Hi,
A friend of mine started a new software engineer role recently, and he's worried he's going to get fired. I'm not sure why exactly. He's very competent. He used to have problems with procrastination and not getting things done, but he's gotten over that. He's tons smarter than me.
I think it's because this is his first serious job, with health insurance and a pension plan and everything. And a very generous salary. I think he feels there's a very high expectation on him and so he's over-exaggerating any way he thinks he might fall short of deserving this compensation.
I told him to check out the Self-Development 360, but I'm not sure what else to recommend:
http://www.manager-tools.com/2012/07/self-development-informal-360
I've also passed on a few chestnuts that I've found helpful when having arbitrary self-doubts.
Cheers
I still feel that way after 15 years
I've been a software engineer for 15 years with titles like "Senior Software Architect" and I still feel like an impostor. I'm not sure it ever goes away.
Your details were sketchy but if he's an entry level programmer, nobody expects much of him right off the bat. Just jump in, work hard, pay attention and learn. This is the right time to develop core engineering practices and professional habits that will help him for years to come.
I'd recommend starting with a couple of things. First, keep a log (I use Evernote) of how he spent his time each day. Second, do something cool each week - fix the circular dependencies in the build, refactored some universally recognized ugly bit of code, used a profiler and improved performance of this class, created a wiki page on how part of the app works, etc. Things above and beyond his daily assignments.
Also, there are a few classic books that may help him - Pragmatic Programmer, Passionate Programmer, Clean Code, and Code Complete. I'd go in that order.
Cool thanks. :) Yeah,
Cool thanks. :)
Yeah, I'm.... not a coding type person at all myself, so I don't really understand what he does. Best I can grasp it is he deals with data servers and... handles the architecture for... handling.... data?
It's not his first ever job, and I'm not sure it's entry level exactly, but he is the new guy, hired in from having done freelance work with other people beforehand. This is the first time he's been set to a proper big job.
I'll pass on your recommendations to him.
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Rory
6147
One thought on the Impostor Syndrome
A thought I discovered from Valerie Young, who operates impostorsyndrome.com:
Does your friend really think he's so smart, or they're so dumb, that he has pulled the wool over their eyes? Did he baffle them with enough BS that they hired the wrong guy and don't know it?
It's more likely that he really is good enough, and the anxiety that led him to procrastinate may be rearing his ugly head. Seek out some anti-perfectionism resources for him, too.
I know how this works, because it happens to me -- someday they're going to realize I'm a screwup, and then I'll be tossed out on my ear. I've been at this job ten years now, and that's never even been mentioned, much less threatened. Still, I think it.
flexiblefine
Houston, Texas, USA
DiSC: 1476