
Stanford Female CS Student: I Fight Impostor Syndrome - tarahmarie
http://ladycoders.com/2013/02/25/stanford-female-cs-student-i-fight-impostor-syndrome/
======
h2s
This has absolutely nothing to do with anybody's X or Y chromosomes,
genitalia, or gender identity. It's part of growing up and people of all
university majors, professions, genders, shapes, colours and sizes experience
it.

~~~
pessimizer
It does. Women and minorities are primed to think that they suck anyway - and
tech is a place where most of the ancient masters are white men. It takes a
bit longer to learn to think of yourself as like those people, rather than a
bargain replacement for them.

Everybody can feel like an impostor when objectively competent; it could have
been your parents or your older brother who primed you to think that any
success you have comes from faking it, but that's not the same as saying that
sex or race has "absolutely nothing" to do with it.

~~~
smsm42
Impostor syndrom happens not because somebody was "primed", but because one
knows one's own limits of competency and internal doubts better than anyone,
but of course in others such things are not noticeable, so comparing oneself
to others causes the person to self-doubt since everybody seems to be lacking
internal struggles, deficiencies and doubts that are so clearly obvious to
self.

Of course, various "positive discrimination" programs won't help this too,
since once one belongs to a group which such a program targets, one has yet
another - in this case, externally validated - cause to doubt if one's
achievements are of one's own merit or were just bestowed by somebody else due
to the fact of belonging to the targeted identity group. In this case, if the
identity group is gender- or race-specific, of course this component is very
prominent.

~~~
cantankerous
Yes! I find myself dealing with this issue really frequently. I have to remind
myself that, while I can't see it, everybody's got their own internal crap
they're working through and I just can't see it...so I need to stop comparing
my internal bs to external achievements of others.

~~~
nooneelse
Absolutely. When I also derived that commonly known idea for myself (seems the
only way to have a hope of internalizing it and having it stick), I tried to
think of a pithy way to say it, so I would have a better chance of remembering
it when in the moment. The version that won by being remembered the most,
"They didn't take pictures of Lincoln's messy closets."

------
stuff4ben
I don't think this is limited to women. I suffer from this "syndrome" too. I
went to work at one startup several years ago (geez almost a decade now) where
I was surrounded by the most brilliant developers I had ever encountered.
Definitely my experience wasn't up to par, but they hired me anyways. To
combat the imposter syndrome, I worked my tail off learning all I could about
their architecture and filling in my programming gaps. I'd like to say the
imposter feeling goes away, but even today I get twangs of it when confronted
by other brilliant developers (male and female BTW).

~~~
fennecfoxen
Impostor syndrome as a new computer-science/engineering student is a sign that
you have self-introspection and successfully recognize your limitations. It
will be cured when you get a Real Job [tm] one day and realize that _most_
programmers are as dumb as you are (or worse ;)

