*SERIOUS* Imposter Syndrome and Critical Moments in One's Career

[JM Aggie08]

Call it being young and stupid, but right out of school I had unbridled confidence in my abilities in the professional workplace. My capacity to learn quickly and pick up new skills, disciplined and objective decision-making -- I would not say I was arrogant but certainly confident in myself.

Fast forward a few years and I've been spending weeks putting together a project proposal. Technical analysis, financial analysis, resourcing -- put a bow on it, and presented to my director. GOLDEN -- approval received, let's get shit rolling...

...until 2-3 days later after some additional testing to ensure my ass was checked, I discovered something that caused the entire effort to unravel. Fortunately, no funding or time had been invested in delivery, but that night I had my first (and only) panic attack over my fuck up. To make matters worse, my NEW manager and the manager above her were so hell-bent on making sweeping improvements to our environment that they kept pushing me to make things work...for 2 months. I finally convinced them that we should cut our losses and abandon the idea entirely, which they finally conceded to. Much later, said manager re-opened to wound and asked me to do a GLOBAL presentation on failing fast...citing my fuck-up as a great example.

Since then, I have serious imposter syndrome at work. I still do great work, get promoted, etc - but holy shit, it's an everyday struggle to convince myself that I'm not a dumb piece of trash unworthy of my job.

How does everyone else cope with this?

 

[crashtech]

Has anything great ever got done by fearing failure too much? There's plenty of good writing out there on the subject. Clearly your peers still recognize your value, so maybe you are overthinking it a bit.

 

[lxskllr]

A member's sig on another forum. It's one of my favorite things ever...

"Confidence is the feeling you sometimes have before you fully understand the situation."

I bet the sun will still come up tomorrow. No point in stressing over shit that doesn't matter.

 

[pcgeek11]

The only people that don't fuck up are the ones that don't do anything at all.

 

[nakedfrog]

I think it's natural to feel this way about your mistake, and time & distance will probably help you to shift to feeling better that you found the problem before much had been devoted in the way of resources. Remember the Dunning-Kruger effect has broader implications than it's typically used for, when you're younger and less experienced, it's easier to feel more confident in your abilities because you aren't really fully equipped with the ability to fully assess them yet. Now you are maybe more at the middle part of the curve, where you're better able to see where you stand, and are viewing yourself more harshly than is really called for. One thing that helped me was looking around at other people and using them are more of a metric to how I'm doing versus my own internal standards. Like others have said, yeah, we all fuck up sometimes. Identifying the fuck-up and owning it is kind of the best case scenario when it does happen.

 

[mindless1]

Everyone makes mistakes but only bosses get to delegate the fuckup down the food chain.

In context this means:

To make matters worse, my NEW manager and the manager above her were so hell-bent on making sweeping improvements to our environment that they kept pushing me to make things work...for 2 months. I finally convinced them that we should cut our losses and abandon the idea entirely, which they finally conceded to. Much later, said manager re-opened to wound and asked me to do a GLOBAL presentation on failing fast...citing my fuck-up as a great example.

... that when you do the presentation, you aren't allowed to make them look obtuse for trying to keep it going for months after you already stated it wasn't going to work.

it's an everyday struggle to convince myself that I'm not a dumb piece of trash unworthy of my job.

Then you learned something, that the more important your decisions become, the more you need to double check everything.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just remember, there are people making 4x your salary working for the government who are completely incompetent and yet keep getting raises and bonuses and have made bigger screw ups of larger magnitude than you could ever imagine. Happens all the time and it's usually millions of dollars down the drain.

At least you can own up to a mistake and caught it before it went into production. I would present the proposal anyway, then say that you last minute made a realization that something was overlooked and needs to be looked at further. This is way better than just hiding the problem and letting the project go forward.

 

[BoomerD]

If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance...baffle them with your bullshit.

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

That's some nerve your manager making you go on a corporate apology tour. I'd make it clear you sounded alarms early on.

