
Show HN: Impostor Roster – Suffering from Impostor Syndrome? You're not alone - vcavallo
http://www.impostorroster.com/
======
drewrv
It always reassures me that even Albert Einstein appeared to suffer from
impostor syndrome.

“the exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at
ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.”

Source of the quote is here, about three quarters of the way down:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/28/time-
bandits-2](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/28/time-bandits-2)

~~~
enraged_camel
Did he actually suffer from imposter syndrome, or was he being humorously
humble?

~~~
justboxing
Yeah I think it's the latter.

~~~
scroy
Don't be so sure. Einstein, in spite of all his achievements, was human. He
made mistakes and misunderstood some things. Overall he understood physics
more deeply that any of his time, but from his point of view maybe it came so
naturally that he never felt he had totally "earned" his recognition. That
said, he was known for humility, but that doesn't mean it was disingenuous.

Isn't that the point of "impostor syndrome"? No matter where you stand, your
measurement of your ability is subjective to whatever standards you personally
hold, which may be different from an objective assessment? And maybe there is
no true objectivity? Maybe it's all... relative?

~~~
Siphwho
Einstein already made his most significant contributions by age 26 and spent
the rest of his life arguing against quantum theory, the dominant school of
the 20th century. Most modern physicists regard the latter portion of his life
a waste in way of contributions.

~~~
abecedarius
That’s a little misleading — the latter period started around age 40. E.g.
Bose-Einstein statistics was from 1918, which would be age 39 if 1905 was 26.
The EPR paper was many years later still. Also, you can’t leave general
relativity out of his most significant work.

------
mikekchar
Just looking at the software entries and when I see "still can't X
effectively" I'm left thinking, "And neither can anyone else".

One of the most interesting things I've discovered as I've gotten older is
that I sometimes have a great success and then I think, "Awesome! _This_ is
the way to do it!" Then I try to duplicate that success and... it doesn't
work. Now I'm left wondering whether my previous success was _because of_ my
actions or _in spite of my actions_ (or not related at all).

So frequently we read from people who are really good at promoting themselves
and they say " _This_ is the new super sauce!" They really _are_ convinced
themselves, but that's mostly overconfidence. It's worse when the thing they
discover makes tons of sense, but doesn't really work the way you might
imagine it would.

It's an exciting time to be a programmer because there is still so much to
discover. It's also a stressful time because everyone sucks badly at this
stuff. Those who think they've got it figured out usually (in my experience)
have either very low expectations or very poor observations skills ;-)

~~~
opportune
Sometimes I wonder if the current state of software/programming will, in the
future, be seen similarly to cuneiform or hieroglyphics, in the sense of it
being an archaic, overly complicated form of expression needlessly reserved to
specialists. Coding might be something everybody is required to know in the
future, like reading or writing are now. What I envision happening is that
whatever become the popular languages will sacrifice similarity (in the sense
that even across functional/imperative/OOP/etc families, languages are in
general low-level/explicit enough that coding in them is similar) in favor of
a highly opinionated programming style designed to make it easier to program
in.

For example, imagine a language and IDE designed in tandem to compliment each
other. You could incorporate all kinds of visual models into the design of the
code, and actually make it easy/automatic to include things like the standard
library, which you could make very large. The language could require such a
high amount of structure that once you learned it to a reasonable extent,
there would only rarely be a need to look up how to do something completely
new. If kids learned how to use things analogous to e.g. python/matplotlib
instead of excel, or jupyter notebooks for science reports / presentations,
just imagine how much more productive we could be as a society.

I'm happy knowing that even if we suck now, we can perhaps live to see a
future where we don't suck. I just hope it's soon

~~~
scrumper
You’re describing Mathematica. It’s lovely stuff but a bit of a closed system.
And expensive too.

------
2_listerine_pls
Impostor Impostor Syndrome: pretending to have impostor syndrome as a self-
serving justification.

~~~
stareatgoats
Yes, the site title is misleading (imposterous one might say ...). Fun idea
nonetheless.

------
zamalek
Does the definition of imposter syndrome include the awareness that one should
feel better about one's accomplishments? It seems ironic to self-diagnose
imposter syndrome because that is internalizing your accomplishments - which
is the precise antithesis of the Wikipedia definition:

> individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their
> accomplishments [and a persistent fear of being exposed as a "fraud".]

