Is there a fix for impostor syndrome? - <AUTHOR> http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2018/is-there-a-fix-for-impostor-syndrome <comment><USER2> I've been in software for 14 years without a computer science degree and carry a chip on my shoulder because I missed out on algorithms and compilers in school. I'm mostly self-taught and have had the opportunity to run a SAAS company for six years now (CodePen).

I'm winging it like many other people in our industry. I wish I'd had two things to when I started my career.

1\. A right of passage that endorsed my skills as a competent developer (or that educated me on what skills I'd yet to learn).

Something equivalent to what doctors have when they receive a medical license and become board certified.

After five years on the job, no one cares about your cute degree but the 21-year-old version of me who knew nothing and was a tiny bit terrified of being found incompetent cared.

You are born with a level of confidence (unsubstantiated and unproven), but you can also earn it by doing a substantial amount of work.

A right of passage within the software industry that showed a fundamental level of competency beyond the fizz-buzz test would've worked wonders for the young me.

2\. A formal mentor.

I spent years flailing within technology. I learned the wrong things, dove deep into the wrong technology (Java Swing :|) and made obvious mistakes. In retrospect, I would have paid to work for a capable mentor when I started who could have validated my work and guided my efforts.

Alas, software development is free, unregulated and open to all. That is what makes it beautiful. That is what makes it frustrating.

<comment><USER3> > Something equivalent to what doctors have when they receive a medical > license and become board certified.

In the US this requires four 8+ hour exams, spread out over at least seven years of training; each exam requires months of preparation. I have a hard time imagining most programmers would elect to jump through those sorts of hoops just to feel more confident about their jobs.

> In retrospect, I would have paid to work for a capable mentor when I started > who could have validated my work and guided my efforts.

I think this idea definitely has some merit. I was very fortunate that my first big job after getting my CS degree was on a very agile team that leaned toward the bleeding edge. I wonder if there could be a way for programmers to rate the development environment of certain companies.

<comment><USER4> I think a better equivalent would be something like the FE exam that mechanical engineers take out of college. It's given right at the end of college, but could be given at any time for self taught programmers.

Hard part is implementing the test to be (almost) purely problem solving and agnostic of language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I might have an impostor syndrome at work. And I am somewhat anxious about it. And I feel like it decreases my performance by quite a bit. And luckily, my managers understand it and are very supportive of me.

However, I have a question (and this is going meta). Maybe my managers are too understanding about it. Sometimes I wish they give me a harder time, and feel like I don't get reprimanded for failure enough and strangely, it exacerbates the feeling of being an impostor.

It's not like I would enjoy being wrong or beaten up for it, it's just sometimes I feel like I can afford being somewhat lazy because of that, and I don't think that's right. So I am not sure I entirely agree with the recommendation of the article.

Or to reword it as a question: Cannot the positive thinking actually hurt the person having an impostor syndrome?

Maybe we are all impostors, and I just happen to be the one most suited for the task.

<comment><USER6> _Maybe we are all impostors_

This, a thousandfold.

I have struggled with impostor syndrome throughout my life - it doesn't help that my 35 years to date look like a smacked out Mary Sue fantasy. In my previous business I often felt like I was pulling the wool over the eyes of the world - what right did I have to lead these people, to charge those people, to make these decisions?

Well, none, _and neither does anyone else_.

Through my dealings with other business owners, from small outfits through to the gods of the world of commerce, I have come to realise that _everybody_ in any position of power or responsibility is faking it to some degree or another - or even more interestingly, they _believe_ they are faking it, even when the results are tangible and real. I often find just talking to other people in a similar position really helps, as you rapidly realise that not only is what you're feeling not unique, it is practically a universal maxim.

Where I ended up was concluding that we are all wittingly or unwittingly impostors, and the only actual question is whether it's something worth being bothered by.

It's the unwitting impostors you have to keep an eye on - hubris and incompetence are a dangerous combination.

Being aware of your own limitations brings humility, which is good in that it imbues striving, through which you grow your limits.

In short, we are all impostors. Being aware of and treating this as a law of being is a useful step in understanding both yourself and how to optimally operate the world in which we live.

People will agree to almost anything which makes them feel like less of an impostor.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps we feel compelled to assume that the people in charge know what they're doing since the alternative is deeply unsettling.

<comment><USER8> That's also one hypothesis of why people are prone to believe in conspiracy theories: the alternative to believing in some malevolent force controlling everything towards some ultimate end goal is that no one is really in control and stuff just kind of happens. Some people find the latter more disturbing.

<comment><USER7> Ah right, that context is where I first encountered the idea. Thanks for the reminder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My semi-cynical, 35+ years in the industry advice? Avoid blogs, forums, podcasts, social media pages, news sites that only focus on the 1% of startups that make it 'big' seemingly overnight.

Go out and talk to fellow entrepreneurs, hackers, company founders and people in the industry, and you will quickly find out that _everyone_ , and I mean EVERYONE goes through a heartless grind and struggle to get things done or to make a difference. Connect with these people on a far deeper level than just making money or comparing tech stacks and identify what it is that gets them out of bed each morning with a spring in their step. If it is the same reasons that get YOU out of bed every morning, then sign them up as your support buddy so you can measure (and they can help you measure) the _real_ metric that makes you tick. No room for impostor syndrome in this scenario at all.

<comment><USER10> I totally agree with your statement, but how can one compensate for the fear of missing out of new technologies, interesting discussions among interesting people sharing their insights to the problem in hand, like you're doing with us at the moment. That's the only reason I check Hacker News, or some Subreddits multiple times a day, so that I won't miss that one non-upvoted post which could have proven significant to me, whether personally or educationally.

<comment><USER11> FOMO is a trap. You're looking for a needle in a haystack, but instead you should let someone else bring the needle to you.

If something is worth your time, someone you know and trust will bring it up to you. The more people you talk to and interact with, the more likely you are to be offered up information that is actually significant to you. It is also more likely to have a real impact because human interaction is more "sticky" than a simple website post.

What you're doing now is akin to throwing a Bubble sort at the problem. It's slow, inefficient and a waste of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On mobile, sorry for typos.

I've experienced imposter syndrome hard. One of my first jobs was a small programming gig, but I switched careers twice before securing a job as a "real" developer. Oh, man, what I didn't know. Everything was new. Source control? Neat! Unit test? Wow! I was so far behind. I worked hard and researched everything I could that I heard someone talk about more than once. If I couldn't find information on it and it came up again, I'd ask a person on the side what it was. I _knew_ I was out classed and I figured I'd never catch up.

Fast forward a year or so and I was working harder problems and harder code bases and still felt inadequate. Everyone was so much smarter and experience than me. They saw solutions before I saw problems. I was still learning so much, but how could I catch up?!

About a year later, our company introduced 360 Reviews. For those not in the know, that means your peers (and it should be a mix of people you've worked with from other teams and your team) anonymously give you a review and talk about percieved strengths and areas in need of growth. I thought, "oh, shit..".

I turned out that people I respected and looked up to had really positive things to say, and they called out where I could improve (and I since I agreed with the improvement areas, I thought maybe I could agree with the strengths too). It was so uplifting to read how folks said they could rely on me, that I had great knowledge that they wanted more access to, and other great stuff. I began to question my imposter syndrome.

A few more rounds of that while continuing to grow in my roles, and my imposter syndrome has faded from a roaring stampede to background noise. I fully credit 360 reviews coupled with striving to do better as a fix for my imposter syndrome.

<comment><USER13> We are our own worst critics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had it for most of my career until I realized that I should trust the opinion of the people who employed me. They had read my CV, marked my tests, interviewed me repeatedly and decided they liked me and trusted my abilites, so I should too. Sure, in my mind I'm not as good as hundreds of brilliant people I look up to, but that's ok. It's not about being on a linear scale, it's about fitting a niche.

<comment><USER15> This is great advise, I also find talking to the right people about doubts helps too, we all get trapped by our doubts, and it's up to us to free ourselves from those doubts, but sometimes you need to hear from someone else that it's all just a mirage and you were never really trapped to push forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's funny how grad school is designed to bring out the impostor in you, kind of like a negative image of the different kinds of "impostor" listed. Obviously each of these is false in their own way, but these are messages that you will be given / experience during your PhD, so it's no wonder how people come out the other end thinking like this:

1\. "The Expert": your advisor/other professors/students will make fun of you or berate you if you don't know "everything" i.e. if asked to list relevant sources you list twelve and forget the thirteenth.

