How to defeat impostor syndrome: confessions of a developer
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Do you feel like you don't belong, you don't deserve what you achieved, everyone in your office is more talented than you? Do you have imposter syndrome... too? Imposter syndrome is common across all industries, but the increasing pressure to be successful in IT is taking its toll on employees, affecting more than half workers, me included :) After many years working in tech for a lot of companies (from startups to big corporations) in many business fields, I found a way to overcome self-doubt and turn this weird feeling in a booster for greater achievements... and I want to share it with you!
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How to defeat impostor syndrome: confessions of a developer
- 1. Confessions of a developer How to defeat impostor syndrome and turn it in an invaluable asset for our growth
- 2. Hello, world! I’m Matteo 😊 Señor software developer, pizza lover, traveller, runner, blockchain & crypto enthusiast (sometimes not in this order 😉). Foggia ▶ Rome ▶ Milan ▶ Barcelona Currently working for “Ubeeqo, a Europcar Mobility Group company” on the Connected Cars Platform. https://www.linkedin.com/in/brunomatteo/ Who am I?
- 3. Now that you know me... Let me know you a little bit as well! 😉
- 4. Just a couple of questions... Have you ever felt like you don't belong where you are?
- 5. Have you ever felt like you don't belong where you are? Is everyone at your office way more talented than you? Just a couple of questions...
- 6. Have you ever felt like you don't belong where you are? Is everyone at your office way more talented than you? Do you think you don't deserve what you achieved? Just a couple of questions...
- 7. Let’s have two quick polls! Go to sli.do and enter the code ISQ1 (Q1) Then, same site, enter the code ISQ2 (Q2)
- 8. So... is it happened to you as well, at least once, to feel this way?
- 9. So... is it happened to you as well, at least once, to feel this way? Yes?
- 10. So... is it happened to you as well, at least once, to feel this way? Yes? Yes, for sure!
- 11. So... is it happened to you as well, at least once, to feel this way? Yes? Yes, for sure! Well, it seems we are in good company, all with this weird feeling.
- 12. Why I decided to talk about imposter syndrome? (I) I was on the beach, I read an article, I wrote a post on LinkedIn but I had more than 1.5k chars to say around this topic, so I prepared some slides, and then from some I went to +80 slides!
- 13. I’d like to share my experience around this topic, and show you it’s not so awful after all. Why I decided to talk about imposter syndrome? (II)
- 14. Let’s start with my story, then!
- 15. January 18th, 2015 - Milan I joined Viacom family... So many interesting projects to work on!
- 16. January, 2018 - Milan I had a great job, I was working for an amazing company, but I needed something more / different.
- 17. July, 2018 - Croatia What am I still doing in Milan? 🤔 I need sea, sun, sand!
- 18. July, 2018 - back in Milan Let me look on Linkedin if there are any good opportunities out there!
- 19. July, 2018 - Milan Way too many options!!! 😱 I needed to narrow down this list!
- 20. July, 2018 - Milan Wait! I always loved Barcelona ❤❤❤❤ Let me see if there is any cool job opening there!
- 21. August, 2018 - Milan
- 22. August, 2018 - Milan
- 23. August, 2018 - Milan Ubeeqo, it’s time to start the hiring process! 😄
- 24. September, 2018 - Milan I’ve got an offer from Ubeeqo! YAY! ✌ Time to ride to Barcelona! 🚗 Barcelona, it was the first time that we met Barcelona, how can I forget The moment that you stepped into the room You took my breath away
- 25. December 2018, Milan Time to say goodbye to my dear friends.
- 26. December 27th, 2018 - Barcelona Let’s start a new chapter of my life! 🙌
- 27. January 2nd, 2019 - Barcelona Ubeeqo, here I am! 🙋♂
- 28. January, 2019 - Barcelona What the heck am I doing here?!?!?!?! 🤦 I’m overwhelmed by all this new stuff!
- 29. Way too many doubts in my mind! 😟 ...and those questions were bugging me!
