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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I stole this Sig