2\. "The Perfectionist": your advisor will never say that a work is "good" and there are always ways to improve everything, the good parts will go unmentioned while the warts will be called out for repair until eventually you run out of time and ship it.

3\. "The Superperson": everyone else is always working, so why aren't you?

4\. "The Natural Genius": these are the words that your advisor and other professors will use to describe "successful" students: genius, insightful, gifted. Words your advisor will never use to describe someone positively: hard-working. Hard-working is assumed. Everyone is hard-working. Everyone puts in a lot of effort. Get over it.

5\. "The Rugged Individualist": Only work that you and you alone did "counts" for your PhD, and credit is zero-sum. Debate carefully the authors you add to your paper because they will take some of the "success" from your work.

<comment><USER17> It sounds like you attended a toxic grad school. Was your program in Chemistry?

<comment><USER18> Is this a joke about toxicity/chemistry or is the field of chemistry known to be socially more toxic than other fields?

<comment><USER17> Chemistry has a reputation

[https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/21/us/after-suicide- harvard-...](https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/21/us/after-suicide-harvard- alters-policies-on-graduate-students.html)

> Eight graduate students have committed suicide at Harvard since 1980, > officials said -- not an unusual rate for a university. > Of those, three > have been in the laboratory of Mr. Altom's adviser, Elias J. Corey, a Nobel > Prize-winning chemist. > But Dr. Long asserted today that by all > indications, the first two deaths, one last year and one in 1987, had > nothing to do with the students' work in chemistry. > One student, he noted, > had been very successful in his work, and the other had barely begun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've felt imposter syndrome badly before, even while I was climbing ranks and getting excellent reviews. Now I manage developers and, while not a cure, the best I can do is constant feedback, and to urge them to find their "superpower". This sounds terrible but hear me out.

Years ago, after a string of programming jobs at, what I didn't know at the time, "boring enterprise" programming jobs, I felt like the top dog alpha supreme of developers. I sought out more pay and bigger challenges, and landed a job at a promising startup with 25 people.

This turned out to be my introduction to hard mode. I was dumped into a team with probably the eight smartest coders in the region, working on problems with huge scale, and immediately felt the fear. I cranked out code as fast as I could, as best I could, and still felt inadequate.

Then, months in, I discovered something that made everything better. My background wasn't in engineering. I went to college for Graphic Design, coding was a hobby from a young age, and a career I fell into. No one else was as interested in the UI/UX of our platform, they were deferring to me because I was constantly pushing code to improve it. This was my "superpower". That and, as it turns out, "boring enterprise" experience with Oracle, J2EE, and scaling also really comes in handy sometimes.

Years later I'm enjoying being a manager but the Imposter Syndrome is creeping back in. The difference this time is that I'm not scared of it, I see it as a challenge. I haven't found what my superpower is in this role. It causes anxiety yes, but also a drive to find a balance and purpose. If it turns out I don't have any special powers in management then maybe it's not the job for me, I'll step back and enjoy what I did previously. If I discover I'm good at it then I'll continue upward.

Everyone can rise to a position where they're incompetent. Imposter Syndrome is your brain being extra cautious. Sometimes it's off the mark, and sometimes it's exactly right. The key is that when you agree with it that you understand that's not a bad thing. Being an extra super great developer is just as useful as being a ground pounding monster of a VP of Development.

<comment><USER20> > ...urge them to find their "superpower".

Might I suggest "specialty", "focus area", or "expertise". Maybe "competitive advantage" if you're talking to business types.

I like to tell engineers that their job is to be an expert. Find some area that we need more experts in. Read, experiment, troubleshoot, tweak, document, teach, and whatever else you need to do to be the person _others_ rely on when they need an expert in that area.

<comment><USER21> For what it's worth Amazon HR specifically chose the term "superpower".

Not sure it needs to be replaced.

<comment><USER12> I'd argue that superpower construes an innate ability, potentially something that does not need future nurturing to grow. I think this is bad. A term that suggests you can grow into a niche or area of expertise would be much more encouraging for someone I'd think.

<comment><USER21> But a lot of super heroes are just regular folks who gain their special abilities (super powers). Granted after being bitten by a radioactive spider (or something of that nature).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm always reminded of a story I read from Orson Welles' daughter. Welles had dinner with her one night (he was mostly absent from her life) and she commented that her husband said she was a good writer but lacked confidence, and this was what was stopping her.

Welles derisively remarked 'Confidence? Forget confidence. If you want to write, just do a lot of it!'

I'm paraphrasing from memory, but the implication was that confidence as a prerequisite was bunk. You only get confident by doing more of it than others and realising that you're the expert now whether you like it or not. That's definitely been my experience. Every time I've been called an expert I wince because I know someone else who's better at it than me, or someone I consider more talented, or whatever. Every performance review I have is an argument with my boss where they have to reassure me I'm actually capable in my job title and among my peers. It's surreal.

I've also come to accept that marketing and pushing yourself out there is fine, as long as you don't get an unrealistic sense of your own worth. You realise there's a wide band of abilities and knowledge and you won't be able to cover them all. And that's fine. There's still value to others in putting yourself out there.

<comment><USER23> I feel that the problem is comparing yourself to others the "to be the best you must beat them" attitude.

I tend to feel that you should compete with who you were yesterday and get assistance from others i.e. learning from them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not normally one to comment here but this is just an awesome topic.

I have about 8 years experience in the industry. In the beginner of my career I did feel a bit of the impostor syndrome. Quite frankly, it was because I had this ideal of what a programmer ( or whatever buzz word title) should be. As I got on with my career I slowly realized no-body gives a shit. Its just HR that give those titles.

I also found that I accepted the fact that I will just not know everything. I will never tick all the boxes of what a job may require...

So moving forward to now. I don't care at all for titles. I just want to code and I want to TRY write some good code. I compare myself to nobody else and just talk and learn from everybody. I have learned equally from a juniors as I have from a senior developers.

I continue to chug along with the mindset that I am a crappy developer. Therefore always interested in learning and always open to whatever somebody else has to add. I will never be the smartest programmer or the best programmer. That's ok because I will learn more from the programmers that are.

I'm just enjoying the ride.

<comment><USER24> "The humble improve" \-- Wynton Marsalis :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Frankly, are we overthinking this?

IMHO, 99% of human emotions have reasons of existence. It just makes evolutionary sense (or, if you prefer, it helps us serve the intelligent maker(s) better). Maybe we SHOULD have impostor syndrome, as well as shyness and awkwardness and diffidence and stress and whatnot. Maybe we should EMBRACE them instead of treating them like unwanted baggage of lizards.

One of my memory on this: one night (2 yrs ago?), I woke up with cold sweat, with a terrible dream: I just got paged and I didn't even know where to start debugging. It's horrible time.

You know what happened next? Next few days, I compiled a list of "essential documentations" (plus all the juicy links for debugging). On-call rotation came. I did get page. Different from the dream, I did not forget all of the crappy code (that I had lovingly written). However, the list helped immensely. And whenever my teammates had on-call cold feet, I shared the list. Life rocked. (for a while....)

I was told that we humans freaked ourselves into actions. Deadlines press for action. Pressure elevates the flow and sharpens the focus. Challenges inhibit daydreams and sweeten successes.

So, again, here is my take: why can't we just embrace impostor syndrome? After all, we need some fire on our behind of get our acts together, no?

</comment><comment><USER26> Funny story, in 15 years of professional software development I never experienced the sense of imposter syndrome until very recently when I decided after 12 years at one employer (on many satisfying projects) I needed to consider expanding my employment options. AKA I started looking for a new job. Once I got a whiff of the putrid state of hiring in our industry today holy hell...

Sure, I've been successful at this for 15+ years, delivering at or above expectations at almost 100% rate with some great individual excellence tossed in for good measure. But I am 99% sure I'd never pass an interview for a new job doing exactly what I do now. Am I even a software engineer developer programmer whatever?

It has been a very disconcerting experience.

Anyway, I figure the feeling of being an imposter is just a natural subconscious reaction to what seems like an entirely alien definition of what my job is vs. what other employers seem to expect from someone doing my job. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed this disconnect as so many links/threads on HN allude to.

It certainly has given me a good deal of anxiety, though, I don't really see what choice I have but to accept this nonsense and try to prepare for it. Luckily I haven't been feeling any depression or burnout or any other obvious mood impact from the whole experience, but, I could see that happening if I had less confidence in my ability to fill in my knowledge gaps, even if it's for nothing beyond an interview.

