Momo - Beginning a career in tech can be daunting, and Imposter Syndrome can be a very real thing - especially at the beginning.
This is just my anecdotal experience, definitely not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. Hope it can be of value to someone 🙂
There's a few things you know, and a million you don't. When I first started, those dastardly lil thoughts went to - "Man, I have no idea what I'm doing. I feel way out of my league. Everyone knows more than me." These thoughts are completely natural, but they are flawed.
In my opinion they come from a fundamental lack of understanding of exactly what having a career in tech means. For 30 years-of-experience principals and fresh new-grad developers alike, a career in tech inherently includes not knowing everything. It is literally part of the job. You’re not being paid to know everything - you’re being paid to solve problems.
Not knowing is part of the job. Although what you do know is and will always be relevant to your career, embracing this constant not knowing and converting it into opportunities to learn something new, a curiosity to feed, has been massively helpful in working through those imposter syndrome thoughts (which can be especially loud early on).
In this short article I'm gonna dive a bit more into this, and a few other things I'd tell my past self.
Early Days in the Tech
It was mid-2022 when I stepped into my first real technical role as a Data Engineering Intern. To say I was nervous would be an understatement. Questions buzzed around my head: What would my daily routine look like? Could I really learn this entire tech stack from scratch and still make a difference? And what in the world was memoization—a typo for memorization, perhaps? The more I thought about it, the more these and other imposter syndrome-esque thoughts began to creep in.
But as the days turned into weeks, I began to find my footing. Sure, there was a mountain of knowledge to climb, but I soon realized I wasn’t just there to learn—I had value to contribute. This wasn’t about inflating my ego; it was about understanding that my presence on the team was more than just about writing code.
The First Milestone
I’ll always remember the day I submitted my first pull request (PR). It was a small change, just a tweak to an on-hover feature, but it felt monumental. That tiny piece of code was going to be used by thousands of users, and the thought of it both thrilled and terrified me.
A week before the production release, I tested it in our nightly environment. The combination of excitement and anxiety made the week before our upcoming production release feel like an eon. When the time finally came, I saw my bugfix listed in the patch notes and rushed to prod to fiddle with the UI component myself. Couldn't help but let out a small sigh of relief and felt a small yet noticeable wave of satisfaction. Did I just do the dev thing? Huh, minor as can be but yea I guess so. Nice! Maybe it's not so spooky after all.
Looking Ahead
As I've continued to build new perspectives since then, that little imposter syndrome voice has gotten smaller and smaller. If it's something you struggle with, I highly encourage you to try to identify what exact dynamics are triggering these thoughts, then perhaps try to embrace some new perspectives on them.
What worked for me was to stop fighting these thoughts and to begin listening to them, working through them, logically.
Take confidence in yourself and what you’ve accomplished, be your biggest fan. Minimize comparing yourself to others. Stay humble but be proud of how far you've come since you began your journey. This self-worth-ing is another madly powerful tool.