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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.
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.
My personal estimation is that we have about 20% people that know what they are doing, at least in IT. (Yes, I know that impostor syndrome refers to people that have external evidence that they are actually competent. But in IT holding a specific position does realistically not provide that evidence, even if a psychologist may believe it does.)
It depends a lot on the organization, but are ~20% of people proper experts with the technology or product they're working on? Probably. That means a good chunk of the remaining 80% keep on running into the boundaries of their knowledge, thinking "hmm, I probably should know this, I bet Bob and Sally know it, it's important for me to perform this task, but it's kinda vague".
Now a lot of them are probably still providing good value, and Bob and Sally might not know after all, but that continual experience sounds like a good recipe for imposter syndrome.
The other aspect is productivity, if I were working 100% engaged for 8 hours a day my productivity would be at least doubled, but I just can't mange that. I kind of assume other people manage it, but they're probably hiding their distractions and lack of engagement the same as I am.
I stole this Sig
The other aspect is productivity, if I were working 100% engaged for 8 hours a day my productivity would be at least doubled, but I just can't mange that. I kind of assume other people manage it, but they're probably hiding their distractions and lack of engagement the same as I am.
There are some very old systematic studies done by Ford and others as to what amount of work-hours provide maximum productivity. For manual work they found the peak at 8h/day, 5 days/week, for mental work at 6h/day, 5 days/week. For mental work, you can basically as 2h/day of stuff that needs not much focus, but that is it. If you work more, you are very likely below your maximum overall productivity, i.e. the additional hours make the overall result worse. There are a lot of idiots that do not know this though. As Ford is not in any way under suspicion to have wanted to do something nice for his workers, these numbers are pretty reliable.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Its a bit misleading though on the numbers. They had a little over 10 thousand responses, which for their overall user base is probably statistically significant, but not for individual companies registered on there.
This is a common misunderstanding about statistics. You do NOT need a lot of samples for statistical significance, and the number of datapoints needed is usually far below what people intuitively expect.
If you want to improve predictions, it is generally far more important to improve the representativeness of the samples, and design the questions to elicit a proper response. Increasing the sample size does little.
Then finally, what is the rate of imposter syndrome among other profession?
Very good question. Without knowing this, the results of this survey don't really mean much.
If they're frauds, it's not imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome requires you have verifiable successes that you negate and discount and verifiable ability you deny. Fakes have neither.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I find it's like that all over. If a person likes to talk about how awesome they are and how everyone else is an idiot, I'd put money that they are the real idiot. The ones full of self doubt are usually the ones who not only know what they're doing, but are actively trying to do things better because they think they are frauds.