<comment><USER27> Similar situation: I have a history of obtaining lower level positions and then quickly rising up to higher level engineering position within the same company (this has happened with two employers). I don't think this can reliably be used as a general strategy, I just have been lucky with employers. This doesn't give me a huge amount of confidence when considering my chances at getting a new job comparable to the level I'm at now.

Also the past few times I have seen the job posting for a position I've held, based on the job posting I'd assume I was unqualified. There's a bazillion buzzwords and technologies in our industry and it's difficult to account for how experience carries across related technologies (or not directly related technologies) in a job description. So employers end up just listing every technology you may touch and add an 'X years experience required'.

On the other hand, having worked with several engineers of varying backgrounds at my company and our partners I don't feel like an imposter at all in my actual abilities, knowledge, and performance.

<comment><USER28> This week I got to see the job posting for a replacement of a colleague of mine. The first requirement was 3 years of experience with a product we don't even directly use. I'm pretty sure the only reason it's in there, is that HR requires it for working in our department, even tough our specific team doesn't even touch it. The same line also requires "Java, Java script", while it's a backend Java position with literally no JavaScript work.

I already told my manager that with the maximum wage (shown in the posting) and the listed requirements, none of my peers would even try to apply. Even if they were an extremely good fit for the actual job.

<comment><USER29> The process through which a typical job posting is created is seriously broken in most organizations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My first for real full-time software engineering job was for a very small company. I was self-taught and their only software developer was leaving in 3 months, but had mostly checkout out already. The company environment was find but all the software was terrible.

Over that first year there it was basically the Klingon Rite of Ascension. Fighting fires and trying to keep the company afloat. I had no backup/mentors and if I failed then the company was done. I was near tears (or privately at tears) at a few points from frustration and stress. In the end I think this experience made me a better person for it.

First I was forced to learn how to manage stress. This was a big one and one I had never mastered before. Next I need to be able to juggle and prioritize actual company needs, not just what people told me to do. I couldn't spend all my time fixing things when our customers also needed our product to work. I also handled much of the customer support at this point because most of the issues were software related.

In any case, in the end I pulled the company back from its instability. This gave me a good amount of confidence that I am a good engineer. That no matter what gets thrown at me I can fix any of our problems and develop new systems. Even if I need to outsource some of the work to people who are better at particular platforms.

This probably isn't a healthy way to overcome impostor syndrome, but its how I did.

</comment><comment><USER31> My theory is that "impostor syndrome" is just another facet/manifestation of anxiety.

While many people do have anxiety time to time, for some the degree is high, and it manifests as the impostor syndrome. (worrying if they are good enough, or over anxious about the tasks not being done correctly, feeling not being a good performer, etc, when they are actually performing great).

I'd say, the same CBT techniques that help people deal with anxiety will help with the 'impostor syndrome' as well. (things like gradual exposure, getting used to the new situation, stepping back and accurately assessing the situation (like a third person) etc).

<comment><USER32> I dunno, I feel like imposter syndrome has a bit more existential roots rather than just a manifestation of anxiety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've read thru a bunch of the comments (many of which echo my own thoughts on my career), and have a thought:

Why is computer programming taught in universities?

Seriously. There are many people who learned some things but not what they would have wanted to learn when they look back on their life.

I wonder why programming can't be like welding [1]. There are many different types of welders, from the person welding a spacecraft, to your backyard bbq. And everything in between. Welding stainless steel is totally different from welding aluminum. And welding on alloys is like it's from a different planet.

The welding field has many certifications for different things. We depend on their work every day. Yet they don't go to college. And their mistakes can kill people.

Programmers on the other hand, should be able to have cerifications on things like data structures, communication methods, data stores & indexing, UX, etc.

That would be a much better use of people's time than what we've been doing.

[1] [https://www.aws.org/certification/page/certified-welder- prog...](https://www.aws.org/certification/page/certified-welder-program)

(EDIT): yes, I read the article, but my post is more targeted at the HN comments. For what it's worth, the article didn't reference overly-worked blue collar fields like welding, hence why I used it as an example.

<comment><USER34> Programmers are not just welders, or should not be equated to welders. Welders have a blueprint, generally, to work from. There is someone who's had to design how to form the thing being welded.

Software engineers are constantly asked to design and build the things they work on. It's not a straightforward process of sticking two things together, based on some predefined blueprint.

We make the blueprints while we code. On top of that, systems as they come together sometimes show problems that need fixes, because of the scale of the system. Then we need to completely redesign for the newer bigger problem.

Using the welding analogue, sometimes you start building a BBQ, and end up making a bicycle or a rocketship.

<comment><USER33> Good clarification. Programmers are like welders. Architects aren't. They may be welders or programmers, but they lay out the structure and define how it connects to the world.

Programming is different (way different) than architecture. In my mind, and part of the reason for the post is that we are expecting programmers to be architects. We shouldn't. It's a different discipline.

<comment><USER23> I really agree with your point on certifications. We are similar to welders in my mind as well.

In my country, our software industry holds certifications higher that degrees. Certifications require to be updated and redone every so often. Even though a degree will teach you fundamentals, I do believe you will learn those in the job and with the certification but a certification really is that.... its to certify that you are adequate in a certain technology.

All of my job interviews have required me to show them my abilities with whatever tech they require.

Another point I would like to make is that I work with people with degrees and I have certifications. Their degrees are more than 10 - 20 years for some. How much has technology changed in that time? I have to keep redoing my certification every 2 years (microsoft for example). And to me 2 years is a long time in the software industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> IMO the fix is for our industry as a whole to stop reinventing the wheel with yet-another-incompatible-alternative.

My personal imposter syndrome feelings are almost always related to either a) not knowing the "replacement" to an existing technology I am already familiar with (in almost all cases it's two steps forward one step back anyway), or b) not using a technology for a somewhat extended period of time, then coming back to it and realising that the landscape and ecosystem has completely shifted from underneath me.

The latter has hit me most hard lately in iOS development with the move to Swift (and then v2, v3), deprecation of NS*, autolayouts, APNS' http2 etc etc, and in JavaScript development.

We have far too many technologies that have established niches that all accomplish largely the same goals, but aren't transferrable. These days, boosting the toolchain for these technologies is a big feature too, which increases the differences between ecosystems. They require sometimes hundreds of hours of learning to become competent in, even for an expert in another similar technology.

It's some sort of crazy arms race that we don't seem to want to stop...

<comment><USER29> Frontend work is brutal. It's as fickle as the fashion industry, only it doesn't have quarterly updates but roughly every second Monday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yes. Make something hard. Impostor syndrome comes from feeling like you can't do the things people expect you to be able to do, so if you can point to concrete evidence that you're capable of doing something difficult (whether on a team at work or in a personal project you did 100% yourself) you'll greatly reduce any feelings of impostor syndrome you may have.

<comment><USER37> But what if you struggle with it (even if you eventually finish)? What if you look back and think that code could be much better? There are still so many things that can creep into your mind making you think you aren't as good as you might actually be. Sure it may reduce a little, but it is a temporary relief. At least in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> After 20 years as a programmer with various employers/clients, I noticed the impostor syndrome when I was alone on projects (or in small teams). But when I was working with big teams in traditional fields like bank or retail, I felt something more akin to the Dunning-Kruger effect...

When alone, I compare myself to people in the videos I watch, People like Hickey, Carmack, Crockford, etc. I can't handle a candle to them! But when in BigCorp, intertia is massive, people souls have long been sucked out, and you feel shackled. This make you believe that you can accomplish way more than the median person (which is of course probably wrong).

<comment><USER39> This is a great explanation. I've long thought about these two conflicting effects, and I think as you pointed out it has something to do with what nowadays gets described as 'culture'. Dunning-Kruger seems to dominate in the 'everyone gets a trophy' culture in which I was raised; whereas in cultures that (at least in the way they speak about themselves) pride themselves on meritocracy, leaderboards, stack ranking, and the like, the impostor syndrome probably takes over.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Imposter syndrome is caused by improperly comparing ones own abilities to others.

The better one is at modeling another person the more accurate they will compare themselves to others, and from that the less severe their imposter syndrome will be. This is a learned skill.

>Is there a fix for impostor syndrome?