 

[Exterous]

Much later, said manager re-opened to wound and asked me to do a GLOBAL presentation on failing fast...citing my fuck-up as a great example.

That's some nerve your manager making you go on a corporate apology tour. I'd make it clear you sounded alarms early on.

Maybe - maybe not depending on the reasoning behind the request. Calling it 'failing fast' makes me think this might be a way to build a culture around it being ok to fail within certain guardrails. I mean its a specific Agile term. I can tell my team all the time that I know they'll try something out and it won't work or 'fail' but thats ok - even if we've spent a lot of time on it. They rarely believe me until they actually have a failed effort and see how I handle it. As for specifically choosing JM for that? Well that could be a couple of reasons. They do think this is a good example and have the confidence in him to do a good presentation. Or they don't fully realize the impact of asking him to do this. Or it actually is an apology tour. But that last one doesn't seem to line up well with failing fast. I mean it can but I'd place lower odds on it with the information at hand.

 

[Exterous]

Personally I've found confidence comes with familiarity of role. The more the role changes the more challenging maintaining confidence can be. I tend to be pretty hard on myself but - truthfully - I look at comparisons of peers for where I should be. If I am doing as well or better than they are with less time in the position that gives me a feeling of confidence. I'm the youngest in my peer group by quite a bit but get a lot more accomplished and, therefore paid more so that certainly helps. I still do compare myself to a senior executive and wish I had more of those skills but there is a 12 year gap in experience there that only time can bridge.

It can also be easy to lose sight of how you've grown so it can help to think back several years to and compare where you are now. Think about what challenges you had years ago. Are those easier now? Maybe they aren't even difficult to deal with anymore so you've forgotten they were a problem to start with. As we grow we get new challenges all the time so it can be hard to see that progress but when I think back I laugh or grown at how I did or handled something compared to how I would handle it now.

And - for me - there are still some that really sting. Several years back I stepped into a viper pit meeting and got roasted for something that appeared easy on the surface. No help from any corner and no warning of what I was getting into. That still comes to mind every once and a while and its never a pleasant memory. But I learned from it. I am more aware of what meetings to not take for granted and have handling strategies for when a meeting tries to derail in case I misjudged a situation. So hopefully yours fades like mine did although it may not go away entirely. Reflect and see what you can learn from it. Sure the bosses wanted to go ahead anyway but was there a way you could frame it in their language that might have lead to a different approach? Maybe maybe not but I use this example with people in the IT world: The IT world cares about the nines of availability. Your customers care that its not down during a critical time. 99.999% uptime means jack shit if it goes down during tax time\peak season\The Big Conference etc. You'll get more attention to your proposal if you can show how you've engineered redundancy or scaling to handle the critical times (and specifically name those critical times) than talking about the nines of availability it has. And doing your kudos of "We had 100% uptime during X, Y and Z critical business operation cycles" is more meaningful to them. With new bosses, you might not have been able to avoid the situation because there is a lot to learn about how a new boss operates and the new boss is learning too but thinking about it could help the next time. And even if 99% of the blame is one someone else I can still usually find 1% that I could have done differently to avoid some to all of the situation. It might not be my fault but that awareness at least gives me more opportunities for control the next go 'round

It sounds like you might have an opportunity for some nice recognition and help other people if they encounter a similar situation. Hopefully this is stemming from them having confidence in you and\or wanting to push you some to grow. You could even start out with how you weren't quite sure what to make out of being asked to highlight what you see as a failure but, after you thought about it some, you see that this aligns\plays into this initiative\vision\culture. Being somewhat open about your emotional challenges dealing with it could be a big win to others who might have suffered in silence or not had the amazing ATOT to turn to. Hell even if it is an apology tour you can turn it into something more

 

[Mr.IncrediblyBored]

Maybe - maybe not depending on the reasoning behind the request. Calling it 'failing fast' makes me think this might be a way to build a culture around it being ok to fail within certain guardrails. I mean its a specific Agile term. I can tell my team all the time that I know they'll try something out and it won't work or 'fail' but thats ok - even if we've spent a lot of time on it. They rarely believe me until they actually have a failed effort and see how I handle it. As for specifically choosing JM for that? Well that could be a couple of reasons. They do think this is a good example and have the confidence in him to do a good presentation. Or they don't fully realize the impact of asking him to do this. Or it actually is an apology tour. But that last one doesn't seem to line up well with failing fast. I mean it can but I'd place lower odds on it with the information at hand.