I've made a lot of progress since I realized that I potentially do not have
imposter syndrome and instead have self-esteem problems.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Impostor syndrome is mostly marked by the feeling of being a fraud which can
run in parallel to feelings of "I know I'm smart, but I feel so dumb compared
to everyone else."

It's a constant self-doubt in spite of knowledge of what one is capable of;
self doubt that one should be in a particular position, because while one
knows what they're capable of, they think they should be capable of more when
comparing oneself to one's peers.

One doesn't need accomplishments to feel like an impostor and a lack of
notable accomplishments doesn't mean that one shouldn't be in a particular
position.

------
dejawu
"Someone in the _Strawberry_ field for 10 months still can't _forever_."

I love this. Thank you whoever sent that in

~~~
craftyguy
I... don't get it. :(

e: Oh, a beatles reference. Ok.

~~~
vcavallo
I believe it's a Beatles reference. Strawberry Fields forever

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tw1010
Hm... "Someone in the Computer Science field for 2 months still can't solve
the halting problem."

~~~
vcavallo
Some of the most ambitious among us suffer from this syndrome XD

We added a twitter account now
[https://twitter.com/impostor_roster](https://twitter.com/impostor_roster) so
feel free to comment on posts there!

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smcl
This is a serious issue and I'm really glad someone's making an attempt to
make people realise it's not uncommon. I am slightly ashamed to admit however
that I completely lost it at "Someone in the Roller Coaster field for 13
months still can't get off mr bones wild ride.".

Context: [https://imgur.com/gallery/Wxzbl](https://imgur.com/gallery/Wxzbl)

~~~
vcavallo
haha yep, as the creator of this site I'm now trying to figure out the best
way to keep the fun stuff while also keeping the site helpful.

for about 20 minutes at the beginning of the HN traffic there was a beautiful
moment of 100% real posts and supportive comments here. and then...

~~~
smcl
Cool, good job all the same! When I looked it was still a healthy mix of fun
and serious :-)

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hkmurakami
This is really refreshingly candid, and frankly uplifting. Thank you for your
efforts.

So much better than the "failure resume" that was a thing a few years ago,
which often looked like a thinly veiled brag.

~~~
vcavallo
Thanks, I’m glad you appreacite it. Warms my heart :)

------
yellowapple
"Someone in the Devops field for 60 months still can't explain what devops
is."

Can _anyone_ explain what devops is? It's always struck me as being a
meaningless buzzword.

~~~
sitkack
Portmanteau of developer + operations, where infrastructure and application
life cycle are coded using engineering best practices in a way that is
repeatable and debuggable. Someone in devops will know tools such as Chef,
Puppet, Virtualization, Containerization, Load Balancers, Network and
Application Firewalls, IAM. Basically all the stuff that supports running an
application. Application and System level cross cutting concerns.

Dont pretend you couldn't give the same answer, imposter.

------
vcavallo
Here's a little blog post I wrote about it on the eve of deploying:
[http://vcavallo.github.io/blog/2017/03/01/launching-the-
impo...](http://vcavallo.github.io/blog/2017/03/01/launching-the-impostor-
roster/)

Thanks for checking it out! Please add something!

Edit: If anyone is interested in keeping up with any changes and developments
to this site (a redesign is coming soon) you can sign up for the newsletter at
[http://exnil.io](http://exnil.io) where I will be announcing that and other
fun stuff)

------
oldboyFX
I absolutely adore this. Watch out for the trolls though — they're coming.

~~~
craftyguy
Looks like the trolls have arrived:

> Someone in the Presidency Of The United States Of America field for 12
> months still can't tell you what the emoluments clause is .

I mean, the troll is not wrong, but it definitely takes away some of the charm
that this website (briefly) had.

~~~
vcavallo
Manual moderation is _fun_...

I'm leaving anything but explicitly elicit stuff for now.

------
brailsafe
"Someone in the White Girl field for 240 months still can't even."

Love it.

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jschwartzi
You should allow hyphens and dashes in the inability field. There are words
that I would like to hyphenate but which I can't.

