So The Thing Is

I have a confession to make. This will just be between us, right? It turns out that I'm a fake developer! Strangely I was thinking about this topic right before I saw this on my feed...

Are you a fake developer? Me too.

Ben Halpern ・ May 24 '19 ・ 1 min read

#career #beginners

Which was prompted by @badrecordlength 's original post...

The "Fake Developer" Conundrum

Henry 👨‍💻 ・ May 23 '19 ・ 1 min read

#computerscience #development #career #discuss

What Is Developer

Unlike someone like @ben who is an actual "developer" 😜 I, typically, am not shipping code in my day to day work. Not that all developers ship code every day. Sure, I've written code that's been deployed on servers around the globe. But, I still think that's kind of a fluke.

Faker

I've never been employed as a developer - so I'm a fake developer! Like many people, I sometimes struggle with imposter syndrome. Which is likely what keeps me personally from trying to make a go of actually going for a proper development job. Well, that and the fact that I can't stand the thought of struggling through a whiteboard interview. Such an awful process. 😅 Instead, I stick to my hobby programming and allow my attention to dictate projects - in the grand ADHD fashion of focusing hard on one for a while, then abandoning it when something else catches in my head.

Does It Matter

"Developer" is just a word. We have a number of terms for people who write code: coder, programmer, hacker, code monkey, etc. I like to think I fall somewhere in the hack/coder category (yes a hack, not a hacker). I've written code in a dozen or so languages and can generally get what I want to compile to compile - and work! I wouldn't call myself an expert in those languages and would be hard pressed to write anything in say Pascal today but I made it work.

For more on overcoming imposter syndrome see https://hbr.org/2008/05/overcoming-imposter-syndrome.

Wrapping Up

I generally don't overshare when posting so, this is kind of an odd topic to write about. Imposter syndrome can sometimes feel brutal and lead to varying forms of self-deprecation. Small examples of this litter this post as a matter of fact. Just remember to not be too hard on yourself. After all, you aren't alone, lots of people have gone through the same thing. Just look at how often it comes up here.

Anyway, thanks for reading my ramblings if you've made it this far. Next week, we'll see which Go project my brain takes us too next.