You may very well be right and it's more about the learning experience than managers distancing themselves from the situation. But for t it to be a fair accounting then it needs to paint a full picture.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Modern aircraft exist in the way they do because we made the DC Comet.

Failure sucks, but it's also the best teacher. History is full of lessons learned (and also plenty of examples of failing to take heed of said lessons learned)

 

[mindless1]

^ Ya know, I've seen that stated more than a few times... "failure is the best teacher", but I don't know if I really agree with that.

Success is the best teacher, if you find something that works and stick with it then you prosper. There are plenty of people who fail at nearly everything they do, and are just idiots, not geniuses who chose to be homeless or in prison and then after years of mistakes, die so very (not) wise from their mistakes with nothing to show for it but a lower standard of living if not suffering too.

Failure is a reality check, potentially a growth moment, but the best teacher is the one that tells you not to bite off more than you can chew, so you don't fail, don't have to backtrack and deal with the aftermath, and have more time/money/focus on expanding your abilities. A failure is more like a do-over where your finite time on this earth, was spent without gain. This is in context of a corp environment, not life in general.

The real problem is when a hierarchy gets involved and people above you in a company, have their positions more due to social skills/manipulation than ability, and are eager for their underlings to make them look good, but don't want to take the same responsibility when their underlings make them look bad.

You can document everything and it may help within the same company, but if you're handed your hat... not so much on a resume.

Long story short, history is more about people benefiting from the failures of others, not so much the person failing, benefiting from it. Some have historically tried and tried again after their failures and we can attribute their success to persistence, but that's not better than trying fewer times, failing fewer times before success.

 

[mindless1]

I still do great work, get promoted, etc - but holy shit, it's an everyday struggle to convince myself that I'm not a dumb piece of trash unworthy of my job.

How does everyone else cope with this?

I forgot to mention, this is a sign that your bosses are f-tards and you should build a resume and use it to look elsewhere for employment.

You should not have been put in this position, and certainly not be living with their attitude about it after the fact of their screwup. Granted, we have very limited, subjective info on what happened.

If your account is nearly objective, then this is not some teaching moment like they pretend, rather this is their being too arrogant to realize it looks bad on them if all the facts were revealed.

It should not be an "everyday struggle". Challenge, maybe, challenging jobs can be fulfiling but you are dealing with biased people who are giving you the short end of the straw, trying to benefit themselves at your expense.

Putting resumes out there doesn't mean you have to take the other job...

 

[JM Aggie08]

That's some nerve your manager making you go on a corporate apology tour. I'd make it clear you sounded alarms early on.

I think the intent was to demonstrate being bold and throwing in the towel at an early sign of failure, rather than dragging on to no end.

I'm sure someone got something out of it. For me, I just got to relive the bullshit 3 times across 3 continents lmao.

 

[crashtech]

I think the intent was to demonstrate being bold and throwing in the towel at an early sign of failure, rather than dragging on to no end.

I'm sure someone got something out of it. For me, I just got to relive the bullshit 3 times across 3 continents lmao.

Oh, so you are already on "tour," so to speak? I was hoping this had not yet occurred.

 

[Dr. Detroit]

I too am a dumb piece of shit yet manage a team of people and report directly to a C-Level & routinely present to a subset of the Board of Directors at a public company.

I clearly have fooled them. I'm not worthy, I have turned into Costanza, "Its not a lie if you believe it".