To outright nuke imposter syndrome permanently first some new vocabulary that will explain how to do this:

In Pali there is the word māna, which is sometimes called conceit, but is definitely not a standard use for the word conceit, and is very much not English. A quote to explain the concept behind the word māna:

"There is conceit or pride when we consider ourselves important. Because of conceit we may compare ourselves with others. There can be conceit when we think ourselves better, equal or less than someone else. We may believe that there can be conceit only when we think ourselves better than someone else, but this is not so. There can be a kind of upholding of ourselves, of making ourselves important, while we compare ourselves with someone else, no matter in what way, and that is conceit." source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81na](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C4%81na)

These comparison cause many kinds of anxiety, including imposter syndrome. The solution to not create māna, but to instead create a kind of comparison that I think of as an "Apples and Oranges" comparison. It is seeing the differences in everything, in a way that has all of the benefits of a normal comparison, but one that does not construct a better and a worse. Everything is different. Everyone has their own advantages and disadvantages. With no better and worse, especially when this better or worse is attached to ones identity, there will be no more psychological stress in this way.

<comment><USER23> awesome post. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Being prepared. This is what I have found to be the most helpful. I'm an SDM at a big tech company, and when I was hired I thought they must have made a mistake. I felt like an imposter in meetings and managing my team for a long time. I was able to relieve the anxiety by focusing on always being the most prepared person in the room (ie. read everything before hand, try to anticipate questions and answers, speak with confidence [fake it 'til you make it]). Eventually this just became second nature and the thing I was doing didn't feel like I was an imposter anymore. I just recently changed roles to a new org and I feel the same anxiety creeping back in, so this a pep talk for myself too. The thing to remember is you got where you are for some reason, try to think about the positive attributes you know you have, and just keep practicing the rest. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER42> > This is perhaps why women may be more likely to feel like impostors, because > they typically do not see themselves reflected and reinforced—in some sense, > validated—in the same way that men do.

For some reason, I was irked by this comment which seems to be completely unsubstantiated.

<comment><USER43> The author says you can feel like an imposter when you're a minority, whether gender or race. I think there's much evidence out there about women that are not being validated in the tech and startup space the same way as men... Just look at female founder statistics.

<comment><USER42> I just find it best to keep those kinds of complaints extremely specific. Maybe the founder validation statistics you're talking about have changed since the last study was done. Imagine we'd fixed all race and sex discrimination problems (bear with me for a moment). By leaving unfounded statements like the above littered across the internet, we'd be ensuring that future generations of minorities also feel a vague sense of inferiority. This causes the exact kind of uncertainty the author is concerned about.

<comment><USER43> I interpreted that you could feel imposter syndrome simply from the fact that you don't look like you belong and thus minorities have a more difficult time because they can't hide because their difference is literally visible.

When it comes to women or minorities in tech or female founders, if the statistics aren't good enough I believe it's easily visible. Even Google has an atrocious amount of Hispanic or African American engineers. If you work in tech look around your office or at the next tech conference. The lack of visibility is a big problem because it gives the subtle message that you don't belong.

Future generations of minorities won't feel a vague sense of inferiority from reading comments like these, they will have the benefit of seeing who was right or wrong. In fact they might be more amazed by the amount of ignorance...

<comment><USER42> People ride to the level of their expectations. If you expect them to feel isolated and alone because others "don't look like them", it's more likely they will. If you expect them to not work about it and do good work, they're more likely to do that. And the end result is more diversity, just like when East Asian and Indian engineers started working in tech, did good work, and continued to be gainfully employed.

I'm not denying there are systemic problems that affect different ethnic groups differently, but I'm very confident that moaning about visible diversity in tech is not the best way to fix it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Stop treating being an impostor as something bad. See yourself as con artist who succeeds in senior developer, architect and management jobs without the required skills.

<comment><USER45> Impostor syndrome is bad because you fear being fired for not being able to do your job, or being dropped as a speaker because you're not worth listening to, or your career stalling because you can't compete with other people who seem to be better than you.

Suggesting that sufferers _accept that might actually be true_ is not helpful.

<comment><USER46> > Suggesting that sufferers accept that might actually be true is not helpful.

On what are you basing that? It's an interesting insight. Thinking of the world as one big pool of impostors might be equally relieving.

<comment><USER45> _Thinking of the world as one big pool of impostors might be equally relieving._

He said "See yourself as con artist...", not "See _everyone_ as con artist..". Believing that most people feel this way may well be helpful. Believing that you're not good at what you do but you've successfully faked it definitely isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I have always had impostor syndrome, but also a somewhat revelatory idea that most people are just human beings full of shit too. Let me explain.

In college, I revered my professors - always thought of them on a higher plane, so much smarter than everybody. Same with doctors. Then I go to grad school, and realize that my fellow classmates (who have become professors, or the ones in MD/PhD programs doctors/surgeons), are smart indeed - but not on some super-human super-intelligent level who's batting way above my level like I felt in undergrad. It's like all of a sudden I realized that people in those positions are humans like me and aren't on some higher plane. I mean, maybe there are a few people who truly are. But most of the people I revered are regular joes (who most definitely work hard). Similar to looking up to adults when you're a kid, then realizing they're human beings with flaws once you grow up.

On the flip side, I constantly feel like I don't know what I'm doing compared to other people. Doesn't matter what level I reach in my career, it's all the same - that data scientist over there _truly_ knows his stuff, I'm just faking it. That manager over there _truly_ knows his stuff, I'm just faking it. And you know what? Maybe there's some truth to it. But the truth I've found is that if that's the case, there's probably an exceeding number of people who are 'faking it' too, so I'm in good company at least.

I also tend to conflate 'faking it' with confidence. In grad school, all of my published papers would have so many caveats - "the results suggest that maybe possibly potentially .... " or "the results suggest that ____, with the caveat" or "we possibly found evidence..." My advisor always had to change my wording around to be at least a little more definitive because journals would pick up on the wishy-washy statements. Now in the corporate world, people expect definitive statements because putting 'possibly, maybe' in every sentence doesn't exude confidence that higher ups or customers want. So in a way when I say something in a confident manner when I'm only 80% to 90% confident, I feel like I'm faking it.

</comment><comment><USER48> > I asked some of my male colleagues whether they also experience impostor > syndrome and got a resounding yes. In researching the topic for this column, > I read an article that suggested even Albert Einstein felt this way at > times.

Damn.

It's hard to compare oneself objectively with others. Not that it's ever such a great idea. For others, you only know what they accomplish, plus whatever they're willing to share about the process. But for oneself, everything is laid bare. All the uncertainty, false starts, mistakes, dead ends, and so on.

<comment><USER49> I've thought about it in the converse. Imagine it's just after Einstein releases his paper explaining the theory of special relativity. Given what we know now about it, and it's ramifications, if Einstein truly understood this idea at anything close to this level we do now, how difficult must it have been to explain the bedrock concepts to those first few people that read it. Simply because it was such a radical idea, whether true or not, it must have been a pretty tall order to get his peers on board, as it changed so much about the current understanding of the universe.

I also think in this frame of mind for people like Copernicus, and how controversial his mathematical formulas and expertise must have been, simply because of the magnitude of the sea change that ensued from confirming the ideas.

<comment><USER48> As I recall, his intuitive insights about special relativity were the easy part. But he had to learn the mathematics required to coherently explain them. There must have been many opportunities for confusion and self doubt.

<comment><USER49> And that's my point. Just imagine how many times he must have heard some variation on the phrase "Newton has been right this whole time. His laws and ideas are too big to fail"

The accumulation of frustration of not being able to elucidate what is obvious to your inner thoughts, to the satisfaction of your peers, precipitates impostor syndrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What's the opposite? I feel like I'm smarter than everybody else here (big 5 tech). Including Principal engineers, CEOs and VPs. I'll talk to some random engineer who might impress me once in a while but for the most part, there's a lot of smart people but there's a lot of dumb people. I consider myself near the top.

I know this might feel like /r/iamverysmart but I'm self aware enough to know that what I feel is not necessarily the truth. How do I combat this feeling of superiority?

<comment><USER51> Prove it and erase the doubt once and for all.

Too many people try not to feel superior but secretly feel deep down if they tried to prove it they would come out superior, and so they keep a subconscious sense of superiority under a veil of humility.

You will either discover you were not as great as you thought or you actually are the best. There's no other way.

<comment><USER52> Exactly. We tend to judge other people by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.

Similarly, we tend to judge others' intelligence by their achievements, but we judge our own by _what we could do_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I get it from time to time, most recently I got a massive chunk of it when I was hired as an external examiner at my old university.

