Is this imposter syndrome?
Posted by paddockson@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 39 comments
I’m a 32M living in the South East UK with 8 years of experience as a full-stack developer. I’m very underpaid for my current position, so over the past month I’ve slowly started speaking to recruiters and dipping my toe into the market.
I’ve recently been put forward for a senior position that literally doubles my salary, and they seem very keen to speak with me. When I looked through the spec, I realised I matched a lot of the skills they were asking for, but I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m not worth that kind of money.
I ended up looking through the team on LinkedIn, and some of them are ex-Microsoft developers. I come from much more humble beginnings, so part of me wonders how I’d hold up against people like that.
Is this a common feeling among developers at this stage in their careers?
hitanthrope@reddit
Something I absolutely want to reassure you is absolutely don't look at, "ex Microsoft developers" as meaning anything at all. I've interviewed hundreds of engineers with all kinds of backgrounds an I can absolutely confirm that you can tell *nothing* about their skills based on them having a "name" company on their resume.
All of this "ex-google, ex-facebook, ex-meta, ex-apple" shit that people put on their linkedin profile make me roll my eyes so fast they might catch fire.
It is not your job here really to decide if you are "good enough" or "worth the salary". Your job is just to present yourself to this prospective employer in the best possible way and let them decide these things.
Imposter syndrome is incredibly common, but it's a good sign. You are self-aware. After 8 years in the game, you should already have noticed how many people are not.
Twirrim@reddit
There's some folk I know I worked with at Amazon that I would barely trust to write a hello world serving web app. Most were rock solid, but also you very quickly get specialised in the Amazon way of doing things, which isn't bad, but like any big company is very distinct to itself. Any skills with Apollo, Brazil etc. don't really transfer, let alone the different approach to technology (they're vehemently opposed to relational databases there, at least in any synchronous path)
hooahest@reddit
Any link about Amazon hating relational dbs? sounds interesting
Twirrim@reddit
Not that I'm aware of. Practices could have changed since I was there a decade ago, but I kind of doubt it on this particular front.
It was borne out of lots of painful experiences over the years on both retail and aws side, but particularly on the retail side. There have been a number of incidents where Amazon retail site had gone down over the years because a relational database couldn't scale when they needed it to, for various reasons. On top of that has been the pain of things like schema migrations when dealing with databases on their scale.
The way they pitch it probably isn't too inaccurate: once your database scales to a certain size, you have to spend an inordinate amount of time just managing it. Things like sharding, database query optimisation etc. really requiring detailed knowledge of the application, rather than being fully automatic.
This was the impetus behind dynamodb, which was heavily used by AWS when I was there. You trade off needing to think about how you handle some of the relationship aspects within your application, but (in theory) gain a heavily scaling metadata layer.
Once dynamodb had proven itself, no service was allowed to have a relational database in the synchronous path (i.e. no customer facing API call should involve one in handling the request)
Not long before I left, I was attending one of the weekly AWS ops meetings. A new product had just launched, and tradition was they had to present their metrics dashboard during their first meeting. Their senior director got up to speak "Before we look at the dashboard, I must apologize to Charlie [Bell, then head of AWS ops] first. I'm going to use a trigger word. There's a relational database in the synchronous path. In my defense I took over this team a few months ago and it was too late to rectify it before launch, it's my biggest priority for the year". Cue one of Charlie's rants against relational databases, and him demanding senior architects figure out how the hell it was 2016 and we were still launching services like this (there was something like 4 specific subjects that were guaranteed triggers for him)
hooahest@reddit
I haven't had the experience of working on Amazon's scale, but it sounds miserable to me to have so little trust from the organization as to mandate such a thing.
The story of the leadership actively admonishing the team that delivered a working product instead of celebrating it is a nightmare story, would instantly make me miserable if I had that happen to me
Twirrim@reddit
It's not a lack of trust from leadership. No one came from on high and took the toys away. At the time, Amazon was heavily data driven, with a strong engineering discipline. Senior engineers critically looked at the situation.
