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

article

[religionofpeas]

I clicked on the link to figure out what they were talking about, but it was such a mess that I had to close it before getting a chance to read a single sentence.

Re:article

[TomBauserman]

We're all impostors. Just do whatever it is you think you can do the best you can. If people like it great. If not, do something else.

Re:article

[jd]

It's when a person doubts their accomplishments and has a fear of being exposed as a fraud.

What they're basically saying is that 57.55% of IT workers from the named companies are suffering from psychological trauma you'd more likely expect to find in a war zone, a kidnap situation or a maximum security prison.

You should not be finding it in a 9-5 office job.

Re:article

[gweihir]

Alternatively, many are actually impostors to some degree. But I agree, there is something severely wrong if you find it as often as here.

Re:article

[Zmobie]

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. They did a break down of the registered user-base's companies, but not a break down based on the respondents from those companies outside of a percentage. They have 6 thousand Apple employees and say at least 100 responded. They could have 44 out of those 100 say yes and they have their percentage right there even though that isn't significant for the company alone. Then, the one study they cited from 1978 only had 150 sample size too making the percentages seem extremely high, but not doing a proper breakdown or significant numbers.

I can agree it shows tech workers in general may have high rates of imposter syndrome, but the individual company rates may be misleading without additional information. Its also not controlling for a lot of factors. At best, I'd say you could claim a 40% rate, maybe 50% with more information on the study (maybe it is just cnet doing poor editorial work). Then finally, what is the rate of imposter syndrome among other profession? Could this be something that just runs high for white collar professionals or maybe people in general? It is interesting, but lot of holes in the stats.

Re:article

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:article

[Aighearach]

One is a syndrome, the other is an effect that you don't quite understand as well as you think you do. ;)

Re:article

[Aighearach]

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.

It is a natural mistake, because people presume that "significance" as technical jargon would be even more significant than the literary word, but actually it only means "probably not a math error." It tells you nothing about if your results are "significant" in the literary sense; the vast majority of scientific results that are "statistically significant" are still worthless and misleading, because math errors are not even the main challenge to overcome! The difficulty in predicting unknown explanations for results is really the problem that experiments attempt to solve. And it takes a lot of work. Being 95% sure that you didn't have a rounding error is not exactly a result that is likely to have significant implications, even if it is statistically significant.

If they'd just rename it to Statistically Cromulent people would be better able to understand it.

Re:article

[jd]

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.

Re:article

[rtb61]

I would tend to go with the same idea. A lot of employees at companies are quite unproductive, even more just barely so. The most productive ones, tend to slack off down to the pace of the less productive and just let it slide with regard to the impact on the company. The Peter principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... definitely seems to be at work at work and can cut in much earlier than people realise, right at initial employment.

I have known companies where the staff developed a reputation for ganging up on and removing quality employees who knew to much because they were a threat to the mediocre (company gossip can provide real competitive advantage).

A whole lot of staff members get by on their personality and or appearance, without even brown nosing and of course there are the really unproductive brown nosers. I would say it was pretty normal to fifty percent of employees to carry the other fifty percent, when it goes beyond 40% doing the work, things start going really bad.

Re: article

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:article

[Zmobie]

No, he is quite right in pointing out how that statement is actually misleading. If we did an survey about the effects of economic disadvantage on inner city youth and asked a bunch of affluent suburbanites, that really isn't useful information for anything other then what do the affluent suburbanites think about this particular issue.

And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[gweihir]

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.)

Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[quantaman]

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.

Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[gweihir]

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.

Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[alvinrod]

We all generally know who is competent, or at least more competent. There's always someone that's getting asked to put out the fires or to help fix things or to look over something to make sure that it's okay. That's the competent person, or at least the person more competent than everyone else. Management might not realize this person exists, but that's their own failing. Worse still, management probably undervalues this person because they just look at some metrics that really penalize anyone who's spending a considerable amount of their time helping other people out even though that person is adding the most value to the company.

It might take a while for people to figure out, but if you actually took a step back and monitored a company, there are going to be a few people that have everyone else beating a footpath to their door when they need help. And then there's the other side of the coin, the people that are never going to get asked to do something because everyone knows that they'll screw it up or do a shoddy job of it. It's just that capturing this as a metric so that middle management doesn't make a mess of things is hard to do.

Re: And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[Type44Q]

...definitely people with a so-called 'syndrome' where no matter what they legitimately achieve they still feel like they really haven't.

There are orders of magnitude more with the opposite problem.

Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[Aighearach]

That's not an extraordinary claim, it is a mainstream 101-level claim that anybody claiming enough subject knowledge to demand a citation should already have.

Take some responsibility for your ignorance and attempt to look shit up before you tell people it needs a citation.