- 30. Doubts, doubts, doubts... Crap, everyone in this office is way more talented than me! Damn, how is it possible that they hired me? What were they thinking? What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here.
- 31. Impostor Syndrome ...or self-doubt, or whatever you want to call it
- 32. What is impostor syndrome? Impostor Syndrome was first defined in 1978 by psychologists Pauline R. Clance and Suzanne A. Imes as a feeling of "phoniness in people who believe they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement." “The feeling that your achievements are not real or that you do not deserve praise or success.” Cambridge Dictionary “People who feel like impostors have unsustainably high self-expectations around competence. No one likes to fail, but impostors experience shame when they fail.” Dr. Valerie Young
- 33. Impostor syndrome(s), actually! 01 The Perfectionist: set excessively high goals for themselves; control freaks, feeling like if they want something done right, they have to do it themselves. 02 The Superwoman/man: they often push themselves to work harder and harder to measure up. 03 The Natural Genius: if they take a long time to master something, they feel shame; same if they don't do things right on the first try. 04 The Soloist: they refuse assistance so that they can prove their worth; they think that asking for help would reveal their phoniness. 05 The Expert: believing they will never know enough, they fear being exposed as inexperienced or unknowledgeable.
- 34. ...but there is also someone that feels like the exact opposite! Some people believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are, and we meet them quite frequently! For example, during a holiday family gathering, throughout the course of the meal, a member of your extended family begins talking a lot about a specific topic, boldly proclaiming that he is correct and that everyone else's opinion is stupid, uninformed, and just plain wrong. Everyone in the room understood that this person has no idea what he is talking about, yet he goes on, and on, and on, talking too much about something he doesn’t know at all. This cognitive bias is called Dunning-Kruger effect, named after researchers David Dunning and Justin Kruger, the two social psychologists who first described it. In their original study on this psychological phenomenon, they performed a series of investigations, and they came to very interesting results.
- 35. Dunning-Kruger Effect (I) People who scored in the lowest percentiles on tests of grammar, humor, and logic also tended to dramatically overestimate how well they had performed. Their test scores placed them in the 12th percentile, but they estimated that their performance placed them in the 62nd percentile. Please also note how who got highest scores actually underestimated their performance. In simple words: high achievers have self doubts, while low achievers are flamboyant. 🤯
- 36. Dunning-Kruger Effect (II) You must have knowledge to realize you don’t have knowledge.
- 37. Dunning-Kruger Effect (III) An epic fail, due to Dunning-Kruger effect: “In 1995, Arthur Wheeler made the critical error of confusing the ‘invisible ink’ properties of lemon juice with the visual properties of everything else and walked into a bank with lemon juice smeared all over his face. Robbing two banks over the course of a single day, he was reported to be incredulous when the police caught him later that same day, using CCTV footage of his face. “But I wore the juice!”, he exclaimed […] Tragically, Mr. Wheeler tested out his theory first with a Polaroid camera. Sure enough, the ‘selfie’ he took printed as a blank image, almost certainly due to defective film.” 😂 https://effectiveexperiments.com/blog/optimization-bias-how-true-optimizers-avoid-the-dunning-kruger-effect/
- 38. Dunning-Kruger Effect (IV) Incompetent people, the researchers found, are not only poor performers, they are also unable to accurately assess and recognize the quality of their own work. They overestimate their own knowledge and ability and are incapable of seeing the poorness of their performance. Also, low performers are unable to recognize the skill and competence levels of other people, which is part of the reason why they consistently view themselves as better, more capable, and more knowledgeable than others. Dunning and Kruger said that some people are not only incompetent; their incompetence robs them of the mental ability to realize just how inept they are. "In many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious," wrote David Dunning in an article for Pacific Standard. "Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge."
