The Software Imposter Phase

Any new job always hurts you on the inside, but it will pass.

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

Syndrome

I’ve referred to the prevalence of Imposter Syndrome within the grand game of software engineering many times in past articles.

The stereotypical software engineer suffers all too greatly from that feeling in the pit of their stomach of not being good enough or up to scratch somehow usually when surrounded by other engineers who seem to know what they’re doing or managers who just expect miracles on a daily basis.

Of course for the most part this feeling is subjective and something I personally put down to our gentle inoffensive selves, our delicate countenance, and our not wanting to offend anyone or engage in any kind of confrontation.

We just want to do great work with the minimum of distraction from people who purposefully make it their business to get in our way, such as project managers.

Software engineering is a technically difficult and ever expanding field where the most talented engineers have to not only keep abreast of the latest technologies, fight off continual managerial interference (and more commonly sheer incompetence), ruthlessly shame ‘day in the life influencers’ and the snake oil peddlers of blockchain, but also become masters of their own niches.