Because I refuse to do that for you, I'll instead give an anecdote: In my early 20s I worked at a plywood mill, and they often wanted to increase production seasonally. They would always (always!) over-work everybody. What they would do is go from 40 hours a week to 50 the next week, then they'd add Saturday to get to 60, and then on Monday morning they'd be really happy because they were so far "ahead," and then production would be so low all week that by the end of the week we were barely getting 50% out. They'd try to increase it by pushing people harder, but then it would go down further because of how much work had to be redone. Then eventually one of the people from the head office would get mad enough to come over and find out what was going on, and force them back down to 50 hours a week. Then over 2 weeks production would climb back to 85%. They never seemed to figure out that 85% is less than 100%, though. They also never enacted any policy changes that would prevent the pattern from repeating; every time that a production increase was desired, the same pattern would play out, with reduced productivity.

Eventually they added a third shift, which prevented the ability to work more hours in a day, and waste went down a lot. The only reason they didn't go out of business was that they had a lot of warehouse space, so they could still sell more product during the seasonal peaks than the rest of the year. That helped to hide the related drops in output.

It seems to be the natural result of letting managers teach themselves their job by their bootstraps.

Re: And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[ShanghaiBill]

Bro, google it

"Google it" is not a citation. Quite the opposite, it is the last refuge of a bullshitter.

it's a thing

No it isn't.

the fact that you haven't heard of it, doesn't mean we are lying.

I don't think you are lying. I think you are lazy and misinformed.

Jesus Christ you big brains are so stupid some times.

My brain is normal sized (roughly 1400 cc).

It has been discussed on slashdot ad nauseum.

Indeed it has, and always in an evidence free context.

Re:And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[jareth-0205]

He doesn't provide evidence

Indeed, and that is all that matters.

Yeah, well, neither do you.

There are a whole bunch of ways of causing problems in codebases that you won't know about immediately, that can't just be reverted. Choices that gets buried and then it turns out to be badly thought through weeks later when other things are build ontop. TDD won't always save you because TDD doesn't help if the understanding of the problem is incorrect in the first place, or things that just aren't testable. Negative work isn't a new concept.

Re: And 22% or so have no realistic self-image

[ShanghaiBill]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=overtime+causes+loss+of+productivity

*cough*

THANK YOU. Everyone should do this. Just go to Google and see for yourself that there is NOTHING. NO study. NO evidence.

Don't you think an actual scientific study documenting negative productivity would show up as the very first link? Or on the first page at least? Maybe the 2nd page, or the 3rd?

Nope. Nothing.

Does productivity decline? Yes of course.

Does productivity GO NEGATIVE after 8 hours? There is no evidence for that.

If companies could really get MORE WORK DONE by cutting hours and PAYING PEOPLE LESS, don't you think they would have noticed before now?

Dunning-Kruger effect

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just the Dunning-Kruger effect. Tech employees who have moderate to high levels of experience are knowledgeable enough to "know what they don't know" about their field, and this makes them concerned that they don't know enough. Frankly, I'd be more concerned about the employees who are over-confidence in their abilities.

Re:Dunning-Kruger effect

[robocord]

It's exactly this. Anybody above the level of "unconscious incompetence" will sometimes feel like a fraud.

Conscious incompetent: "I don't know what I'm doing. Why did they hire me?"
Conscious competent: "I sometimes know what I'm doing, but there's so much I don't know. Why haven't they fired me yet?"
Unconscious competent: "All this shit is so easy. Why are they paying me so much to do this high school stuff?"

Unconscious incompetent: "I'm fantastic! I'm the best ever! Why aren't they paying me more?"

Google

[StormReaver]

Given Google's recent history, I think the 44% that identified as Imposter is FAR too low. That should be closer to 80%.

How many are frauds though?

[alvinrod]

How many are frauds though?

There are plenty of times I've felt out of my depth, and sometimes it's because I legitimately was. I think the issue comes down to what people do about it. It's not a sin to realize you lack the required knowledge to accomplish something, but it's pretty damned foolish to remain in that state when you've become aware of it.

I also suspect that people's susceptibility to this is directly related to their belief that everyone (or maybe even anyone) else knows what the hell is going on. Once a person comes to realize that almost no one has the right answers and that most people just operate as best as they're capable of doing, it's kind of hard to feel like a fraud if you're at least trying to get better.

Re:How many are frauds though?

[jd]

A fraud would be someone who is out of their depth and doesn't look things up.

A competent person is someone who is also out of their depth but does look things up.

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.

Re:If you're new to any company...

[quantaman]

The trick is actually just to take up challenges, lead yourself.

This is one of the big lessons I learned going from school to the work force.

In school the assignments always have a solution, the teacher always knows it, and they have a pretty good idea of the best path for you to get there.

In industry, good managers have an idea... but if the task were already solved then there wouldn't be anything for you to do. So if you're assuming the path as laid out will invariably lead to success you're eventually going to hit a brick wall. I've seen this a number of time with co-op students, they really struggle when a minor redesign comes up and changes some characteristic of the task they've been assigned. It's not so much the lack of experience, but they can't quite accept that their assignment as given was flawed.

I've found two things that really help me. First, when I'm confused I start asking questions until things make sense. Sometimes I'm confused because I don't understand the area (and I would have screwed up if I didn't ask questions). But other times the project plan had some serious issue, and asking questions eventually exposed that issue and saved the company some serious money*.

