My entire career path.
I knew I liked concerts, and knew that people had to run that equipment, so I decided to get a job in an event company warehouse to learn what was happening. About 2 months in a sales guy apparently oversold a job and came running downstairs asking if anyone knew how to do video. No one did. So I said “have you got the manuals? I’ll learn.” He said, “Great! You’re going out on a North American arena tour in 6 weeks, good luck.”
Talk about getting thrown into it. I was the projector tech for a show that was running 10 screens and I had never touched a projector before then. I thankfully had a director who realized the crap I was in and helped me out.
That was almost 15 years ago now, I’m no longer on the road, but I’m still in it. Every show is different and every show is a learning experience.
Anyone know when the “making it” step starts happening?
Imposter syndrome sucks, doesn’t it. I’ve been a professional software developer and engineer for more than two decades, and I still find myself worrying people will realize I have no idea what I’m talking about, even on topics where I absolutely know what I’m talking about.
Especially on topics where I absolutely know what I’m talking about.
The “make it” step is already happening. It just doesn’t feel like it, because there is no single moment the switch occurs, no time you can point to and say, “before that I was putting all my effort into presenting as a competent person, and after that I just was a competent person.” The mental effort to see yourself that way will always be there.
What changes is the degree of effort it takes, and that change is gradual.
Ugh. I just finished dealing with what turned out to be a simple configuration problem that took me three days because the tool’s documentation sucked. Turned it in feeling bad only to hear that four other devs had previously failed to get it to work.
One important lesson on life is that everyone is bumbling around all the time. (Like me with autocorrect in the first version of this comment…)
Yes, absolutely. And when I get kudos for accomplishing something like that, I always have to fight myself to allow myself to feel like I’ve earned them and not go, “If I were smarter and not a complete fraud, I’d have solved it sooner.”
What I’ve learned is that if I solve it in a day, my brain will try to make me think half a day would have been better, and if I solve it in half a day, my brain will try to make me think four hours would have been better. Rinse and repeat.
Sometimes my brain will do everything it can to sabotage any feeling of accomplishment I might have. And I’ve had to learn how to say, “No, fuck you, brain… I did this, and I deserve to feel good about it.”
It depends on what you are faking and what the barriers are.
I gave a long example post, but wouldn’t assume that the same thing would work for everyone. Some people have anxiety and no amount of faking it will overcome that level of anxiety for some things.
There are also things that people have other barriers to succes. I don’t believe I will ever learn to be fashionable because it changes constantly and never makes sense to me, and faking it was a spectacular failure. Taking basic fashion here, like I even fail at things like brown belt with brown shoes because they are the wrong browns or materials or something.
So there won’t always be success and it will vary widely based on the person. I know of people who figured out riding a bike on the first try, some in a week, some took a year, and a few that never succeeded despite their best efforts over several years.
When people stop questioning you and start accepting what you are saying within reason.
I’ve been “faking it” (with varying success) for over twenty years. I’ll let you know once it kicks in.
I’ve been faking being nice to people over the phone for like 10 years now. I hate it but it’s the only jobs I can seem to get that will pay above minimum wage . All my bosses say that I sound so pleasent on the phone but I’m always doing my best to get off the call as soon as possible and hate every call . With my current job it’s so boring I can’t even think of something notable that happened in months .
My opinion is that if you can comfortably pay your bills and have a steady job, you’ve “made it” as far as the saying goes. But there’s always more “up,” so the faking it never really stops.
System administrator
It has been 18 years and as of yet no one has mentioned my being a dog , so I guess no cares or has noticed…
I read a metric ton on everything, and yet I know less than Jon Snow.
Mgmt is always asking about things and we just mostly figure it out. And they are very good about supporting us.
But yeah; imposter syndrome is real. I don’t feel like I’m the adult in the room and feeling like it is all fake
Try 35 years
Somehow I’m a “Unix Wizard” because I know how to read log files?
Oh, and now I’m DevOps because I pythoned my way out of wet paper bag.
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.
I just finished up a ~700 line PowerShell script to send input/keep a login session from timing out due to inactivity, and prior to that was a Python script to format LetsEncrypt SSL certs in a way haproxy likes + an accompanying Bash script to make sure those certs are correct, check in the current good haproxy config to a git repo, and then restart it if there are new certs.
The only thing that I know is that I know nothing.
Performing in any capacity is 100% fake it till you make it. People always ask how you can get up and play music or even speak in front of an audience. The secret behind confidence is that it’s all a lie. As long s people believe you have it, then you have it.
First bunch of times, it’s difficult to pretend, but pretty quickly, you’ll forget you ever had to pretend in the first place.
I was listening to comedians talking on a podcast recently where they agreed that confidence was the biggest boon for them. If you’re not confident, the audience can feel it.
That’s essentially what practice is. We’re all pretending to be something we’re not until we become that thing. Anything you can practice, you can do. Keep at it.
My confidence in speaking publicly was entirely the result of fake it till you make it.
As a kid I was reserved and not outgoing. In 4H, one of the things the local group promoted was being able to give presentations about topics, and they gave a lot of help in how to do it and the one thing they always drove home was that while some people are naturally comfortable speaking in front of groups, most people are not and they gave some famous examples that I have since forgotten.