Whenever I do, I remind myself of a line from my first managing mentor that's stuck with me over the years. He was(is?) this immensely talented guy who worked 70 hours a week, not because he had to but because he loved to, today he runs two companies he started on his own since then. Anyway, I was a fresh manager and had been mentored for about two months and I couldn't figure out why he was always so confident in any part of the professional life. Having him as a mentor I'd seen behind the veil, he had the same amounts of uncertainty and doubt as the rest of us. So I asked him how he was so confident in his decision making and natural feeling of belonging. He told me "fake it till you make it".

I may have misunderstood what he meant by it. But I took the combination of what he said and his own uncertainty to heart, and now I remind myself that everyone feels like imposters, so you just pretend to belong with the other imposters and eventually you'll actually feel like you belong.

It's worked wonders for me at least, but it obviously only works when you have the required credentials. If you don't you need to own up to your mistake and get out.

</comment><comment><USER54> I have the feeling 90% of people who think they have imposter syndrome are just bad at what they do.

Just because you work with people who are even wors doesn't make you good.

And just because people who are worse than you act like they not doesn't make you better either.

<comment><USER55> Sounds like you're pretty arrogant.

But you do have a point that by definition 50% of developers are below average. Nearly all developers are below average in at least some part of their professional skills - but that is just normal.

For example doctors are the same, but a below average doctor is still qualified and useful. Below average developers ie (half of us) are still useful, doesn't make you an impostor.

<comment><USER54> Oh no.

For years I had the impression that I'm an impostor.

One day this changed, I found that most people just talk big but are not better than me, but I'm still average, they are just below average.

While yes, I'm still quite useful, I could be a better version of myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I think imposter syndrome can come from 'fronting', trying to always appear perfect, always have all the answers, etc. which leads to ever-increasing fear that people will 'find you out'.

Be humble and honest. Don't present yourself as "the expert". Ask questions. Listen to people. Say "I don't know" if you don't know. You'll be surprised how often the response is "me neither!"

<comment><USER57> > Don't present yourself as "the expert"

This is a requirement for some jobs, like being a consultant :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The lack of the imposter syndrome for me as a programmer is a signal that I start to plateau. Therefore I kind of search to attain it by either negotiate a higher pay, or start working with a new technology, or switch jobs. I lived with this syndrome for the most part of my 12 years of professional programming.

<comment><USER59> I work in management and I treat impostor syndrome as a signal, like you.

I have recognized that I feel impostor syndrome when I am surrounded by people who are great at what they do. Great coders, greatminds and great leaders. How could I possibly compete with these people, my subconscious says.

Well, this is how I grow. Steel sharpens steel. I have learned to accept that I am good at what I do, even when others are great at what they do. If I feel impostor syndrom, it means I am surrounded by people who, given management is good, will make everyone in the team grow and prosper. I will connect with the people I can learn the most from.

When I no longer feels impostor syndrome it is because I am surrounded by people who all treat me as their mentor or senior - and it is time to move on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The truth is you are an imposter. No one fulfills the perfect ideal of whatever role they are playing (employee, manager, parent, etc). Recognize and accept that you're an imposter and continually reach for the ideal.

There are various stresses (will I lose my job? etc) that are reasonable and tangential to this idea of "imposter syndrome". The particular trick to avoiding stress _directly related_ to this imposter syndrome is to dismiss it as the scientifically unsound and useless idea that it is: that is to say, it shouldn't exist: or put another way, your self-worth doesn't _have_ to be derived from your capability, nor should it. Decouple your self-worth from your professional ability; this may be hard in general or in our particular culture/zeitgeist, but I think it's a losing battle any other way.

<comment><USER61> I'm not sure that means you are an imposter. If your coworkers are equally unfit for the job as defined by whatever high bar you've set for yourself, then you belong there just as much as they do and you likely have a higher bar for yourself than your employer has for hiring people. I agree that everyone should strive to be the best that they can be but I think imposter syndrome is a delusion some people have where they feel that they know less than everyone around them and they worry their colleagues will find them out, when in reality they are quite qualified. It doesn't automatically follow that if you recognize that you haven't met your own standard that you would also believe you haven't met your employers standards. I regularly feel I haven't done a good enough job by my own standard but realize it is good enough for the goals my employer has with regard to the work I'm doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I have a four year degree in Math/Comp Sci.

Most everyone else in my group have PhD's, and I don't feel I have impostor syndrome.

I also have never been afraid of asking 'stupid questions' in meetings etc.

If they hired me, they must have done so for a reason (PhD's are not good a writing production code, their words).

My advice for people who might have impostor syndrome, just put it out of your mind, do a good job, and look for good feedback.

People with PhD's or Olympic gold medals or famous rock stars are people just like you and me. They have some skills that are very developed, but others skills may be shockingly lacking.

We are all a blend of abilities, and we are all on a journey. Where you are on your path right now is exactly where you need to be, just as they are exactly where they need to be.

</comment><comment><USER63> It seems to be a very 'millennial' syndrome. Were people complaining of imposter syndrome 20 or 30 years ago? I wonder if it's because people born after, say 1990, didn't have to 'hack' on computers much growing up, and hence lack some of the environmental osmosis comfort level some older folks have. Or could it be that programming has proliferated enough as a profession, and programmers generally lack the social skills needed to mentor younger generations, that more people seem to be experiencing this syndrome these days?

<comment><USER64> I wouldn't call it "millennial" rather than "modern", and not just because I _despise_ the American generation names.

I believe impostor syndrome requires both a bright mind, a successful career in a mental labor job (academia, engineering, ...), and exposure to minds that seem _brighter_. I doubt impostor syndrome is much of a problem in physical labor jobs, as physical labor is easily observed, both by others and by yourself (you can't hide failure in installing a tire on a rim).

Higher education, autodidactism through the internet and mental labor jobs are much more wide-spread than they were a generation or two ago. Here in Denmark, education inflation has basically made Ph.D.'s the norm.

The extremely filtered connectivity of social networks only showing each others "best side" making them appear perfect, as well as a vast amount of information available on the internet from brilliant scholars making your knowledge seem insignificant, are great catalysts for an inferiority complex. Combine that with an accomplished career, and you have impostor syndrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Makes sense to me. It's a vicious cycle: feel like you're an imposter, get depressed and anxious, be less effective at your job, feel like you're an imposter.

<comment><USER66> And depression can cause you to overweight negative memories and discount or ignore positive memories, which seems like it would exacerbate anxiety and imposter syndrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I often have conversations with some of my juniors about imposter syndrome. It's interesting how each of them think of it differently and apply it to themselves differently as compared to their peers.

Some don't seem to have it at all and I've been unable to grasp why one is different than the other. Sometimes it seems connected to self-confidence and sometimes it is not.

Personally, these days I'm feeling it's connected to their seniors and how they interact with them. Or at least how that interaction goes. It's something that I've been pondering over but haven't gotten far enough along to have a theory worthy over a blog post or anything.

As for me, a senior with a dozen plus years experience; I don't feel I've really suffered from imposter syndrome. I've always felt comfortable in what I know and the role I play in each of the positions I've had over the years. I've always been honest with myself and others in what I know and don't know. I suppose that helps in that aspect.

The only times I can think of that I felt the pains of imposter syndrome over the years is during interviews. Mostly trying to equate what I know and my experience with the expectations of people I don't know in an environment I'm not familiar with.

</comment><comment><USER68> > _Impostor syndrome is associated with overwork, with an overly keen focus on > pleasing others, and with an almost desperate drive to constantly achieve > more._

We know the wages have stagnated, we know there are fewer and fewer jobs, and stiffer competition.

Sane people as a result, overwork, try to achieve more, and try to please superiors to get head.

It's just survival instincts. When you're on a sinking Titanic, you're pretty stressed to get to be one of the people on one of the boats!

The alternative is to get together with your buddies, face your fate and play some music together, while everyone else is scrambling.

Since playing music (playing computer games in your mom's basement) is frowned upon, most people choose the 'try to make it' route. That route is stressful - especially when you KNOW in your heart, you shouldn't be on that boat. Knowing you shouldn't be on the boat, and yet trying to get on it, feels shitty. Yes, yes it does.

Another way to look at it is, are we really on a sinking Titanic? Or are some fuckers hoarding money at our expense making it so? I don't know that people are intelligent enough to figure that one out, so it goes.

</comment><comment><USER69> From my experience, if you become too entangled in abstract tasks, this impostor feelings starts to inevitably creep in, as you don't have an actual measure of success for what you are doing.