~~~
vcavallo
This was a quick and dirty way to prevent abuse. will reinstate when I'm not
panicking :)

~~~
jasonmp85
I feel this warrants an entry.

~~~
vcavallo
I'll add it

[http://www.impostorroster.com/post/sanitize-fields-
thoughtfu...](http://www.impostorroster.com/post/sanitize-fields-thoughtfully-
without-clobbering-all-punctuation)

------
tw1010
Too bad the site just reduced to jokes and spam after it was posted on HN.

------
bob_theslob646
You should make a " you are not alone" voting button instead of comments

~~~
vcavallo
I'm thinking of doing both. Definitely needs a voting feature.

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KerrickStaley
You need to allow special characters in the inability field.

My field was "Python" and my entry was "I still can't remember the argument
order for json.dump()", but it gave the error "Inability Only letters, numbers
and spaces allowed for inability field".

~~~
js2
Here’s how I remember: dumps() takes no file-like argument, thus for dump()
and dumps() to be consistent, the object to dump() must come first.

~~~
amelius
That argument would make as much sense if you replaced first by last.

~~~
js2
Optional arguments are almost always trailing arguments:

    
    
        dumps(obj)
        dump(obj, fp)
    

Might be implemented (in a Pythonic way) by the same function:

    
    
        fn(obj, fp=None):
            ...
    

Another way to think about it is that you're dumping from obj to fp. The thing
I always get backwards is C's memcpy(dst, src, len) which I've always thought
has its first two arguments in the wrong order.

------
kasey_junk
Where is the Dunning-Kruger registry? Cause I know _exactly_ what that should
look like.

------
allhailkatt
This site was frighteningly reassuring. Thank you.

I hope this becomes the new FML/TFLN

~~~
vcavallo
That’s the idea! :)

The argument order for ln one really made me happy today..

------
agumonkey
I only feel an imposter when people ask me how much I want to be paid.

------
sitkack
I have this nagging feeling that my imposter syndrome is forced, fake, that I
_really_ am an imposter, other syndrome suffers have it, I don't.

~~~
vcavallo
Add it! "Someone in the Impostor field for X months still can't accept that
other people feel the same way"

XD

------
andai
Thanks for making this!

~~~
vcavallo
Thanks for checking it out!!

------
amelius
Perhaps you can add a comments section below every post (?)

~~~
vcavallo
Definitely on the shortlist now!

there's this for now if it helps:
[https://twitter.com/impostor_roster](https://twitter.com/impostor_roster)

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nmca
This is good work. Keep it up.

~~~
vcavallo
Thanks for the encouragement. Will do. And feel free to add comments on the
github repo if you have ideas

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nol13
i still can't.. get past the google captcha to post my reply

~~~
vcavallo
Hm... is it just because their captcha is hard, or does it seem broken? if it
seems broken submit a github issue or contact at the twitter link on the site

~~~
nol13
gonna guess just hard, but after the first 2 or 3 screens i just said fsck it.
does it intentionally try to cut tiny bits of the edge off each 'correct'
frame to get good training data?

i did try the audio too though and had no idea what it was saying.

------
ggm
When did we stop calling it "the peter principle" ?

~~~
seattle_spring
We didn't. The Peter Principle refers to a completely different phenomenon--
"Rise to the level of your own incompetence."

~~~
ggm
What do people who rise above their own incompetence feel if not imposter
syndrome?

~~~
icebraining
Impostor syndrome means the person feels incompetent despite not being. If one
is actually incompetent, then feeling like so is just having an accurate
perception :)

Plus, I'd say many don't even realize they're incompetent.

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jmkni
I find that a lot of people who say they suffer from _imposter syndrome_ are
really just humble-bragging.

They 100% know that they are good, but it's socially better to show false
modesty.

~~~
sitkack
Uncouth and Unware

~~~
jmkni
Exactly!

------
Camillo
I suspect that "impostor syndrome" is just what many people feel when the
comforting illusion of the Dunning-Kruger effect starts to fall apart.

~~~
icebraining
Actually, the tests made by Dunning and Kruger that led to the coining of that
"effect" also showed that competent people tended to rank themselves below
their actual level - exactly as described by the Impostor Syndrome.