So we had to give presentations with posters to judges who then asked follow up questions, and the entire time we were reminded that acting confident is basically the same thing as being confident to those that are watching and eventually it will suddenly stick kind of like how riding a bike works. After a few years, I went from freezing up to being comfortable in a small group, and after keeping up with it through high school my actual confidence was there by the time adulthood kicked in. In my current job I am regularly volunteered to present because they all see me as good at it, which is true because I faked it until I made it.
Do note that this worked for me because the learning setting I was in was supportive and reinforced the need to just keep trying.
Relationships, sports, and a lot of other non-dangerous settings are also ripe for the idea that just pretending to be confident and comfortable to eventually become comfortable with the settings. It is important to keep in mind that constant learning while faking it is important to actually succeed. Even after a lot of success I am still not comfortable hosting complex social settings or figuring out what the hell is fashionable, so sometimes faking it has not resulted in making it. But at least an attempt was tried.
Things that are not good for fake it till you make it are working with heavy machinery, dangerous chemicals, or anything that has a significant risk of death.
I work in IT as a self-taught developer. I tried so hard to prove myself that I ended up stepping on the toes of my team-mates, who had to basically tell me, “You’re doing a great job, fucking relax.”
Meanwhile we hire 3rd party contractors and new developers who talk and talk about how great they are… and then everything they do is a mess that we have to clean up.
Many successful people are just putting on a show. They’re imposters without imposter syndrome. Confidence is half the battle. You can learn everything else.
I act like a functional human everyday.
Paramedicine/Emergency medicine?
We often have no idea what we are doing. And we can’t have.And there is literally no idea that we ever can.
Imagine this: To study medicine you go to uni full time for 6 years around here. And then you have another 6 to 10 years until you become a specialist in your respective field. Only then, we as a society believe and trust you enough that you can deal with everything life can throw at you and you will work without any consultant, etc. covering your back in some way, including all emergencies, no matter how rare it is. Now, that’s of course only valid for your own field, none would expect a cardiologist to deliver a baby, even less a breach position. In the back of a car in a snowstorm.
Now. Paramedicine and EM? We get everything whenever they are worst off. My last few shift (I only work occasionally these days, more in a management role) we had to deal with life threatening emergencies from 6 different specialities: Vascular (Typ A aneurysm),neuro(Cerebral bleeding),Gyn(acute postpartum hemorrhage leading into cardiac arrest), paediatrics (patient with a syndrome even the ED Paediatrician had to google it), trauma.
Sure. We don’t have to operate on the cerebral bleeding, but these are the easy ones. (And we won’t be sure it is one anyway, no imaging besides the emerging ultrasound for us…)
The first breach delivery I did was the second birth I ever saw - and my colleague with 20 years more experience never saw one that wasn’t his wife before… The first real life-treatening paediatric emergency? A 4 year old traumatic cardiac arrest post high speed collision.
And now,after 20 years in all roles this field can offer,from remote/wilderness work, helicopter, fixed wing, crit care,etc…I can safely say: While the “normal stuff” like heart attacks or strokes do no longer make me feel thrilled - there is always that stuff waiting around the corner you either never saw before or -almost as bad- haven’t seen in a decade. Only to be hit three times in a week by it. (When training to become a paramedic after working as a EMT I did not see a single cardiac arrest for the whole multi -year traing period. After graduation? Five in my first week…)
This makes this profession only viable for people who are good at ignoring this or people who can really fake it well - competence simulation is a key. But no matter how much you fake it,you will never make it fully. Because people REALLY don’t want to see a panicked paramedic. (And in the end it comes down to an old joke of the profession being true: If the patient is in a situation we can’t make sense either it’s not urgent or it will soon be a situation we know very well: Cardiac arrest)
I’ve had a terrible time whenever I tried to fake it. Something goes terribly wrong, or I’m completely at a loss of how to play it off like I know what I’m doing, and I’m super stressed out the entire time.
I’ve had a much better time admitting when I realize I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I have permission to try to figure it out as I go, so then mistakes and failures are expected by everyone involved. Sometimes admitting my ignorance opens up training, or at least advice on where to start on a project.
I’m a locksmith. I’ve been a locksmith for… a little over 4 years.
I’ve been calling myself a locksmith for 10 years. A rich combination of overconfidence, Dunning-Kruger, and bootstrapping myself into competence over time
Yesssss, let me TELL a social network so it can be used against me later 😜🤪
I cheated on my finals if that counts.
So how’s homeless life been treating you?
Fortunately I haven’t lived that life for a few years now.
Sewing. I just figured I could, and did. Not like a tailor but whatever I needed I could make.
Driving a manual shift car. Learned when I was 15 because everyone else was too drunk. Absolutely love driving manual ever since.
And, the one I really don’t understand still - reading. I was 3 years old and told my mom I could read. I couldn’t read, was lying, had memorized a book she used to read to me. But after I “read” that book to her, I felt I could read anything. The newspaper, novels, anything with words I could read it, like a switch flipped. The next book I remember reading is Grendel.
Dancing.
I knew as a teenager I need to learn to dance. Not skillfully, but disinhibitedly.
So I started with moving my head in rhythm to the music. Nothing more.
Eventually it just clicked and started working automatically, and now I love moving my body to music.
I do wish it was more common to realize there is no wrong way to dance (except inadvertently injuring your partner, I guess). It’s your body, wiggle it the way you want
I would argue that you’re dancing wrong if it doesn’t scratch that itch to move to music. I don’t understand how everyone else does it. I just don’t feel it.
Do it without feeling it. The feeling will come later