I hate people, I attempt to become an extroverted jackass to get along and BS my way through my meetings. I believe nothing I say but these fuckers are even stupider than I am as they keep believing in what I say.

The trick is - people are even dumber than I am. I've just realized than when you are working for the brightest 1%, you just need to be smarter than the rest of their direct reports.

I pray this will be my last job, my C-Lvl boss best not fuckin leave as then I will have to fool the next jackass.

 

[Braznor]

I too am a dumb piece of shit yet manage a team of people and report directly to a C-Level & routinely present to a subset of the Board of Directors at a public company.

I clearly have fooled them. I'm not worthy, I have turned into Costanza, "Its not a lie if you believe it".

I hate people, I attempt to become an extroverted jackass to get along and BS my way through my meetings. I believe nothing I say but these fuckers are even stupider than I am as they keep believing in what I say.

The trick is - people are even dumber than I am. I've just realized than when you are working for the brightest 1%, you just need to be smarter than the rest of their direct reports.

I pray this will be my last job, my C-Lvl boss best not fuckin leave as then I will have to fool the next jackass.

HA HA HA

 

[dank69]

HA HA HA

Are you his boss?

 

[Exterous]

^ Ya know, I've seen that stated more than a few times... "failure is the best teacher", but I don't know if I really agree with that.

Success is the best teacher, if you find something that works and stick with it then you prosper. There are plenty of people who fail at nearly everything they do, and are just idiots, not geniuses who chose to be homeless or in prison and then after years of mistakes, die so very (not) wise from their mistakes with nothing to show for it but a lower standard of living if not suffering too.

Failure is a reality check, potentially a growth moment, but the best teacher is the one that tells you not to bite off more than you can chew, so you don't fail, don't have to backtrack and deal with the aftermath, and have more time/money/focus on expanding your abilities. A failure is more like a do-over where your finite time on this earth, was spent without gain. This is in context of a corp environment, not life in general.

This won't be true for everyone. There are people who won't learn important messages if something is a success. Their view is that it was a success so how much could you learn from it? The failure sticks out though and there is more of a drive to avoid the emotional response to that - or at least avoid the added time and effort they have to put into meetings\resolutions\etc because it failed

I've just realized than when you are working for the brightest 1%, you just need to be smarter than the rest of their direct reports.

Ha - I like that way of thinking

 

[JM Aggie08]

Oh, so you are already on "tour," so to speak? I was hoping this had not yet occurred.

This was 6 years ago, but still haunts me and drives my imposter syndrome.

I understand her intent -- it was a stagnant organization filled with soft-penis people who were fine with leaving things the way they'd always been. I am guessing it was "Look...take risks, and if you fail that's fine -- you can still do well and it won't be held against you." It just happened to be something that I took very hard and wanted to bury.

 

[brianmanahan]

ah yes the panic attacks

never been sure on what to do about those except wait them out

 

[crashtech]

This was 6 years ago, but still haunts me and drives my imposter syndrome.

I understand her intent -- it was a stagnant organization filled with soft-penis people who were fine with leaving things the way they'd always been. I am guessing it was "Look...take risks, and if you fail that's fine -- you can still do well and it won't be held against you." It just happened to be something that I took very hard and wanted to bury.

Six years is a while. I presume you've completed some successful projects since then? But some things just tend to stick with us and become part of who we are. It's a scar to remind you to be more careful, like losing the tip of a finger to a table saw. Really it makes you *less* of an imposter, you've been through the shit and kept going, which makes you the real deal.

 

[JM Aggie08]

Six years is a while. I presume you've completed some successful projects since then? But some things just tend to stick with us and become part of who we are. It's a scar to remind you to be more careful, like losing the tip of a finger to a table saw. Really it makes you *less* of an imposter, you've been through the shit and kept going, which makes you the real deal.

Oh absolutely. I'm just exceedingly hard on myself and refuse to let things go Lol.