Study Finds 58% of Tech Employees Feel Like Frauds (cnet.com)

"Feeling like a hack is more common than you might think," writes CNET: In fact, 58 percent of people with technology-focused careers suffer from Impostor Syndrome, according to a new informal study from workplace social media site Blind... 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. Seventy-two percent of Expedia employees say they experienced Impostor Syndrome, the highest among companies with at least 100 employee responses. On the lower end of the spectrum, only 44.45 percent of Apple employees experienced impostor syndrome.

Comments

If you're new to any company...

[MindPrison]

...you'll feel a bit overwhelmed the first year, this is completely natural.

I work for a huge corporate with IT, and in the beginning I asked myself several times "What am I doing here?", the workload and assignments are so overwhelming that I thought I couldn't even learn this the next 10 years. The truth is, the company is completely aware of this, and most likely - so are your manager.

But corporate knows, you're there because they saw the potential to shape you. Sometimes you can get a job where you have NO initial qualifications, but as long as the company do in-house training, and you're willing to learn - then you're already a valuable asset to the company, at any age!

If you have a competent manager, he/she will have seen the likes of you 10 times over and then some. They know from experience how their learning curve is, and what most of us battle with on a day to day basis. If they're worth their salt, they'll slowly but surely learn from you, observe you, and introduce you to the things you need to qualify yourself over the years, over time you become an invaluable asset to the company, and will feel somewhat more competent as you progress.

I got hired in my late 40's, I was totally clueless. But I fought hard to learn and adapt. Years later - I still feel inadequate sometimes, but I am nowhere NEAR as inadequate as I was years ago, and I now tutor many of our own new trainees - and believe it or not, I learn from them as well.

The trick is actually just to take up challenges, lead yourself. If you sit idly by, chances are that you can get by unnoticed, unremarkable in any way - still you'll have some value to the company as you're not fired yet, they would fire you on the spot if you don't bring anything to the table. Trust me - successful corporates aren't a bunch of clueless fools, they got there for a reason, they found people like you - and you might just be more valuable than you might realize.

I've talked a lot to my managers, they often speak of other values like how well you fit in with the rest of the teams, how you can "empower" others to feel better about their efforts, and how social you are. It's all about the team.

I have had numerous discussions with colleagues that feels EXACTLY like those 58% we're talking about here. I have a female colleague that has no personal interest in IT, and constantly mentions how little she knows and how hopeless it all seems, but I see it differently, she's older, but quite awesome, always nice to those she helps, and if she can't figure it out - she already have figured out those WHO CAN, and she observes when they work, and learn.

She's become quite adept at helping people with IT tasks now, but she still feels like the 58%, I prefer to call that "staying humble" rather than being safe in your position of knowledge, because in IT the knowledge change ALL the time as we get new software solutions every 6 month, and you need to stay focused on new solutions and know how to make things "fit" together, aka - the bigger picture.

If it wasn't for my colleagues constantly accepting my failures by helping me out, I'd be totally lost today, but it turns out that over some time - you become that mentor to someone new as well.