozilla technical director Brendan Hayk - the man who created the damn language!

I made mistakes at every new job. Someone more balanced would write it off on his nerves, but I felt that as my professional growth, despite a sharp jump in complexity, it was in a certain sense my job to make fewer (zero) errors. As a developer of the “Mozilla level”, I could not send a request to include the code, accompanied only by the data of console.log .

Do you know what this led to? There were more mistakes, more pressure on myself, a stronger feeling that I was an absolute fraudster, who as a result should be taken out to Mountain View and burned at the stake. The lower my opinion of myself fell and the harder I tried, the more I made more and more obvious mistakes. Each comment to my requests for the inclusion of the code looked like a warning from the HR department that I could not cope. Once I approved a request to include a code in MDN, which inadvertently subjected the site to a DDOS attack via JavaScript (I give up the secret: DO NOT USE THE NAMES OF THESE EVENTS C JQUERY! ); I warned my wife what dish I want to eat last, because I was finally exposed as an impostor.

Three years have passed since the beginning of my career in Mozilla, and I still have not managed it. Still. As if the singer, who had replaced his local community center at Madison Square Garden, would have thought that he had been successful ... but he didn’t feel that way. I still struggle with the feeling that I am Vincent Kompany an impostor, a crook.

Why do we feel like impostors

Our industry is perfect for impostor syndrome, and it’s easy to explain:

• We compete not only with the guys in the neighborhood: colleagues and competitors in web development are anyone with a computer and Internet access in all corners of the world.
  
• The effectiveness of each programming task is measurable, that is, our colleague can write code that will be 1300% more efficient to perform the same task, making us feel even worse
  
• The APIs change so often that if you don’t constantly follow them, you leave the train
  
• We are at the “transitional stage” when we 1) know how API was mutilated in the past, and 2) try to bring new ones to perfection, and therefore we have to put absolutely everything to functional testing.
  
• We forget that we are expanding the boundaries of the web, its API, browsers and devices.
  
• Promises and asynchronous programming are just hard
  
• Users can be very stupid, but the fact that the developer is guilty is not to use something easily enough.
  
• We forget that our work is only a part of our life and, besides the glowing hardened screen, there is still the real world.
  
• We continue to sit at our computers and after work, which leads to a strong sense of burnout
  
• We are most often introverts, so asking for help or celebrating a victory out loud is a problem.
  

There are other reasons, but these seemed to me the most obvious. The fact is that our profession is characterized by production problems, which many other professions are simply deprived of. They are simply not there.

Why are you not an impostor

The described set of problems is complex and, perhaps, truthful, at least most of it. But there is hope. If you are reading this post, most likely you are not an impostor because ...

• You admit that you can be an impostor. Those who consider themselves experts are not, but those who do not consider themselves experts, know how much they do not know.
  
• You read blogs - learn new opinions and meet new technicians
  
• You have a job: no matter if you have a solid salary, or you only have to pay bills, you can get money by pressing the keys of a computer (did you notice how far people from a computer handle a computer?)
  
• You know what an adaptive design is and why it is important.
  

This list is much shorter than the list of impostor, but it is always easier for us to criticize ourselves than to support.

How not to feel like an impostor (easy victories)

The feeling of an impostor is a hopeless feeling, but even the most depressed developer can overcome it. Here are some ways that help me get rid of him at least for a while:

• Look at your (hopefully decent) work history and realize that, first of all, employers are much more willing to hire you than to fire
  
• Log into the IRC channel on the topic that is comfortable for you and answer the questions
  
• Understand that people who consider themselves "experts" and who do not doubt themselves are arrogant idiots who have no idea about the extent of their knowledge.
  
• Remember the last time your friend, not a developer, asked you about computers
  
• Do some simple task in the javascript console.
  
• LEAD BLOG! The worst thing that can happen is someone will correct you and you will get a new experience.
  
• Review your code and find a couple of small things that can be fixed.
  

Getting rid of the impostor syndrome is not easy, but you can give yourself at least a short respite due to the easiest victories. For all such victories will be different, but they definitely are.

How to live on

The impostor syndrome is not the worst thing in the world: it made me feel better, work harder and set more ambitious goals. But emotionally and intellectually to overcome it was difficult and exhausting. For days I couldn’t write a single line of meaningful code due to lack of self-confidence. On other days I took this feeling and overwhelmed it, overcoming working problems.

I do not know what else to say. I do not even know if there is any sense in this post; it was very hard to write, and, worst of all, I have no answers for all of you. If you, too, have experienced the impostor syndrome and can share useful advice, please share. This is our common problem.

And remember that development is only a small part of our life. Learn to smile :)



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