
Why I feel like a fraud - gthank
http://blog.asmartbear.com/self-doubt-fraud.html
======
danilocampos
_Holy shit._

I thought this was just me. I spend a lot of time churning on this.

I'm a little shell-shocked at the revelation that others feel this way too. I
wish I had something more compelling to contribute than catharsis, but... wow,
thanks for (re-)submitting this.

~~~
patio11
Me too, for what it is worth. At least three times this year half my brain was
screaming "They're going to find out _any second now!_. Flee, flee!"

It all worked out.

~~~
danilocampos
"They're going to find out any second now!"

That's really it, isn't it? The whole thing just boils down to an odd,
amorphous _they_ capable of seeing straight through you if you happen to give
them half a chance.

I wish I could understand the source of this better.

~~~
elliottkember
I like this feeling. It makes you try harder, just in case someone comes
looking.

------
sushi
I think a particular quote from Sh#t my dad says will resonate here.

“That woman was sexy… Out of your league? Son. Let women figure out why they
won’t screw you, don’t do it for them.”

Let customers find out if your product is shitty. They won't buy it if it is.

~~~
cryptoz
Offtopic: why did you self-censor the first "shit" but not the second "shit"?

~~~
ricree
Assuming he's referring to the book version, he's just mirroring the book
title's self censorship.

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daeken
Wow, I had no idea such feelings were so common. I've largely felt like this
for the last couple years, as I've gone from "that weird kid that does
something with computers" to "startup founder" (and now back in a real job
again, which has been an odd (and refreshing) adjustment, but that's a subject
for a post of its own). While I can recognize that I'm doing cool things, I
just don't feel like it's that big a deal; when someone acts like something is
actually a big deal, I feel like I'm overselling it. Hard to explain, but it's
nice to see that I'm not the only one in the community that feels this way.

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araneae
Just because there's a name for feeling like a fraud even if you aren't one,
doesn't meant you aren't one! I felt like a fraud in graduate school and it
turned out I was one.

~~~
sabat
You were an actual fraud? By what definition? [edit: I wonder if you were
really a fraud, or are just feeling down on yourself.]

~~~
araneae
Well, I dropped out after 1.5 years :).

~~~
sabat
You're not a fraud. You changed your mind. It's OK to do that.

------
terra_t
There is no "typical entrepreneur".

If you look at wall street traders, Fortune 500 CEO's and other populations
that have been through intense selection processes you'll find very
homogeneous populations.

If you look at entrepreneurs, you'll find confident people, anxious people,
short people, tall people, thin people, fat people -- all kinds of people.
That's because entrepreneurs select themselves rather than being selected by a
bunch of people who want to select other people like themselves.

~~~
klbarry
Well, I think it's fair to say all entrepreneurs are persistent, but that's
about it.

~~~
terra_t
I was talking with a professor about my work on the bus last night and
mentioned that having faith in what I'm doing is what makes me possible to do
it.

He shared that he's a born-again Christian and he's thought about faith is
important in what he does, since you've never got any guarantee that a
research project is going to be successful.

I'm a pagan, so I like the Japanese word "Haruhi" which means "full of
spirit." (It's been popularized in the U.S. by a post-modern recent anime
which I can't decide if I like or not.) But it's an important thing. For the
idea I'm working on, I find that being "Haruhi" makes me invincible... I used
to be a terribly anxious person but I believe in what I'm doing so much that
nothing bothers me.

Quite funny, my business plan from the very beginning assumed that the system
I was building would soon become more than the sum of it's parts, but I was
quite amazed to see it happen... For me it's a miracle.

------
nadam
I sometimes feel that I wasted all my years because I was developing quite
diverse applications, so I am not an expert of anything. For example I am
writing a Java to Scala translator now. I hate that I was dealing with
completely other topics when I could have done Phd in programming languages
and could have worked on compilers all the time. There is a company founded in
1995 working on source code analysis, translation, etc... I felt the same way
when I developed a 3D game, when I developed Java web apps at my workplace,
etc... I feel that I am not an expert of anything. That if I gave a lot of
time to one topic (years) then I would be much much better than I am now. I
feel like a fraud because I have to pretend that I am a specialized expert of
one topic, but in reality I am a jack-of-all-trades programmer.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Being a generalist isn't always an easy sell, but we can be uniquely valuable
in a small shop that lacks an army of specialists. Just since last year I've
been called on to document several protocols for partners, design and back-
test a Bayesian estimator, troubleshoot a balky load balancer using only a
tcpdump (it was reusing port numbers too aggressively), sleaze together some
last-minute map/reduce analytics feeding Excel graphs, and track down
regressions caused by bad svn merges. Nobody sane would put all of that in one
job description (nominally I maintain a soft realtime Java app server), yet
someone had to do it, and there I was. As a specialist I'd worry about only
getting asymptotically better at solving one problem which could become
irrelevant.