- 39. Dunning-Kruger Effect (V) However, not only incompetent people are affected by Dunning-Kruger! Even people who are genuine experts in some areas may mistakenly believe that their intelligence and knowledge carry over into other areas in which they are less familiar: a brilliant scientist, for example, might be a very poor writer. The reality is that everyone is susceptible to this phenomenon, and in fact, most of us probably experience it with surprising regularity. Confucius said “True wisdom is knowing what you don’t know”. Just ot be 100% clear, Dunning-Kruger effect is not synonymous with low IQ, and the scientist / wannabe writer example explains it quite well.
- 40. I cannot say if I’m affected by Dunning-Kruger effect on some topics, but I can say for sure that self-doubts, yes, I have them frequently!
- 41. So... am I the only one having self-doubts? “It has been estimated that nearly 70 percent of individuals will experience signs and symptoms of impostor phenomenon at least once in their life.” Ravindran, Sandeep "Feeling Like A Fraud: The Impostor Phenomenon in Science Writing" Self-doubt and impostor syndrome are common across all industries, but the increasing pressure to be successful in IT is taking its toll on employees, affecting more than half workers... me included, as it seems 😔
- 42. Blind’s research The anonymous workplace social network Blind conducted a survey to determine how many of the site's users grapple with intense feelings of insecurity in tech fields. 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.
- 44. Common traits You have difficulty accepting praise. You’re an over-worker. You feel the need to be the best. You’re described as a perfectionist. The fear of failure can paralyze you. You avoid showing confidence. You actually dread success. You compare your struggles and obstacles to those of others. You associate praise with charm over actual talent. You focus more on what you haven’t done. You’re convinced you aren’t enough. 11 Signs You Have Impostor Syndrome - PowerOfPositivity.com
- 45. Factors contributing to this syndrome Nature and nurture: nature because some people more than others are emotionally reactive and self-focussed; nurture in the form of childhood conditioning (we become the good child, the clever child, the funny child, and in the process we suppress our real feelings). Family expectations, perfectionist parents (“You can do better, I know you can!”). New setting, academic or professional. Gender stereotypes. Racial identities. Anxiety. Depression.
- 46. How it affects us It reduces productivity, it slows us down. We have to prepare or work much harder than necessary to "make us feel confident". We are not willingly sharing our ideas and thoughts. We engage in self-protective behaviours. We are regularly seeking external validation. We become poor team members, unable to actively participate in the storming phase. It makes us poor decision-makers.
- 47. How much does it cost to us We may be missing out on career or life opportunities, withholding ourselves. It makes more difficult to grow as human beings, because we are defending ourselves from the outside world. We may have a strong internal critic that constantly berates us – and others – for failing to be perfect rather than focus on what we (or they) have achieved or can deliver. To prove to ourselves and others that we are good enough, we may disregard the costs and consequences to ourselves, others and to our family or organisation in doing so. We lose sight of who we are. We sabotage our lives.
- 48. Famous people are affected by it as well! (I) Sheryl Sandberg - Facebook COO + Sheryl Sandberg Foundation David Bowie - singer Serena Williams - tennis champion Meryl Streep - actress Arianna Huffington - Huffington Post, does it ring any bell? Tom Hanks - actor Howard Schultz - Starbucks CEO
- 49. Famous people are affected by it as well! (II) “Every time I was called on in class, I was sure that I was about to embarrass myself. Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I didn’t embarrass myself — or even excelled — I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up.” “There are still days when I wake up feeling like a fraud.” Sheryl Sandberg on “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.”
- 50. Famous people are affected by it as well! (III) “Very few people, whether they’ve been in that job before or not, get into the seat and believe today that they are now qualified to be the CEO. They’re not going to tell you that, but it’s true.” Howard Schultz to the New York Times. “There are an awful lot of people out there who think I’m an expert. How do these people believe all this about me? I’m so much aware of all the things I don’t know!” Dr. Chan, Chief of the World Health Organization.
- 51. So… is the impostor syndrome all bad? (I) Not at all! As I just showed you, many successful people have experienced, and still experience, the impostor syndrome, hence it’s possible to live with it, and doing great things! The key is what we do with it. If we allow it to push us down, it is limiting because we’re hiding who we are and what we’re capable of. However, when we recognise it, acknowledge it, see and accept who we are and find the courage to go for what we want, we can use the impostor syndrome as fuel for our journey.