Using relational databases was a continuing source of pain, source of outages. Everything from query plans flipping (suddenly your milliseconds query becomes seconds when the DB makes an incorrect decision from the heuristics it has, about the most efficient way to query things), to poorly optimised queries, bad index choices, and even to schema migrations locking tables for a long period of time. A lot of the pain points only occur at the worst possible times, when you can least afford to be down (like Black Friday).
The engineers looked at ways these could be mitigated, and considered all sorts of different approaches. The outcome they settled on, and got leadership buy in on, was to avoid relational databases synchronously.
Experiments with things closer to key/value style approaches scaled really well, and made every cost of action visible to engineers. When you have to write the nested for loops yourself it's really obvious what you're doing, vs some single statement SQL query that may be resulting in the same effect just far away from your code.
The ban isn't total, just not in the synchronous path for API calls. There were services that used relational databases, run on top of RDB, for some async operations (not many, though, a lot of those workloads don't involve particularly relational data, more like an enhanced queue). There was heavy use of relational databases for business intelligence / analytics purposes too. They just keep it indirect so that uptime wasn't dependent on some database.
RandomPantsAppear@reddit
A lot of ex Microsoft, ex Google, etc have never owned a feature or a product end to end, which is a huge deal in a lot of companies.
More than that, things move extremely slowly in companies like that. A lot of times years of experience can mean they moved a very small number of small features.
It’s not everyone, but the pedigree is not so important.
OrganicToes@reddit
I have some people on LinkedIn who are like 1yr Amazon, 1yr meta, 1yr google. And I gotta wonder, if they are just cracked or just cracked at interviewing and what do they deliver in short timespans.
RandomPantsAppear@reddit
Inside of the orgs, it’s harder to move up internally, than it is to get hired at another one into a higher role.
So they jump between the different FAANG, interviewing for progressively higher roles.
The biggest worry in FAANG is that you can’t cut it for their specific way of working, so once you have that experience showing you can, the hiring process is a lot easier.
Coxian42069@reddit
Completely agree. It's the next step-up from people listing their university everywhere - have you done anything since doing well in school and passing some entrance interviews when you were 18?
Conscious_Analysis98@reddit
Half the week I think it wont be long until I'm back stacking shelves, the other half I genuinely think im the best software developer ive ever met. Just go with it
circalight@reddit
The only people who don't get imposter syndrome are idiots or psychos.
w3woody@reddit
It is imposter syndrome, it's extremely common, and I've met ex-Microsoft developers who cannot code their way out of a wet paper bag.
rakan_builds@reddit
Perfectly normal to feel that way. We all get that feeling. I've been working for a lot longer and constantly have that feeling of doubt creep up on me. I shut that voice in my head up, and I take the risk. I'm yet to find that voice being correct... and even if one day it's true, at least I tried. That's the way I look at it. Be bold, be confident, and trust your abilities.
Twirrim@reddit
I've been working for over 20 years now in the industry, and I still find myself wrestling with imposter syndrome, and questioning if I'm being overpaid, underpaid, or quite what.
Here's how I frame it in my mind: If someone wants to pay me this much, to do what I do, I'm not going to stop them.
ericmutta@reddit
Questioning everything include questioning self is the hallmark of all good engineers, IMO. Dangerous things happen when you go from am I great? to I am great. The question encourages progress, the statement ends it.
Cultural_Wheel_6936@reddit
You got this man, you just gotta give yourself a chance. Don’t cut yourself short.
ppepperrpott@reddit
Look it the other way. That panel of that calibre see something in you. If you hold them in esteem, make them right and meet them
PressureHumble3604@reddit
A lot of major companies have not so great developers.
The gap between the best senior and the worst one that still meets expectations can be huge.
Remember that some people are really good at looking smarter than they are or they look smart because they know the domain very well.