~~~
epochwolf
Worse. Definitely worse. ;)

~~~
S4M
Yep, the worst douches I ever met across programmers are the one who think
they are really good, while producing some really really crappy code.

------
zeidrich
I think that it's probably easier for women to feel this way. More
specifically, I think it's probably easier for men to shed these feelings. As
a guy, there are a lot of social opportunities as a CS student; from clubs to
just friends. In my classes the ratio of women to men were something like 1 to
30, so I can imagine when a woman's hanging out with her girl friends, they're
probably not CS majors. And when a woman is involved in a CS club, she's
probably one of the only women, and feels a bit like an outsider anyways.

I think that sort of feeling is helped along when you are recognized by your
peers. If you feel like you are "Just a person learning to code" but you think
your friend is an awesome programmer, and one day you're working on a project
together, and you realize that actually, you write better code faster than he
does, or he compliments you, or you solve a problem he has been stuck on;
eventually you start to realize the people you thought were pros are really
not any different than you.

But if you never get that feedback, or if when you do get that feedback you
feel like you are an exception to the group, it's harder to shed that yoke. If
you go to girl friends, who have no experience with CS and they tell you "wow,
you're really smart, I could never program." that's pretty meaningless. If
you're in a club where you're the only girl in a group of guys, and a guy says
"You did a really great job" you mentally affix "... for a girl" to the end,
or you wonder about his sincerity.

As more women take CS, and as more communities like the blog above develop, I
think there will be more opportunities for women to find that confidence.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>I think that it's probably easier for women to feel this way. More
specifically, I think it's probably easier for men to shed these feelings. As
a guy, there are a lot of social opportunities as a CS student; from clubs to
just friends.

More importantly, in male-dominated fields men receive praise and validation
much more easily than women do, which makes it easier for them to get over
their impostor syndrome. For women the situation is quite different. I work
for a private software company and our owner and CEO is female. She once
explained it like this: women in tech are not taken seriously until _after_
they have become successful.

------
danso
I'll skip the gender issues in this discussion, not because they aren't
central, just because I only have so much time in the day :)

I'm not sure I agree with the OP on this: > _So to all the girls learning how
to code, and not sure where you stand: screw it, and just call yourself a
developer already._

Replace "girls" with "people" for now (again, I'm not saying gender is
irrelevant, I'm just focusing on a tangent for now)...I know there is
virtually no concept of "licensing" for the fields of "developer" or "hacker"
in the way lawyers and doctors have it (i.e. you can't call yourself a lawyer
just because you're reading case law for fun)...and that's a _good_ thing. But
there's something in me that wants to say, "Well, you have to have built
something, and watched it either succeed or fail". It doesn't have to be
something big. It just has to be something you invested your time in and that
you put out there because you thought the world might be interested...at that
point, even with a small project, you know what it's like to "ship" and be
invested.

To me, that's the difference between learning to code and calling yourself a
developer.

If I were to try learning guitar, does that make me a musician? If I read the
works of George Carlin and think of one-liners of my own during the day, does
that make me a comedian? I would argue 'no'. But once you practice and refined
yourself to the point that you book a gig, or even do an open mic, then the
labels of "musician" and "comedian" seem more applicable.

\---

OK, now for me to be really catty: Why does any modern blog (this is not the
OP's fault, obviously), in this day and age, think it acceptable to use 13px
as the body font for articles? Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

~~~
tanglisha
I'm one of the owners of this blog, and genuinely interested in your input on
the font size. I don't have great vision, and tend to browse everything at
110-120%, depending on the site. Is your complaint the specific pixel size, or
do you think we should have used a different measurement?

As for the developer argument, the problem is that there is no hard line. How
big of a project must one complete before they're a developer? You said even a
small one, but Hello World is a small "project" and certainly isn't enough.

I completely agree that there is a difference between learning to code and
calling yourself a developer. One problem here is that the industry uses
developer, coder, and programmer interchangeably, although programmer seems to
be currently falling out of favor. (I was once at a party where someone
thought that I meant I was a "party programmer" or something.) Obviously they
don't mean the same thing, but it's kind of like arguing over the difference
between a geek and a nerd at this point.

~~~
danso
Thanks for replying...the 13px size is the main issue...i don't have great
vision but I don't think any recent design guide would argue at 13 px is
suitable in today's design standards.

One other metric is letters per line...guidelines recommend roughly 70 to 80
characters, because as lines get wider, it's harder to track which line you
were on when your eyes go from the end to the beginning of the next line. It
looks like your site is at around 100 characters despite it not having an
extremely wide article body size.

Anyway, just my rant...this post on typography I've found to be useful:
<http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/typographic-choices/>

As for what kind of project makes a developer, well, that's definitely open
for discussion. I have no idea, but was just looking for a litmus test beyond
just learning or being interested in code.