- 52. So… is the impostor syndrome all bad? (II)
- 53. Cool, but… What should we do? Be open with people around us, they are surely eager to help. Find a mentor, or a friend, to talk about the situation, to take inspiration from. Identify our strengths, recognize our victories. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Accept that we have had some role in our successes. Store in a file all nice things people told us. We will die, eventually, so stop being scared!
- 54. Back to my story!
- 55. Kata: detailed choreographed pattern of movements made to be practiced alone. You are basically fighting against an invisible enemy, using your best moves. Going through those points, I put things into the right perspective, and regain balance.
- 56. Be open with people around us, they are surely eager to help. George, Edu, Hèctor, Adam, Mehdi... they helped me a lot, and they still do, as well as all other Ubeeterraneans! I just hope I’ll have the opportunity to return the favor soon enough.
- 57. Find a mentor, or a friend, to talk about the situation, to to take inspiration from.
- 58. Identify our strengths, recognize our victories “People born in small towns quite often have huge dreams, and a limitless dedication to make them come true.” I was born in Foggia, a small town in the south of Italy. I had (and still have) big dreams and goals to achieve. I am stubborn, and I will not stop until I get there.
- 59. From Foggia to Viacom’s HQ in New York Yes, I had hair! 🤣 ...but then I started running and I lost them, ‘cause I was way too fast 😅
- 60. January/February, 2018 - Milan I’ve started reading papers and other stuff about crypto and blockchain a few years ago, then in January ‘18 I decided to enroll in a couple of MOOCs, held by Nicosia and Princeton universities.
- 61. March, 2018 - Milan After just a couple of months I got an offer from Bitmain! (then I turned it down) This is the biggest crypto-related tech company in the world, with massive influence and reach.
- 62. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.
- 63. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.
- 64. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes.
- 65. Accept that we have had some role in our successes. It was not only luck if I worked for great companies, with amazing people. It was not luck at all if I was able to pass technical tests, interviews and then get job offers from many companies, from startups to big corporations. I was just bold enough to chase and face those challenges, getting out of my comfort zone.
- 66. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (I)
- 67. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (II)
- 68. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (III)
- 69. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (IV)
- 70. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (V)
- 71. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (VI)
- 72. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (VII)
- 73. Store in a file all nice things people told us. (VIII)
- 74. We will die, eventually, so stop being scared! “Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.” Tony Robbins - American author, philanthropist, and life coach “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.” Suzy Kassem - American writer, poet, philosopher, and multi-faceted artist “Your mission: be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear.” Karen Salmansohn - Multi bestselling author and award winning designer
- 75. Therefore, how can we turn this bad feeling in positive energy?
- 76. Remember, you achieved a lot in your life! Just think about it! 01 Try to do the same exercise I just showed you, going through those steps. You will be surprised by the fact you did great so far! 02 Enjoy this exciting feeling of looking back at your life / career and seeing how many wonderful things happened to you! 03 Repeat these steps every time you need! An extra boost of energy is always welcome! 😉
- 77. If you got to this point, and you recognized how good you are... well, congrats, you did a great job! Keep in mind: - No fear of getting out from our comfort zone. That’s where great things happen! - No one is immune from self-doubts, we should manage them and use them at our advantage, to bloom and achieve our goals. - Talk more to ourselves, without turning us down. Sport champions are doing it all the time to get focused, motivated and energized. We are champions too! - Talk to people, and learn from them! Everyone is a master in something.
- 79. Just a small town girl Livin' in a lonely world She took the midnight train goin' anywhere Just a city boy Born and raised in south Detroit He took the midnight train goin' anywhere Don't stop believin' Hold on to the feelin' Streetlights, people Don't stop believin' Hold on Streetlights, people Last but foremost: Don’t stop believin’
- 80. Thank you!