So my take is that once you start feeling that, you should find a manual hobby, something that you produce with your hands, by your effort, even if simple things. In my case, I sew. Since I do manual work, crafting solutions for mundane things, I see the results of what I'm doing, I have a direct contact between doing something and achieving something — again, even if just a mundane thing.

This takes me out of my abstract world, where I tend to get lost, and from measuring myself by the standards of others in tasks that are not quantifiable in terms of real competence. By doing manual work, I take a much needed break from the my intelectual work and demands. For a bit I feel more like a _normal_ person, competent enough to do this particular manual job.

</comment><comment><USER43> This article was very refreshing for me because each bullet point was like yes this is totally how I feel. Even reading about this issue gives me a lot of anxiety.

I built a 6 figure business on my own from $1500, imported my first goods from overseas, been validated with mentorship from 7 and 8 figure business owners, I'm now a board member of an org in my industry, and I still have extreme amounts of imposter syndrome.

Even when I realized that the reason I'm not as successful as some of my peers is because they started with a bigger investment than $1500 or that they built their success over years... I can't help but be anxious over what I've achieved in comparison to theirs when I end up thinking about it. I try not to because it's not productive.

I wish there were more resources to overcome imposter syndrome as a founder or business owner.

</comment><comment><USER70> I've been trying to coach my wife out of this for years and years. She's very smart, dedicated, hard working, talented, analytical and you name it -- she's a fantastic person...

And she has perma-doubts. She recently refused to apply to a directorship position in her job, because she didn't think she could do it.... even tho we both agreed that she'd do a better job than the last _3_ in that same position... And still, she doubts... I keep repeating her that the only thing preventing her from doing anything is _herself_ and that _I_ have zero doubt she'd grow to be excellent at that job as well...

Oh well, it'll take time :-)

</comment><comment><USER71> The fix for imposter syndrome is to stop comparing one's self to others.

The definition of an imposter is: "a person who pretends to be someone else in order to deceive others, especially for fraudulent gain."

So, if you feel you're an imposter, it's only because you're comparing yourself to others who you feel are either doing it better than you in their respective roles, or perhaps worse still you fear they could do your job better than you.

In my experience, as a man with a semi successful software business and no formal education in the industry - the only thing that has kept me from falling under the imposter syndrome bus is just working harder and ignoring others around me.

I love this snippet I saved from a Reddit post some years ago, I come back to it from time to time when I've demotivated myself - typically by comparing myself to others more "successful" than me:

\--

You do not make progress in climbing a "mountain" (neither real or ethereal) by standing around gawking and whining about how much further or faster others are climbing it.

You make progress climbing by putting one foot in front of the other, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day.

You gauge your progress ONLY and SOLELY on how much further up that mountain you are NOW than you were a minute, hour or day ago.

As you continue to climb, you use the distance you have recently come to motivate yourself to climb further and faster than YOU have done in the past.

You only need worry about others when they are directly in your way and preventing you from making forward progress -- and even then it is best to simply sidestep them and continue on your journey up.

When you reach some higher plateau, if you then want to take a breather and greet the fellow climbers that have reached a similar plateau, that is fine, but it does not matter if they have reached it faster or slower, before or even after you -- the journey further upward for everyone is in the future, not the past.

\--

P.S. I killed all my social media except for Linked In - that helped a bunch too.

</comment><comment><USER72> Weird, this seems so common. I would guess that most of the people who feel like frauds, actually are to some extent.

The impostor syndrome concept is so popular because people want to believe it. It provides a simple black-and-white answer: I deserve my success, the unpleasant emotions in the back of my head are just the result of impostor syndrome, totally normal. But in fact, success is usually the result of both ability and luck. Successful people have above-average ability and luck. So from the point of view of a typical successful person, most equally-able peers are less successful.

</comment><comment><USER73> Becoming a confident, capable solo developer. If you're able to make stuff by yourself at decent speed and with good features, you can generally be confident in your own skills based off results.

This doesn't account for interpersonal skills or skills for working in a team, but if your imposter syndrome is about programming skills, just program by yourself.

BUT, important to add is that you should be focused on improving, learning, and experimenting. If you're just staying in your comfort zone you won't be doing much more than busybody work.

</comment><comment><USER74> In my experience - a large minority of developers, especially among young, inexperienced, perhaps insecure developers, act like condescending know-it- all's their colleagues. I think this is borne out of a fear of being incompetent in comparison to other people who are also in the field.

For those who are not this way, or try not to be this way, I believe the festering of gross dog-eat-you cultures in regards to hire-ability can also fester imposter syndrome in many of us younger devs.

</comment><comment><USER75> Gawd I get sick of hearing about impostor syndrome. Some people who claim to have it really are impostors and use the syndrome to somehow indicate they aren't.

No one knows everything. But do you know enough to get done what you need to in an economically feasible timeframe relative to your peers? Or do you perhaps do even better than they do? Not an impostor. If not then maybe you are an impostor and should work on that. It's not a fixed state.

</comment><comment><USER76> The worst thing about impostor syndrome for me is knowing whether you're actually suffering from it, or whether you're actually an impostor.

It really is a vicious cycle.

<comment><USER77> What i think helps, is not even asking if you are an impostor because it can lead doubting yourself. We focus on doing our best work, then it will be to others to determine whether we are good or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> I took the nuclear option and switched careers (there were other reasons too, but it was one of the big ones) from academia to software engineering. Since then I've stayed in a job no longer than 3 years and the constant need to learn may have killed it off, which seems paradoxical.

Then again, I'm also honest to a fault since the switch. Nobody can think I'm an imposter if it's obvious when I don't know stuff!

</comment><comment><USER79> I feel it and it works to my advantage. My workplace is very good about reminding everyone that imposter syndrome is normal. Knowing that, I use it to motivate me to try harder and get better.

I guess part of this is coupling the inevitable feeling of "I don't belong" with the idea that "I can belong". Knowing it's normal keeps me from being truly worried about losing my job (for the most part).

</comment><comment><USER80> I don't think I've ever had a job I was qualified for, and to me that's totally ok. My personal view is that if you can land a job in a week of interviewing, and/or you feel very comfortable/qualified to do your job, then you are probably "punching way below your weight class" and need to reach higher. If you're not faking your way through at least something then you're not learning or growing.

</comment><comment><USER81> This is what helped me: on a level, everyone in every industry is bullshitting one way or another because the future is unwritten. Who knows what may happen tomorrow, you can only deal with it in the best way you can.

Just try and do the best job possible you can at the time. There will always be people who know more but everything is a learning process, you'll get to that level eventually.

</comment><comment><USER82> Are people who are predisposed to imposter syndrome worse hires because this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy? Are there even indicators?

<comment><USER83> > Are people who are predisposed to imposter syndrome worse hires because this > becomes a self fulfilling prophecy?

That's an easy one: nope! All the best people I've worked with have struggled with not feeling good enough while simultaneously doing stand-out work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Consistency, a non-didactic intellectual environment, and free speech go a long way.

I'm only speculating that "non-didactic" is key. But let me put it to the test:

Does anybody have an example of a person who swooped into a FLOSS mailing list and posted a long didactic screed that ended up qualitatively changing that FLOSS project for the better?

</comment><comment><USER85> From the wikipedia page:

> It is not considered a psychological disorder, and is not among the > conditions described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental > Disorders (commonly known as the DSM).

However, I'm wondering if that is justified. Also, I'm wondering if a treatment for a mood disorder would affect impostor syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER86> I fixed it when I stopped comparing myself with other people. Why care what other people are doing? I look at myself and focused on what I'm doing. How well I do my job has absolutely nothing to do with how well they do their job. And more importantly, life is bigger than my job. It's not worth stressing over.

</comment><comment><USER87> What do they call it when people wish they had impostor syndrome instead of just being an impostor? I have that.

<comment><USER88> That's not something you're equipped to tell objectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Fake it 'til you make it. The only way to get ahead in life. I've been doing it for the past decade and it's worked out well.

(To be clear, this doesn't mean go around and blow hot air. It means to believe in yourself despite what the little voices in your head may be telling you)

</comment><comment><USER90> I have an impostor syndrome when I look at myself. I have a god complex when I look at the alternative...

</comment><comment><USER91> I'll tell you what pierced the veil for me: being involved with code reviews and looking at other people's code. "Oh, THIS is what constitutes senior software engineering? Then I'm much more skilled than I thought I was!"