Actually it's the stuff I'm _supposed_ to know how to do where I feel like a
fraud, because I compare the imaginary progress of an idealized version of
myself to what I've actually accomplished. When I'm handling one of these
tasks from left field, everyone knows I'm winging it, and that makes success
sweeter.

------
known
"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I
myself deny it." --H. L. Mencken

------
Alex3917
I often feel like other people are frauds. I call this Taleb syndrome.

------
run4yourlives
Here's a little secret:

Nobody really knows what they are doing; they're just winging it, more or
less.

That's not to mean extremely talented people aren't doing some amazing things,
it means that there is no documented pattern to follow that once completed
equals success. It also means that you can in fact be as good or better at
every "expert" in your chosen field, and that many of the people reading this
probably already are.

Everyone is using a blank piece of paper, and everyone is painting their own
portrait their own way. Knowing how to both create demand and deliver a
_perceived_ value is much more valuable than whatever it is you are actually
doing to deliver the product. There is nothing fraudulent about it. Every
mechanic is a genius to a person that has never seen a car.

------
iuguy
I definitely feel like a fraud all the time. In meetings someone will
introduce me as an information security expert and it makes my blood run cold.
I keep thinking to myself, "This isn't rocket science, it's just common sense
surely?" but bizarrely there are still developers out there who haven't heard
of input validation, bounds checking or even how to do authorisation properly.

I worked out the other day that I've been doing this job for about 12 years.
There's that whole 10,000 hours thing when it comes to being an expert, and I
think I've put in several times that but I certainly don't feel like an expert
in anything. If anything I keep expecting someone to turn up and point out
blatant flaws in everything I say, but somehow it doesn't happen.

------
dholowiski
I struggle with this often: I KNOW I'm not as smart/talented/capable as other
people think I am, especially at programming. I haven't been programming for
that long, and it takes me an hour to write something that should take me 10
minutes to write.

However, my skills continue to amaze my peers (who are all non-technical) and
they think I'm a genius because I can build a web site with a login form, or
register a domain name.

It's really hard to reconcile the two things, especially since, eventually I
will be a 'real' programmer, but I still won't think I'm any good.

That being said, it drives me crazy when people call themselves an 'expert' in
everything. Just because you read a book, and wrote a few blog posts doesn't
make you an expert!

~~~
sabat
_Just because you read a book, and wrote a few blog posts doesn't make you an
expert!_

Or it does make you an expert, but "expert" doesn't mean what we think it
means. ;-)

~~~
redcap
My dad always said that "x is an unknown quantity, and a spurt is a drip under
pressure".

I tend to take self-professed "experts" with a grain of salt.

------
mcantor
"First you get your Bachelor's degree, and you think you know everything."

"Then, you get your Master's, and you realize you don't know anything."

"Then you get your Doctorate, and you find out that _nobody_ knows anything."

~~~
epochwolf
> Then you get your Doctorate, and you find out that nobody knows anything.

Took me about 3 months to figure out why the java class I was taking was so
screwed up. The professor had never seen Object Oriented Programming (or Java)
before. He was staying one chapter ahead of the class and picking assignments
that required his domain expertise to complete.

As annoying as it was to find out, I still learned a useful bit of Java. Took
me years (and learning ruby) to actually grok objects correctly.

~~~
tjpick
Teachers are often just-in-time learners too.

~~~
epochwolf
I don't really have a problem with that in most cases. This case was a little
special because I don't think the professor grasped OOP during my time in
college. (Had him for a few of my classes)

Not grasping OOP makes using Java a tad difficult.

------
edw519
hn rerun. Orignal thread with comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1059985>

~~~
throwaway111222
Sometimes good posts are worth rerunning.

~~~
jmtulloss
I certainly agree, but linking to the previous comments is also valuable. He
didn't call it a dupe, he called it a rerun. I think that's appropriate.

------
Rickasaurus
I often feel this way too. The hardest is when you are up in front of a room
of people who are there to see you because you are an "expert".

Every misstatement or generalization feels like a punch in the face as soon as
it leaves the lips. Even worse, sometimes there's a person in the crowd who
takes pleasure in calling out the "expert". Even after days of research and
practice for a single hour long talk this person is what I fear the most.