~~~
tanglisha
Thanks for your input. I have access to a typography nerd and will ask for a
recommendation :)

------
RandallBrown
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook gave a talk about this at the 2011 Grace
Hopper conference. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVCSrm65kg>

In my experience, lots of girls in CS feel this way. I convinced my ex
girlfriend to major in computer science. She didn't think she could do it
because she had never programmed or anything before college. I told her that
it didn't matter, and that she _had_ in fact programmed before. She used to
love making myspace layouts.

As she neared graduation, she was constantly telling me how she felt like she
couldn't do it. That she was faking her way through all of her classes and
that if anyone actually hired her she would be a miserable failure. Honestly,
a lot of that feeling was probably my fault. I was a few years older and
already out of college. The amount of help I gave her on assignments would
probably be considered cheating at most universities. I always tried to make
sure she understood what was happening though. So she really felt like a
fraud.

She had an internship writing code though, and even got a few raises while she
was working there. I knew her coworkers and they never even hinted that she
didn't know what she was doing. I just tried to keep encouraging her and
telling her she knew what she was doing (even though I had doubts)

So what happened? She's a developer at Amazon now. As far as I know, she's
doing quite well.

~~~
elisehein
That's so cool for your friend :) I hope you've taken some of the credit,
encouragement is such a huge part of success.

I'm a girl doing a CS degree and also often think that the amount of help I
get from my boyfriend (who has graduated by now) borders on cheating which
really makes me feel miserable from time to time, and constantly having
someone next to you who you know can complete any task you have with so much
less effort doesn't help a lot either.

Other times, however, I acknowledge that as long as he isn't plainly handing
the solutions over to me (which he never does) but just kind of acts as my
rubber duck, all that can really be said is that it's just a fortunate
situation where you constantly have someone to bounce ideas off of. It's also
a question of not becoming dependent of that person -- at first I felt that he
literally _always_ knew the answer to whatever I was struggling with, but by
now I've realised that it's simply about the ability to think out loud and
make conclusions as you go along, and I know that I have all the potential to
do that on my own as well.

I guess it's kind of what the article is saying as well -- if you're used to
someone being better than you and kind of like a mentor, it's difficult to
adjust to a situation where you might just have caught up with them in terms
of skill and expertise.

------
cantastoria
I think the real imposters are the developers who act like they know what they
are doing!

~~~
dmethvin
That's the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

------
Spooky23
You need to embrace that while you frequently feel like you have no idea what
you are doing, most folks feel the same way.

It takes time to become aware of what you know, and to know what you don't
know. That's why true craftsmen take thousands of hours to master their craft.
It's also why we build procedures and process -- it allows people with limited
mastery to keep things going.

My first day as a professional full time IT person was a DBA role about 3 days
after my college graduation. The guy who hired me had left for another job,
one person was on vacation, and the other was out sick due to a car accident.
I got my HR paperwork done, found my cube, and someone dropped by to say "Oh,
you're the new DBA, good. The system is down."

Did I know what I was doing? Hell no. But we got an SA from another office on
the phone and some helpdesk techs together, stepped through it, got things
working and got things resolved in a few hours. The next time it happened, we
restored service in about 15 minutes and found the root cause.

The point is, you eventually know what you are doing. But you have to do stuff
first.

~~~
koshatnik
I had similar feelings when I started to use 'programmer' and 'developer' on
my CV, and when I started my first IT contracting job. I had done programming
in my previous job, but it was in no way acknowledged in my job description or
grade. Similarly when I started to earn more than I had previously, I
questioned whether I deserved it.

The chicken-and-egg situation with job experience and employability makes it
inevitable that you will be in positions where you 'don't know what you're
doing'. But if you have the determination to seek out answers and fill the
gaps in your knowledge, you'll become that expert you think you aren't.

------
johngalt
How to fight feelings of impostor syndrome:

1\. Look back rather than forward. Consider where you were even just 2-3 years
ago. How much more you know now about X,Y,Z. The next goal will always stretch
out in front of you. When looking forward so you'll never measure up to
'future you'. 'Past you' is a much easier comparison.

2\. Look down rather than up. Consider how much you know about your domain. A
Stanford CS student is probably in the top 0.0001% of people with CS
knowledge. Don't compare yourself to the small number of people ahead of you,
think of all the people who are behind.

3\. Examine your track record. Remind yourself of all the challenges you've
overcome, the hard problems you've solved. Think of how rarely (if ever)
you've failed when the chips were down. Even if you can't solve [current
problem X] right now, be confident that you _will_ solve it.

tl;dr _Even if you're the slowest runner in the marathon, you can still run a
marathon._