The other thing I've found is a lot of good features and ideas tend to get ignored, and pushing for those features to get implemented (or even doing them on your own if appropriate) can bring a lot of value. As a bonus those tasks tend to be the things you're better at, and you're building a little domain of your expertise into the project.

* In one unfortunate experience I had with a technical manager was on a project involving some functionality I hadn't been exposed to. I didn't have a clear grasp of the concepts so I asked the manager to explain some points and he basically replied "You've been here X years! I don't understand how you don't know this already?" And so I accordingly shut up with my questions.

After a week and a half of several people working on the project another technical manager came back from vacation and started asked me to explain the design, I got to the part that confused me and I explained that it handled it by the functionality working like X, he replied, no, the functionality works like Y, at which point we both realized the project was fatally flawed.

Next day that project was abandoned.

Re:Also

[jd]

No, I disagree.

Angsty nerds are likely to check their work, apply good methodology, document and test, because they know they can make mistakes. Those are GOOD programmers.

What you don't want are the Microsoftists who check nothing, who get fixated on this better crap and who end up endangering lives (and killing everyone on board the occasional airliner) because they absolutely have confidence and fixes will be in the next patch anyway.

We're all "frauds" - it's part of the job

[zerofoo]

When I took my first computer science class in high school Java had not yet been invented and IPv6 was becoming a formalized standard. Powershell didn't exist for many many years in my career and dynamically routed networks weren't really common when I got started - clusterfucks of static routing everywhere.

Was I a fraud then? Am I a fraud now? - Yes and Yes.

No one in tech knows everything - it's a dynamic field that is constantly changing. "Experts" I've found have very deep and narrow knowledge of one particular part of the field. Many are not experts, but have wide and shallow knowledge and experience.

Are we all frauds? Probably. Do we have the ability to constantly learn and apply our knowledge? - hell yes. The ones that don't wash out very quickly in this business.

I'm a fraud - you are too - and there is nothing wrong with that.
 

To be expected...

[Junta]

The tech industry is filled with falsely grandiose claims about overwhelming awesomeness on so many fronts. Most people rather than calling things out for the way they are assume they *must* be wrong and smile and nod. As they go with the lofty words and in real terms see something they continue to not really 'get' despite using it for a long time, they have to decide is all the discussion and media coverage wrong, or am I personally wrong? A lot of people assume that if they called it out, *they* would be betrayed as the morons. So not only do they refrain, they'll actually jump in, to blend in.

It's actually a supremely ripe segment for marketing people, who love manipulating this sense to their ends. There's a lot of subjective facets to things and a lot of vagueness to make it very difficult to confidently declare something either a fraud or a big self-delusion.

So I'm not surprised most people are filled with self-doubt that runs counter to their outward behavior and a result feel like impostors.

Re:I think DK is over-talked about

[ShanghaiBill]

It kind of bothers me a little to see so many people talk about imposter syndrome (AKA Dunning-Kruger).

No. IS and DK are OPPOSITES.

Imposter Syndrome: You think are dumber than you really are.

Dunning-Kruger: You think you are smarter than you really are.

Yes

[Jfetjunky]

It has been nearly crippling at times. My manager has me reading "Mindset" by Carol Dweck because I'm pretty sure she could see it in me. There are some good insights in there. I suggest anyone suffering have a look.

Re:I think DK is over-talked about

[Aighearach]

It kind of bothers me a little to see so many people talk about imposter syndrome (AKA Dunning-Kruger).

No. IS and DK are OPPOSITES.

Imposter Syndrome: You think are dumber than you really are.

Dunning-Kruger: You think you are smarter than you really are.

They could be different points on the same curve for all you know.

If you don't know what you do know, and what you don't know, you're pretty much a perpetual fraud.

The words "smarter" and "dumber" in your comment doesn't even have meaning; it is just means you think they're not as Virtuous as you are. You're using it as if they were inherent attributes, but what is being measured is something different than that in both cases.

It could even be something as simple as, after a person gets past the Dunning-Kruger peak, they feel like an "impostor" unless they're a psychopath(*), right up until they reach a level of extreme knowledge that most people will never even attempt to reach in their life. So you start out new and overconfident, and then after you achieve some minimal competence you're doomed to always know that you're (still!) less competent than you used tell people you were! There is always this lurking sense of embarrassment and shame related to having realized that you were standing on Mt. Stupid, and then also continued moving forwards down the far side.

*) Please note that sociopath is a deprecated synonym for psychopath.

Re:Exactly on target, alvinrod !!!

[Aighearach]

I'm pretty happy when I feel like I understand a single interrupt routine 100%, even when it is only a few lines and I wrote it!

Especially because it is usually in C, and who knows what the compiler actually did! If I had time to "understand" what actually happened to 100%, I'd have time to write all my code in ASM to begin with. Actually, that would be quicker for that goal...

And even then my understanding is only an approximation; all hardware is analog under the hood, after all!

That's funny...

[mbeckman]

I think 58% of studies are frauds. And 100% of this study is a fraud. And an imposter.