</comment><comment><USER92> Is it taken for granted that the concerns of not being adequate always are unfounded? What if you observe other people who are inadequate and shouldn't be there? You can't have impostor syndrome on their behalf, can you?

</comment><comment><USER93> I found Amanda Palmer's advice on this helpful, she calls it the 'fraud police': [https://youtu.be/eA8XiC3m7vw](https://youtu.be/eA8XiC3m7vw)

</comment><comment><USER94> Well yeah, have confidence in yourself and stop judging yourself harshly.

Would you go around calling your coworkers impostors because they aren't smart enough? No? Then don't do it to yourself. Yes? Stop being a jerk.

</comment><comment><USER95> I for one don't feel smart enough to even experience impostor syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER96> I think honesty is a good way to fight against this syndrome. State what you know, state when you have problems, and be open about your results. That way simply doing your best should be enough.

</comment><comment><USER97> Is there a way to tell the difference between your being underconfident in abilities that you are actually competent at, and where you actually do require remediation?

</comment><comment><USER98> I think working at a company where you're one of the most valued employees, even if only one job out of ten, it will mostly cure your impostor syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER99> I've never had imposter syndrome. I've always been honest about my qualifications at interviews and I've always purposefully taken jobs where I barely meet the qualifications. It's a great way to learn. This also meant the first few months I spent plenty of extra time learning the technology that I didn't know. If the company hired me despite knowing that I didn't know all of the required technology, they must be willing to give me ramp up time.

</comment><comment><USER100> Working at Elite MegaBigCorp for the last 6 years... without a degree. My imposter syndrome has become epic.

Now I just want to leave the industry.

Can I retire yet?

</comment><comment><USER101> No surprise to me. Of course the research quantities it, but I always had a gut feeling of this being the case.

</comment><comment><USER102> There's a fix, of course. But it works only for a _real_ impostor syndrome, not for the fake ones.

</comment><comment><USER103> For me doing my own thing helped a lot. I learned that I can build and run something successfull on my own.

</comment><comment><USER104> I have the opposite of impostor syndrome. I always feel like I deserve more than I get.

</comment><comment><USER105> Look at the worth of the things you do, not at the worth of who you are.

</comment><comment><USER106> Yes: dissolution of ego.

</comment><comment><USER107> Realizing the feeling is common helps.

theimposterroster.com

</comment><comment><USER108> Aaaand self promotion:

[https://vadosware.io/post/the-cure-for-impostor-syndrome- is-...](https://vadosware.io/post/the-cure-for-impostor-syndrome-is-knowing- things/)

tl;dr - Stop claiming to be an expert at things you haven't delved into deeply. Conversely, if you've delved into a subject deeply, there's a high chance you won't feel like an impostor. If you don't have time (or resources) to delve into something deeply, and understand thoroughly, accept that fact and move on.

<comment><USER109> Absolutely false. Being aware of your need to learn and improve is perfectly normal and healthy.

Impostor syndrome hits experts, often when they are at their peak, while beginners rarely experience it, hence the name "syndrome".

<comment><USER108> Could you restate what was "false"? Are you referring to the article or my comment?

I didn't mean to state that being aware of your need to learn and improve isn't normal or healthy -- but you can't learn about _everything_. You literally don't have the time to learn (and practice, and implement in production) everything as deeply and thoroughly to make you a tried and true expert. You have to cut and run at some point, if you want to get anything done. If you know anyone that constantly keeps every single piece of the actual "stack" (and I don't mean AWS + your apps, I mean down to the assembly at the very least) in their head, please direct me to them so I can learn how they do it.

I don't think widely considered experts experience the impostor syndrome in the same way that I see it explained. Experts on postgres internals don't wonder if they're experts on postgres internals... _Maybe_ they worry if they're good application developers, but that's a different thing.

<comment><USER110> > I don't think widely considered experts experience the impostor syndrome in > the same way that I see it explained. Experts on postgres internals don't > wonder if they're experts on postgres internals...

Um. I'm an expert on PG internals. And I get impostor syndrome on stuff related to PG internals.

<comment><USER108> But you don't get impostor syndrome on PG internals itself do you?

If you do, could you expand on the parts of PG internals that you know the best (I assume that's what you've written/hacked on the most), and the parts that you feel you don't know enough to be an authorative source on?

A sub-point of my post was that maybe people should avoid statements like "I'm an expert at X" for a sufficiently complicated X. Maybe just say "I have a lot of experience using X's feature Y, and dealing with Z when it occurs".

<comment><USER110> > But you don't get impostor syndrome on PG internals itself do you?

I do.

> If you do, could you expand on the parts of PG internals that you know the > best (I assume that's what you've written/hacked on the most), and the parts > that you feel you don't know enough to be an authorative source on?

I've hacked, and in some of the cases authored, on many parts of postgres (I'm a committer in the project), including physical and logical replication, durability, locking, executor, JIT compilation, good chunks of the planner, ... There's a few parts of postgres that I don't know as well (SSI, some of the PLs, gin/gist/spgist), but even there I know a good bit.

But that doesn't really matter. Even on code that _I_ personally wrote and committed I get impostor syndrome like feelings. I've learned mechanisms to cope and continue regardless. But I consciously have to do it.

I don't think you should disregard the fact that other people get impostor syndrome quite so blithely.

<comment><USER108> Thanks for the feedback -- assuming you didn't mind, I've updated the post with the conversation here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> acm.org again... do they still block HN readers because they're an 'automated process' ?

</comment><comment><USER112> Get better at what you want to do.

</comment><comment><USER113> Does anyone else get that feeling like, "am I the only one who sees what a load of shit this is?" I don't think it's imposter syndrome per se, but it's related. It's like, "I'm the only one who can see the truth."

An example: years ago my old crooked boss brought everyone in to his huge office to tell us why he couldn't afford to give people the pay rise they'd been asking for. With a straight face and with his Aston Martin parked in plain sight behind him. He gave some sob story about how a friend had come round his house to ask for a loan and how he was so poor he could only afford to lend the guy £800, even though his wife didn't want him to. It was pathetic. At the end of the meeting I walked out and duly started laughing, only for people to reprimand me, "he's doing his best for us! Didn't you hear the story about his friend?!"

So since then I've learnt to keep my mouth shut. Just yesterday I was in a meeting where we were giving estimates on things we knew nothing about. On the way back I glanced at people's screens and there must have been a hundred people pushing numbers around on excel spreadsheets for presumably no reason.

Quite possibly everyone else is just keeping their mouths shut too. And now we all go around doing pointless shit all day, every day.

Just now I saw a hare run across the field outside the office and thought, "you lucky bastard."

<comment><USER42> All I've got is your word that he's crooked. There are totally reasonable ways that people can have a fancy looking Aston Martin and be dead broke at the same time (used cars, financing, underwater on loan, etc).

Estimates are guesses by nature, and it's not surprising you know nothing about them.

If you hate your job that much, what are you doing about it?

It's weird to see the top post on HN be an immature and empathy-barren rant that is completely irrelevant to the article.

<comment><USER113> Yes it's a rant. It's born entirely out of frustration on a bad day.

I called him crooked because he dealt drugs to his favourite staff, or gave them coke as a reward. He was eventually on Crime Watch UK for fraud. The pay rise was to get people up to minimum wage.

Not that that matters - it was still a rant. I'm not going to apologise for that, though. Sometimes it happens.

<comment><USER113> For anyone interested: [https://www.mirror.co.uk/opinion/money-opinion/p-s- investiga...](https://www.mirror.co.uk/opinion/money-opinion/p-s- investigates/fury-over-graham-ross-ross-534412)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Why is this article about women? Men suffer from it just the same. There seems to be this perception that men are somehow immune to the various work related shit. That's not the case at all.

The best fix I've been able to find is to note and recall significant achievements: delivering projects, getting promoted, getting hired by top companies in the field, graduating with honors from one of the top schools. Think rationally about this, and there's really no reason to complain.

<comment> cup-of-tea This is a good question. Downvoted because it's unfashionably gender neutral, of course. This post should be titled "Is there a fix for impostor syndrome for women?" If you're a man just deal with it, as usual.

<comment><USER115> the article acknowledges that it is also an issue for men. There is no reason to imagine the 'fix' only applies to women.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> Imposter syndrome immediately goes away as soon as you make your employer more money than they are paying you.

<comment><USER109> You are touching on something that most post ignored.

When a significant number of employees suffer impostor syndrome that's a symptom of an overly competitive environment.

