
Feeling Like a Fraud on the Job - Oatseller
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/minds-business/feeling-like-a-fraud-on-the-job.html
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argimenes
To paraphrase Groucho Marx: "He may look like a fraud and talk like a fraud
but don't let that fool you. He really is a fraud."

What I took away from that article was that the root of the feelings of
insufficiency, or fraudulence, stem from the individual's impossibly high
standards or negative perfectionism. But to say that someone has 'impossibly
high standards' is another way of saying that they have an inflated self
image. The conflict, or sense of fraudulence, emerges when the gap between
their self image and their actual achievements becomes too glaring to ignore.

So, simply feeling like a fraud doesn't necessarily absolve the person from
actually BEING a fraud. And although it may feel better to justify to
yourself, in an ironic inversion, that only the person who acknowledges their
fraudulence ISN'T a fraud, it doesn't actually solve the problem of impossibly
high standards or negative perfectionism -- let alone the very real
possibility that they ARE fraudulent and allowing their self-doubt to keep
them fraudulent.

~~~
sdrothrock
> But to say that someone has 'impossibly high standards' is another way of
> saying that they have an inflated self image.

I would disagree. They're similar but different; one is internal and external,
the other is internal.

As someone with impossibly high standards, I sometimes find myself holding
other people to those standards and feeling like they're frauds as well. I
know many other people with similar exhibited behaviors.

However, I feel like having an inflated self image would be different; it
would only directly affect the person in question.

~~~
marktangotango
I disagree with your disagreement; who says your or others 'high standard' is
correct ie the one true way? I mean where does this standard come from?
Suppose you were an advocate of TDD, and perfection to you is 100% code
coverage? Guess what, TDD is not a universally accepted standard, there's a
lot of great software written without tests (I use TDD as an example only,
please bear with me). Another example; suppose one holds object oriented
design and analysis and SOLID principals to be the ideal of software
architecture, well there are many advocates of functional programming who
would love to argue the merits of OOP with this person.

So this appeal to 'high standard' is in effect egotistical masturbation in
most all cases, in my opinion.

But perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by high standard? Work hours,
properly formatted commit messages? Code documentation?

~~~
sdrothrock
That's a good point; some "high standards" could simply be mismatches between
personal priorities.

> But perhaps I misunderstand what you mean by high standard? Work hours,
> properly formatted commit messages? Code documentation?

For me, personally, it's thoroughness and attention to detail -- for example,
seeing that someone's cleaned a bathroom but didn't bother picking up the seat
and cleaning the bowl/underside of the seat.

~~~
argimenes
Those are all good points, but when programmers talk about feeling fraudulent
aren't they talking about their level of knowledge and/or competence? I'm not
saying that work ethic, tidiness, etc., aren't standards but I suspect that
when a programmer fears that they're are a fraud they're not so much worried
about the quality of their commit comments as they are, say, the breadth of
their knowledge across the web stack, or their expertise in tuning databases,
or their mastery of design patterns, etc. In other words, intellectual skills
rather than good habits.

I admire the integrity of those workers who own to feeling like a fraud,
especially those who talk openly about it, and I'm not seeing that they are
'objectively' frauds, simply suggesting that something is out of synch for
them to feel fraudulent in the first place. Denying feelings of self-
fraudulence COULD discourage someone from taking actions to become an expert
... or it could have the opposite effect.

~~~
sdrothrock
For me, the (self-diagnosed) root cause of that feeling is an awareness that
there's so much that I don't know.

When I read about insightful things or neat tricks/pitfalls is a different
person from a different background, but it turns into a mess of "wow, all
these people know stuff I didn't know -- and there's _so much more_ I don't
know!"

So even though I do the best I can, there's still a feeling of "Oh, geez, I
bet someone else could do this way better. I'm probably missing so much or
doing this in a fundamentally bad way."

------
hackaflocka
I think only the slightly sociopathic/psychopathic feel completely confident
in making certain kinds of "organizational" decisions.

So, if you feel like an imposter, it's ok, all it implies is that you're not
(at least) slightly sociopathic/psychopathic.

