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Programmers tend to feel “programmer imposter syndrome”.
When you’re feeling like what you’re doing is not meant for you or you shouldn’t be doing it or you can’t get better at it, is what we call “imposter syndrome”.
This is a normal thing, especially in this field of software engineering and I believe everyone has experienced this feeling at some point in their lives.
SOME REASONS WHY
Software development never stops evolving. There’s always something new adding to it each day. There are more people getting into the field and the use of software is continuously expanding. With this fact, the creation of new tools and frameworks is encouraged, which means there’ll be more things for the existing engineers to learn and develop themselves in. This can sometimes lead to the engineer or developer being overwhelmed.
Another thing is the unrealistic perception that is created by the media around the tech industry. The area of software engineering has this ridiculous mythology that only the smart people has the ability to grasp it. Also the fact that the media portrays startup founders as brilliant and uniquely creative, making so many people see that making it as a software engineer is far fetched.
Matching your skill with your interest. This might sound strange but it’s true, most people don’t match the tech skills they learn with what they are interested in. They just move along with the crowd or just pick up some random advices. That’s why some people don’t have niche, they learn this language today and by tomorrow they are learning another or they learn frontend today and by tomorrow they migrate to cloud computing. For example if you are interesting in analysis you should learn languages related to it and then stick to analysis, you could start building softwares that are related to analysis also.
Skipping the learning process. Most people start learning a language today and expect to build crazy stuff by the end of the week and missing out on the fundamentals. They expect the learning stage to be a fast process. I’ve been learning for over two years and I’m still learning till date even as I teach. That’s the awesome thing, it never gets boring.
WHAT TO DO?
Having a career goal and stirring it up with passion. Not setting a target or an end goal can also play a huge part in causing imposter syndrome. Instead of learning different different skills and languages, you just learn what is required to get you to where you are heading to on a long run.
How you learn is important. Figure out the best and easiest way for you to learn. This is key to making progress in your engineering journey. Find what works, if it’s reading books or watching videos or taking courses or attending bootcamps. Whichever styles works for you is what you should bank on. Also another thing people take for granted is the learning environment, put that into account. And lastly, be curious and have that innate desire to learn and continue learning.
Keeping track of accomplishments. You should learn to keep track of your milestones in every journey you take so that when you look back you can see how far you’ve gone and how close you are to achieving what you want. You should also take into account of ways in which you solved previous problems and how you can do that better and faster.
The journey as a software engineer and dealing with imposter syndrome is continuous and also progressive. Following the compound effect is also going to help, this effect is about taking continuous and consistent steps to yield satisfied results.