~~~
stuff4ben
I found the following quote to be helpful, "I may not know what I'm doing, but
at least I have no idea what's going on..."

------
benwgold
I think I can relate... As I write this, I am sitting in the first class of my
Compsci study abroad in Israel (Analysis of big data) which I now find out is
mainly for master's students. So, I'm a 19 year old that looks closer to 16,
surrounded by bearded, army-hardened Israeli's in their mid 20's. The class is
also being taught in Hebrew and I don't speak a lick.

'Imposter Syndrome' is my life right now, but I kinda love it.

~~~
tanglisha
Genuine question: How are you able to follow a class in which you don't speak
the language? Are you just following the examples and the book?

------
enraged_camel
People who are saying this is not related to gender are wrong. It is _very_
related. While both men and women can suffer from the impostor syndrome, men
get over it much more quickly and easily than women. The reason is simple: in
male-dominated fields men receive praise and validation much more easily than
women do, which can help them overcome their feelings of self-doubt. For women
the situation is quite different. I work for a private software company and
our owner and CEO is female. She once explained it like this: women in tech
are not taken seriously until _after_ they have become successful.

~~~
pm90
_> women in tech are not taken seriously until after they have become
successful._

Neither are men, so I don't really see what you are getting at.

~~~
enraged_camel
No, it's very different. Men often times are taken seriously _just because
they are men._ The odd thing about it however is that if you are a man, then
this is not immediately obvious, because you have always been treated this way
and have taken it for granted. But ask any woman in a tech field and they will
give you lots of data points about how their male counterparts are always
praised by their peers and superiors for minor accomplishments whereas women
are either not given much credit or the stuff they do are ignored completely.

I was getting lunch with a female coworker/friend last week and we ended up
talking about this very topic. We work for a software company and she's in
sales. She recounted that back when she first started, other salespeople
treated her like crap and blamed her for things that weren't her fault. Even
when she exceeded her daily or weekly goals, she didn't receive any praise.
Whereas the male salespeople who started around the same time as her were
getting rewarded for performing half as well. It was only after she dominated
the quarterly metrics over and over that people started to pay her any
attention. Nowadays she's very highly regarded, but had to work extra hard to
get that.

~~~
chc
I have an anecdote about a guy who wasn't given recognition while female
coworkers were. Want to anecduel? Or shall we actually look for hard data
rather than relying on hand-waving and stories about women we've known?

More importantly, though I agree that women have to fight harder for
recognition in many fields, there is no evidence that this means they are more
subject to impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is an internal thing, not
something somebody else tells you to have.

~~~
enraged_camel
This constant insistence on "hard data" is extremely tiresome, and throws a
wrench in what would otherwise be interesting debates. I think, as intelligent
people, we should be able to reason ourselves out of a disagreement without
relying on data that may or may not exist.

~~~
chc
Logic is a wonderful vehicle for arriving at good conclusions, but without the
fuel of accurate data, it is mostly useless for going anywhere but downhill.

We cannot confidently reason about reality without some hard data to use as a
premise. We need that connection to reality. By trying to go without it, we
are essentially constructing a fantasy universe. It might be a very elaborate
and intelligently constructed fantasy, but it is still ultimately disconnected
from reality.