As a new joiner maybe with less experience you will have a lot to learn and at
The same time you may offer them something to learn as well.
You will soon discover that incompetence can go very high and that this career requires a wide variety of skills and no one or very few people have all of them
cmgg@reddit
> ex-Microsoft developers, how I'd hold up against people like that
Have you used Microsoft software recently? Bar isn’t that high
Jokes aside, you’ll do great. Look at this as an opportunity to learn and grow, besides you’re not a newbie, you got 8 years of experience already.
xpingu69@reddit
Worry about it if you actually get an offer
SomeRandomCSGuy@reddit
Imposter syndrome almost never goes away and actually gets worse the more you grow. It's all about navigating it and positioning yourself as an authority, and others will start respecting you, no matter if they are ex-FAANG or not 😁
Any_Sense_2263@reddit
It's how skilled people are pushed out of the tech industry. They doubt themselves and let others decide their fate.
What matters are your skills and confidence. You can bring a unique knowledge and experience. The ex-something people quite often have ootdated knowkedge (my experience with ex-google and ex-nokia) and people from not recognized companies can have much fresher experience.
What you should worry about is if you have the desired experience and knowledge or not. If you not, then start to learn. Doubting yourself has no positive impact.
YahenP@reddit
Imposter syndrome is a wonderful thing. It's the very thing that keeps you from being the smartest guy in the room. And in fact, it's our best friend in our challenging careers. Don't be afraid of this feeling. This advice comes from an imposter who has successfully pretended to be a software engineer for almost 40 years.
As for "former Microsoft engineers," you have a great way to exchange your technical knowledge for their knowledge of how to survive in a corporate environment. So to speak, your hard skills in exchange for their soft skills. From personal experience, I can say that engineers from large enterprise companies don't typically have the highest professional skills, but they are unrivaled masters of personal interaction and hierarchical relationships. And as experience shows, this becomes significantly more important over time.
y2cwr2005@reddit
I'm a dev in the UK as well and have just gone through a similar step up. I thought it was too good to be true and something that I must be missing something, surely I don't have all the skills needed. In actuality I've come into the role and found that my knowledge stacks up better then most of the team that was already in the company and am even pushing towards a lead role. So all this to say, don't let imposter syndrome talk you out of what can be a brilliant opportunity and a massive bump in your income! Go for it, if theirs any skills your missing, you can learn.
lordnacho666@reddit
I have one of those jobs, so let me help you with that feeling. My second monthly pay just arrived today. After tax, it's still five figures. More is coming at the end of the year.
I'm buying a car and a kitchen in the same month.
The job itself is no different to what I was doing before, if anything it is less technically demanding. Yes, they grill you at the interview, but the work is, like at all such jobs, not anything near as demanding as the interview suggests.
You are joining a shop that making a lot of money and rewards its staff, why shouldn't you have a piece? Take the chance bro.
StickyDeltaStrike@reddit
Just take the damn job. You will then realise how much underpaid you were.
throwaway_0x90@reddit
Hmmmm,
...but also....
What happened to that feeling of being underpaid?
rocketbunny77@reddit
Yes
demosthenesss@reddit
yes, it likely is. I've been part of a couple prestigious companies and the first time I joined one I figured I'd get found out as a fraud immediately and fired.
I have so far never been fired.
While I suppose there's always a chance it happens but I've got some years now without having been fired so for me it was imposter syndrome clearly.
thecrius@reddit
At your years of experience I'd say it's natural to feel imposter syndrome.
At some point you'll realise that 75% of the professionals simply pretend and figure shit out when they need it. Results may varies.
Another 20% are actually good at their job but have also accepted that they cannot know everything so they are good because they know the fundamentals to create good solutions, they know that the not knowing phase is part of the process of finding a solution.
Then there is that 5% that just carry over the entire innovation in the field. Those are rare beasts and usually do what they do despite their job, not thanks to it.
Here is the kicker: No matter which percentage you are, you are always underpaid. No company will even hire someone if they do not generate at least x5 their cost.
