"Imposter Syndrome" will probably never go away 🥷

When you first enter the workplace, no matter what type of work you do, you'll be nervous to a certain degree. As now you suddenly have new relationships to cultivate and you need to prove you deserve to be there - this I'd argue is normal for the situation.

Imposter Syndrome is a different beast entirely, that every so often comes out of the dark corners of your mind to make you feel inadequate. With the fact that the Development world has opened up to people without a degree in a way other professions really haven't, is great, but this small fact amplifies the effect of imposter syndrome.

Imposter Syndrome - the condition of feeling anxious and not experiencing success internally, despite being high-performing in external, objective ways

The above definition of imposter syndrome sums it up nicely...you could feel you're doing quite well...then suddenly take part in a technical discussion at work and someone mentions method A or framework B that sounds completely foreign to you and the feeling of doubt starts to slowly creep in.

It's not the end of the world though when you realise this starting to affect you, this feeling of you're not good enough can be used as the driving force to become better, in a healthy way. Find areas of improvement and learn from colleagues. Discomfort shouldn't be a reason to stop, it should be a reason to become better.

A way you can manage it better, is by taking part in the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen - meaning small incremental improvements could make a lasting difference down the line. Don't focus on others and try to become a better you than you were yesterday, even if only by a fraction.

It's difficult to keep up sometimes 🫠

Software Development is a ever evolving field with more and more people joining daily with their own ideas and how things should be done and with AI becoming actually usable for the first time ever, so much so that people like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak signed a petition to stop it's development for the time being, new frameworks are being added, new languages are being built on newer ideas of compilation and sometimes it's just too much information for one person to digest.

Learning Computer Science is daunting, and Keeping up with the Joneses so to speak is equally so. Established technologies get overhauled more often than one might think.

The frameworks and languages you already use could have a major rework and change the fundamentals of how it works. For example, as mostly a .Net developer, Microsoft has done a tremendous amount of work to make it more accessible for newer devs to pick up, by making the SDK open-source and cross-platform compatible, but I share the sentiment once they switched to yearly releases and a new LTS version every 2 years, that they'll run the risk of becoming more and more bloated in the coming years, making an already complex framework just so much harder to pickup for newer developers. I could be wrong.

It's a never ending learning journey 📚

This goes hand-in-hand with the above point, with everything changing constantly you need to keep up with newer technologies and learn completely new things in the process not to become completely irrelevant , and this usually comes at the expense of you're free time.

You will need to make time to keep your skills sharp, if you want to stay competitive on the technical side of things, not all people are meant to be managers, me included.

This can be dealt with by just spending an hour or two everyday learning, working on personal project, or anything that will push you forward and keep up to date.

If a person will spend one hour a day on the same subject for five years, that person will be an expert on that subject - Earl Nightingale.

It's not meant for everyone 🤷🏻

When looking at Software development as a career, you usually see something along the lines of

"How I learned to code in 6 MONTHS and got a $300K+ job at [Insert a FAANG] company"

Or maybe my favourite

How to learn programming in the FASTEST way

One thing to note as mentioned above as well, you can learn at best basic programming in 6 months, this covers things like a quick CRUD application, maybe an API, some front-end framework, throw some DS & Algorithms in the mix - unless you are a genuine genius, you are going to struggle, there is no getting around that.

Programming is the lowest common denominator when it comes to the field of Computer Science in my opinion, it's only a tool to get the idea stuck in someone's head onto the computer, nothing more, nothing less.

The reality of the situation is not many people get to work for a FAANG company, some of us, including myself, isn't even based in the USA, where those types of salaries are available. If you work for any other company as a developer, it's highly unlikely they are going to have the same atmosphere as Google, it's usually just a normal job, possibly some nice benefits, and all the challenges that come with it.

When you see these "a day in the life..." videos, those aren't representative of the majority of the people that's working in the field.

And not all people should move into the field, no matter if the pay check is good at the end of the day, just like not everyone should become an actor, a lawyer, etc. Not everyone thinks in a way a developer should, or it just doesn't fascinate them enough to put in the extra effort to learn an improve. It's a mentally intensive job and will probably continue to be so.

TL;DR

1. Learn Computer Science if you truly enjoy the subject, not for the money, unless you want to spend a lot of your day you were doing something else.
2. Depending on where you are, you are not going to get paid the $300K that the influencers tell you.
3. You will have imposter syndrome, but can use it as motivation to become better.
4. You will need to make time to stay relevant.

References

Imposter Syndrome (4, 2023) Definition taken form: Impostor syndrome - Wikipedia

Microsoft and Amazon have cut their AI ethics teams as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak call for a moratorium on tech companies’ ‘out-of-control race’ (29-03, 2023) Taken from: Elon Musk calls for cautious AI approach as companies cut ethics teams | Fortune by **Tristan Bove**