But anyway, there is some hard data for this, so we don't need to worry about
it not existing. It's already been offered earlier in the thread.

~~~
mmatants
My post is off topic, but anecdotes are data. Poor data to make decisions
about systemic changes, but good data to make decisions about _individual
choices and policies_. A single instance of a wrong is enough to discuss how
it might have been avoided.

------
lbraasch
I often hear beginner programmers state they cannot program, only write code
that will work. I hear this commonly among Elec. and Mech. E fields, where
coding is secondary in the education.

It takes reading other peoples code to realize plenty of poor code has shipped
and generated revenue. Yours may not be so bad.

------
saalweachter
I personally find question-answering great for helping me feel like not-an-
impostor. Answering questions helps you recognize both that you have valuable
skills and knowledge and that your coworkers are not the brilliant godlings
you think you're just impersonating. They're smart, capable people, just like
you, who know some things and don't know other things.

Now, you can't force people to ask you questions (although you can avoid
discouraging it), but you can ask more questions. Even if you're stubbornly
certain you can find the answer to your question if you only dig into the
poorly documented codebase for another 45 minutes, occasionally giving up and
asking one of your coworkers can (a) save you time, (b) maybe make them feel
less like an impostor, and (c) make _you_ more approachable so they'll come to
you for help.

------
cupcake-unicorn
I'm a female developer, and I fought this my whole career. It _is_ real. I
even bought several books on it, which are mostly outdated. It used to happen
more in fields like law/medicine.

I don't think I ever experienced outright sexism, but the group dynamic of all
males often had to try adapt to be less abrupt/rude/direct, which was
difficult for me to manage. And if you're going to post that I should have
been the one adapting (and I was, in every way) - you don't get this post. It
frustrates me to see many males posting here that this "doesn't exist". It's
something you can't see or experience until you've been through it.

------
127001brewer
_... The good thing is you want to learn, and that’s all that matters._

That's the best advice to anyone: never stop learning. Working hard isn't
always fun, but it's - in my opinion - the best way to succeed.

------
tehwalrus
I (male) had exactly the same experience when I started at a software company
straight out of a Physics degree (only breif experience in Fortran..) I was
asserting to (someone senior, can't remember meaningless job titles) that I
was "not really a developer yet," and he told me off - "you sit at a desk and
do developer-y things all day!" At that point, I got over the label, and when
I left 2.5 years later I noticed I had put "developer" on my twitter profile -
clearly my brain had accepted it by then!

------
gtr32x
"Imposter Syndrome", so I understand it, is not even an issue in any regard or
form. This is the 'humbleness' that stereotypically exist among Asians. It is
a trait that tells us to never be content with oneself and always be on the
search for self betterment.

The only place where I see this is an issue is if one decides that himself or
herself is worse than other people and loses self-confidence. However, for
people with real success and accomplishments I just really don't see this
happening. They may deem their success to be lucky, but if they are aware that
it was still a success, they will continue to try harder to make it 'not luck'
the next time. Dismissing at the same time the false notion that he or she did
not achieve.

I would even go as far to call out that Imposter Syndrome exists mostly among
perfectionists. They'll get this sort of feeling whenever they sense that
someone else is better than them at one particular thing. Internally they try
to achieve in all aspects of life. This might not necessarily be a good mental
state since it diverges one's attention depending on the current social
context one is in. However with a correct mindset then one should be able to
utilize this trait to his or her advantage. The idea is to know there are
things to learn, but not that I am worse than others.

Therefore I know I have the 'Imposter Syndrome'. However I don't fight it, I
use it.

------
Mz
I don't know if men have an easier time or not. But I am female and inherently
am untrusting of most praise that comes from men. It usually comes across as a
blatant pat on the head of a sort they wouldn't likely do to a man, which
strikes me as belittling. Because it is delivered differently from what seems
to be the norm between two men, it strikes me as either a form of
tokenism/pity or makes me wonder if the real intent is to butter me up because
he is attracted. Both are big problems, not any kind of leg up or meaningful
assurance that I am perceived as competent. It is relatively rare for me to
get backing of a sort which suggests to me that it is based on genuine esteem
for my ability.

Edit: My point is I can see that being a source of self doubt which men might
experience less of in a male dominant environment. So I can see this being
tough to overcome for a woman surrounded by men.

(Not that I view myself as a woman in tech. I run a few websites. I do some
freelance writing. I know a smidgeon of html and css. I have a certificate in
GIS. But I am a former homemaker who paid insurance claims for about five
years. My self image is not "woman in tech." I really do not know what
professional label would currently fit me. It is quite irksome at times,
though I suppose there is no need to drone on further about that detail.)

