Impostor syndrome

[denise]

I've been talking a lot at conferences this year about impostor syndrome, and if you're interested, the Ada Initiative has transcribed and captioned the talk I gave at linux.conf.au this year:

Kicking Impostor Syndrome In The Head: Lessons from AdaCamp DC and SF

This is the shorter version of the talk -- I gave the longer one at Open Source Bridge last week, and the slides for that one can be found at Kicking Impostor Syndrome In The Head. (The longer talk also includes a section on how you can help people around you with their impostor syndrome, especially if you're in a position of social or technical authority or status in your group or project.) I'm pretty sure video of that talk will be available at some point, too!

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

Thanks for posting! I'll have to watch the whole thing when I've got time. I've struggled with imposter in the past, although not so much at the moment (knock on wood). But right now the church secretary has a horrible case of imposter syndrome, combined with general low self-esteem and shyness issues, and I'm trying to help as much as I can. (I've worked with a lot of church secretaries, and she is hands-down the best. She'll do something that's perfect, and apologize because it's not good enough. Or I'll screw something up, and she'll apologize. I keep telling her: you're great! you're awesome! She says thanks, but with that look on her face where I know that in the back of her head she's thinking "she's only saying that to be nice/because she likes me.")

[havocthecat]

It's hard to be an administrative assistant. You end up reflexively apologizing for other people's mistakes because you're lowest on the office hierarchy, and people really do demand constant perfection from you. It contributes to raging imposter syndrome, which is even harder to overcome in a situation where you don't have any actual power.

[giglet]

Thank you!

[parhelion]

Thanks. I'm temporarily having to do administration at a level I never thought I would, and this is helpful.

[grammarwoman]

That's a wonderful presentation! Thank you for sharing it.

It's funny, but the thing that has most helped me get through/past/around my imposter syndrome is simply age: I used to think I was younger than everyone else (which is basically true in my department here at work) and that therefore they had more experience and knew more than I did.

Now that I've been at my current workplace for 10 years, and my job has changed to web development, I'm working with people my age or younger, and I can see that it's not that their experience is greater or better, just different. It's become a lot easier to say, "Hey, I don't know that." and not take it as a personal failing.

[ninetydegrees]

This was a really good talk d. Thanks for making and linking!

[juliekarasik]

God, this is so cool it should be a ted talk.

[kate]

This is awesome!

[princessofgeeks]

I finally had time to read the transcript, and I thought it was a useful and entertaining talk. GO YOU.

I wish had heard of this ten years ago when I had a really brilliant student who engaged in all kinds of puzzling and counterproductive behavior when he was writing his senior paper for me, and it turned out that these were his problems exactly.

Thanks again.

[beatrice_otter]

Randomly, I just stumbled upon this filk that talks about coding, and while I know nothing about code, it sounds fun. Since you're the only programmer I know, I thought I'd pass it along in case you've never heard it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-OjTPj7K54

Audio now available

[brainwane]

The OSBridge talk now has audio available (click on the "Download audio of this session" link).

Re: Audio now available

[denise]

Oooh, awesome! Thank you <3