It's been over 10 years now that every company is a tech company. Without our knowledge and skillset, the current modern world would stop working in a matter of weeks. Never doubt your worth.
montdidier@reddit
I am not a fan of this metaphorical use of the term imposter syndrome. It was intended to have clinical meaning. It’s overused and there are simpler, less dramatic ways to describe this experience that practically everyone will feel at some point.
It’s just a pegging problem and/or a confidence and self esteem issue.
You have mentally pegged yourself to the value you are currently getting paid. The reality is that value is sometimes nebulous. The market has changed, you have gained experience and a business has needs. Since it’s a new role, the salary being offered is likely more contemporary and in touch with your current market worth.
The only connection you have to this worth is do you provide something someone is willing to pay an amount for and an interview is just a rough and assessment of your match.
SansSariph@reddit
I'd like to offer a reframe - independent of what "ex-Microsoft" actually means, let's assume for a minute that it's an indication of expertise or experience that you find intimidating.
The reframe is - what an excellent opportunity for you! You match the necessary skills, it's a pay bump, and your network will grow to include potential mentors that you feel you could learn from. That sounds excellent and exciting, like you have something to offer the company and the team has something to offer you (learning and growth) beyond just a paycheck.
You always want to be on a team with people who know more than you about something.
user345456@reddit
I'm also in SE UK, and around 5 years ago I went through a similar thing - was at my first place way too long, underpaid. Finally I applied for a senior role at another place, and in the online application I had to enter my desired salary. The salary range was listed, and even the bottom of it was substantially more than I was making.
I asked for the bottom of the range, because how could I possibly be "worth" that much money? Especially considering I was doing basically the same thing already for much less, and that was all I knew, and I assumed it was normal. Surely if they are paying a lot more they must want some genius! I'm just a lowly self-taught developer with no formal education.
In the end I was offered over the top of the range, and joined. And found that most people here are just smart, regular people who are similar to my ex-colleagues who earn probably half as much. I realised that some companies pay less and some pay more for the same work/role/expertise, because the impact of your work is worth more to some companies than to others.
Tiny_Ad_7720@reddit
When I write a job spec I put everything I need plus quite a few "nice to have but not necessary". So if you are matching a lot of what they need AND the nice to haves that is why they are keen.
I still think I'm not worth it after 25 years, but I guess the people paying me differ.
greenhouse421@reddit
I personally always felt somewhat not "special". So yes. But also tend to assume neither do others i.e. I'd tend not to be impressed/intimidated by the "ex MS" thing. At a similar age I was essentially head hunted into a position - which was a bit of a shock to me - I didn't see myself as especially worth picking.
Some of my friends from university work at MS. Some have previously and have left. Some people I've hired and worked with have gone on to work for MS. Some people have done vastly more interesting work than the MS people at places it's unlikely will register, some... What do they all have in common? They all have their own skills and talents that made them attractive to employers (MS or otherwise). Apparently you do too. Also remember people can benefit from the opportunities they are given - so can you.
Necessary-Focus-9700@reddit
Imposter syndrome depends often on where you are at and your own psychology.
As 8 years you know enough to move. I suggest you do because it gets very very painful when you are the experienced senior dealing with a more junior managers.
You can also feel imposter syndrome when you get much older with a large age gap.
(no offence to microsoft and their devs) but microsoft is no google. They can be totally meh.
TNBH24@reddit
Just to cheer you up: last year I switched from a small (~100 people) software house to one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the EU. I was trying to get a senior-level position there, but because I lacked experience with large-scale projects, they offered me a mid-level engineer role instead. I stayed humble, and my goal was to gain as much knowledge and experience as possible. It quickly turned out that I’m the most skilled and responsible developer on my team. So keep smiling and keep fighting for a better day :)
Gooeyy@reddit
Yes, it's common. Do your best and learn every day; you'll gain confidence in time.