~~~
tanglisha
I've experienced something similar to what you describe.

There are times when I am new to a group, that I will be constantly told how
very valuable to the group I am, how awesome I am, how happy they are to have
me, etc; often before I've been in the office for an hour or written a line of
code.

After this sort of thing, I tend to be suspicious of praise from that group of
people. Do they actually mean it? Did they even look at my code?

~~~
Mz
I have written a few blog posts about that sort of social dynamic. Some of
them have gotten a tiny amount of attention on hn. I also had some interesting
experiences in GIS school, which was 70% male. My male teachers seemed to have
a little trouble with a woman being the strongest math person in the class. In
one case, the professor asked me so often "how do you know that?" that a male
student blurted in exasperation "she's obviously already worked it out in her
head!" In another case, different professor, he bet me "lunch" that he was
right and I was wrong. When he had to pay up, he thanked me for not letting
him confuse the class. (He quietly gave me a twenty. I think he didn't want to
eat lunch with a female student for fear it would look like a date.)

------
wuest
This is a fascinating topic. I haven't heard of this in the past, but I
certainly can relate. I hate talking about things I (do/have done) and usually
tend to prefer to just wait and talk about things "once I actually do
something worthwhile."

------
slurgfest
Something neglected in this discussion is the role of hostile interactions
from others in this field. Impostor syndrome is not always something with a
strictly internal origin. If people are dominating you and making you feel
bad, and you become submissive, that is a pattern as old as primates and it
shouldn't surprise us when it happens also when you are working with people
who are extremely concerned with proving they or their clique are better than
others. Which is super common in CS and a large part of why many women have a
bad experience.

------
will_brown
What caught my attention in the article is the friend who always says, she is
"learning to code" and people look down on her. This reminds me of the legal
profession - when someone asks what a lawyer does, they should not respond
with their title, I am a lawyer or attorney, rather explain that "they
practice law".

What does the HN community think about that? Would you respond to career
questions by answering, "I practice computer coding"? As a non-tech it sounds
professional and badass.

------
tarahmarie
I simply think that Vinamrata is particularly courageous to put her name and
voice to an experience that all too many people of any variety are unable or
unwilling to disclose.

------
sakopov
What Impostor Syndrome? We're talking about a CS freshman interviewing for
their first internship. Be happy that your first internship interview had any
challenging technical questions at all and stop belittling yourself. Heck,
when i was a CS major in school, internships didn't even kick in until 3rd
year. This has nothing to do with gender. As the top commenter says, it has
everything to do with growing up.

------
ndonnellan
I am reminded of this interesting talk by Amy Cuddy on body language:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc>

Most of it is not directly related (still worth watching!), but at about 15:42
in she gives her personal anecdote of impostor syndrome and "faking it til you
make it". Which, incidentally, I think applies well to entrepreneurs.

------
rodly
HN sure is one hell of a sampling bias, but it would seem everyone here has
impostor syndrome.

I think one important factor to feeling like you're an impostor who doesn't
belong is being among others who are smarter and more experienced than you.

------
peripetylabs
The Socratic paradox: "I know that I know nothing."