~~~
chegra
You can tell them that you will discuss it after the meeting or just say you
don't know. Most people will laugh when you say you don't know and think you
are cool.

------
joshrule
I like this idea that if you don't feel like an imposter, you're probably not
challenging yourself enough. It rings true with my experience starting a blog
without much design or web experience (<http://wayofthescholar.com>) and
diving into neuroscience research without any neuroscience background. The
most I feel like a fraud, the more I'm forced to find smart ways to figure out
where I'm at and where I need to head next.

------
othello
Actually the Impostor syndrome has another positive side: it prevents over-
confidence and preserves a degree of humility.

Self-doubt can also make you a more likable person, especially if you are
successful.

------
zoomzoom
Ignorance is very scary. I went to TEDxBrooklyn this weekend, and heard
Richard Saul Wurman say that he lives by embracing his ignorance, because it
is the only unlimited resource he has. I think that the only way to overcome
this self-doubt is to accept that you will never overcome it, and make it part
of your confidence to be doubtful.

------
JangoSteve
It's funny, even writing an essay about this very topic hasn't made the
occasional feeling cease. Though, since then, I feel much better equipped to
deal with it and get on with my day.

[http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-what-
theyr...](http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-what-theyre-doing)

~~~
stuartk
Thanks for that post, excellent.

It's quite comforting, yet scary at the same time, to realise that the stuff
you know you don't know is probably going to grow throughout your life, but
that this is a good thing! Because it beats the hell out of not knowing what
you don't know. Although I wonder if that would lead to a simpler life
sometimes.

------
candre717
I think experts are people who know they don't know much. Humility.

------
shuaib
What scares me most is, when I find someone sharing the same feelings on these
lines as me, and yet being far more productive then I am. This is when it gets
really scary, and the little voice inside your head screams, "dude, you ARE a
fraud".

But, at whatever level, we all have to fight it for the rest of our lives. :)

------
cvg
I often feel that I lack the delusion to build a premier company. I try to
build a great product, but I can usually point out to other companies that do
an element of what I do better. Perhaps no more SWOT analyses.

Such a weird balance that a startup founder must create.

------
double122
I sympathise entirely with this post. I too didn't realise that it was a
common way of thinking until I saw this a while back:

<http://xkcd.com/616/>

One day they'll expose me!

------
guglanisam
I used to feel this way for first 6 years of my career when I was working for
other people and doing pretty well. But to myself I used to think - am I
really good.

But ever since I became an entrpr I feel totally natural & confident in doing
what I m doing. I guess its also about are you really you are totally
passionate about. If yes - you are to absorbed in it that you dont have time
for these things

------
jordanlev
There was a really good episode of "This Week in Startups" a while back with a
psychologist who talked about this phenomenon:
[http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/twist-
episode-21-w...](http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-startups/twist-
episode-21-with-mark-goulston-bonus-3/)

------
igrekel
Ok great article, also read the wikipedia entry...

Now, anyone has resources on overcoming this beyond just a few bullet points?

------
steveklabnik
This reminds me of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1902892> , in a way.

I wonder if it's the obsession with metrics that makes engineers act in such a
self-deprecating manner? I know I certainly do this, too...

------
maguay
HN is teaching me that I'm not so abnormal. Amazing.

------
pmichaud
I think anyone who experiences some success sort of feel like a fraud. I know
I do. I think it's a common thing.

~~~
studer
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome>

------
realitydose
> I would explain how my tool cuts code review time in half, but was that
> actually true or had I just repeated the argument so many times that I
> stopped questioning it?

Am I missing something here? He says he feels like a fraud but if he's telling
people something that he doesn't know to be true.. that's not 'imposter
syndrome', it really is more like fraud.

------
ulf
Just get an SSL certificate for your site, you will instantly feel a lot more
legit!

------
whimsy
Isn't this the Dunning-Kruger effect in action? Illusory inferiority, etc...