Reminding your employees that they are expected to be the best engineers in the world once a day it's a good way to delay promotions and salary raises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> What is imposter syndrome?</comment>


A Lot of People Are Saying - <AUTHOR> http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/04/a-lot-of-people-are-saying <comment><USER2> If you haven't had a chance to watch this documentary, it's worth a look. It's like a Christopher Guest movie, minus the actors.</comment>


China's 'citizen scores' gets people barred from flights – like Black Mirror - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizens-scores-barred-from-flights <comment><USER2> FWIW, [https://www.google.com/amp/www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2...](https://www.google.com/amp/www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/01/04/2016-brings- irs-power-over-passports-use-of-private-debt-collectors/)

Ultimately, the major role of government is to provide structure and order. Sometimes, that means coaxing the marginal elements, relative to your societal norms, to conform. This exists in every society, and IT/IS and globalization simply have made the means much more effective.</comment>


Richard Stallman Explains [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUibaPTXSHk <comment><USER2> Hats off to the interviewer, I thought he did a good job of curbing Stallman and keeping him on topic. He does have this fantastic meandering style that would undermine his agenda if his audience has a short attention span. Like so many of us these days.

I first read about RMS in 1999 in an Australian PC Authority magazine, it also featured an interview with Linux Torvalds. The distinction between the two personalities was felt keenly at the time as well. RMS really hasn't changed in those 18 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> People do not like RMS's "extremeness" for "free" software. But, I personally thing that - if this level of "extremeness" was/is not given by RMS then "free" movement might died within couple of years with loosely couple definition and then more loosely definition of free software by organizations (supported by "evil" companies).

</comment><comment><USER4> Ever since I listened to this episode of the Linux Action Show [0] I can't take RMS serious anymore. He bases everything he believes on one assumption he doesn't dare to argue himself: "Proprietary software is evil." That is it.

When you attack his values and stances, he falls back to that sentence. When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms? He comes back to "Proprietary software is evil" in the end. He is incapable of defending beyond that point. I think Bryan makes some very good points in the podcast below [0] that RMS fails to answer properly to.

I love open source, I love the philosophy, I want to use as much FOSS as possible and I see how it ultimately will protect our society, I get that. But I see no evil whatsoever in someone making a software tool and selling only the binaries to someone who is happy to use said binaries under the terms the seller and buyer agree upon. That to me is freedom, nobody is forced in that scenario.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=radmjL5OIaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=radmjL5OIaA)

<comment><USER5> _" When you argue: But aren't you restricting freedom when you would keep a creator from sharing his software under his own terms?"_

I hope you're aware that this is the oldest argument in the book.

It literally goes back to Plato and arguments about how you can be free if you're not free to make other people slaves.

<comment><USER6> Your argument: Not giving away what you wrote for free under the terms dictated by Richard Stallman is literally slavery.

<comment><USER7> Yes, because you becomes dependent of the good will of the seller if you encounter bugs, limitations, incompatible hardware or if the OS updates in incompatible ways.

<comment><USER8> If you use FOSS only, you still remain dependent on the maintainers of your stack since realistically speaking you don't have the time to understand and hack every piece of software you rely on.

<comment><USER9> Just because you yourself cannot be competent in everything, does not mean that being dependent on a monopoly is the same as having to buy certain things from people who are more competent at producing or maintaining them than you are.

Noone guarantees you that a year from now you will be able to find anyone who is willing to fix your plumbing. That does not mean you might as well have proprietary Microplumb products installed in your house that noone can repair or extend without permission from Microplumb Inc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He is obviously brilliant. The interviewer wants to steer him into being a crazy nut corner. Pepsi vs. Coke.

I realize historically there was only low level software that existed. These days we've got much higher level services which really could benefit from free software.

He hits on these ideas. Maybe he'd be open to working on these sorts of things.

Services have gotten to the level where they are taking a piece of people's livelihoods. Uber & Airbnb takes 20-30%. why?

Amazon is a system of warehousing & distribution... could something like that be run in a distributed / cooperative way which provides as much opportunity to 3rd party retailers as it does Amazon? A level playing field.

These are the sorts of things that the free software movement could move towards now.

<comment><USER11> > The interviewer wants to steer him into being a crazy nut corner. Pepsi vs. > Coke.

Absolutely wrong. The interviewer even said at one point "The things you're describing I believe should be of a concern to many more people than they are." You're totally off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ok, 2 seconds in and I'm shocked. All my life I pronounced gnu as new, like Nutella.

<comment><USER2> Do you pronounce Nutella "Nu-tella" or "Nut-ella" ?

FWIW, I pronounce 'GNU' as 'nu'.

<comment><USER13> The only reason as to why I pronounce "GNU" with a 'g' sound is because of Richard Stallman. Otherwise, I use the silent 'g'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was amazed to see that Stallman doesn't install his OS himself - hasn't for years. He seemed diminished in my eyes after I learnt this.

<comment><USER15> Stallman reminds me of a king who has everything done by servants and knows only what his courtiers tell him. Being free of menial tasks like installing software leaves him more time to tackle serious issues. But it also insulates him from the problems that real people face.

<comment><USER16> It's not really something you can observe well from the outside, but in working with Richard on many things, I was surprised early on how much respect he gives to those he trusts, and how appreciative he is of help.

So "servants" is far from how he views volunteers. And after working closely with him for a few years within GNU, I don't feel at all like a servant--- there is mutual respect, and we're not afraid to state our opinions or disagree with one-another. Much of the time he makes me feel like I work beside him, not below him. It's quite constructive.

And this is typical with others as well.

<comment><USER17> This seems incompatible with what I read recently in an emacs discussion on HN, wherein they were unable to merge a popular package into emacs without Stallman's rubber stamp despite him being essentially uninvolved since 2008.

<comment><USER16> Are you referring to Magit? All code that is part of Emacs requires copyright assignment to the FSF; it's that simple. If Jonas Bernoulli can make that happen, then the issue is resolved.

Jonas' original response: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2017-07/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs- devel/2017-07/msg00516.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Stallman argues that free software enables users to control programs, whereas paid software is controlled by corporations. I see two problems with that.

(1) Isn't knowledge also power? In this context, developers have the knowledge. Users who aren't programmers don't control free software any more than they do paid software. Further, training more users to become developers requires money.

(2) Corporations don't exist unless they serve users in some way. There's an interdependency that I think Stallman ignores.

That said, free software is important, and a useful way to challenge the paid model.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone have an idea what's the project raising funds mentioned at 5:32? The "new computer that will be manufactured specifically for free software".

</comment><comment><USER20> I suppose it's a philosophy. Are there enough who share Stallman's view to advance computing technology at a pace that can match what we see with commercial sector? For sure, I am amazed at the power and scope of open source software and it's a highly influential movement. But at some point in the food chain, software developers need to put food on the table and send their kids to school. How does that happen if all software is free?

<comment><USER21> > But at some point in the food chain, software developers need to put food on > the table and send their kids to school. How does that happen if all > software is free?

Please note "free" has nothing to do with price, but with end-user freedom (to use/study/modify/share).

(example answer to your question: custom/internal software).

<comment><USER22> It actually does have to do with price. All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer.

The parent comment is correct that free software has put magnitudes less food on kids bellies.

<comment><USER23> _All free software is one user away from the possibility (likelihood) it is free as in beer._

And yet, my and others' salaries have been paid for over six years writing free software without it ever being published publicly by its users, despite being GPL licensed.

<comment><USER22> That's a fantastic! I don't mean to insult, but the likelihood of the software being shared freely by a user increases with success. Your situation is an exception. And likely contributing factors are the specific field and sophisticated, like minded customers.

<comment><USER23> Thanks. But actually, no, we write software for many fields and most of our customers are certainly not sophisticated, nor do they care about our philosophy (to most of them, open source means roughly "not as good but cheaper").

It's true that our customer base is not very large, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> YouTube is proprietary and not a free software.

<comment><USER25> If you have mpv with youtube-dl installed then you can watch the video without using anything non-free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Kind of funny you're all in here posting youtube links, I didn't know they were GNU friendly and I can only imagine how RMS feels given his zealotry.

<comment><USER27> You can use youtube-dl[1] to download videos from YouTube (and transcode them to free formats) without runnning their proprietary JavaScript. There's even a free software Android project[2] that lets you stream videos without running their proprietary JavaScript -- and in my opinion it's much better than the proprietary YouTube app.

RMS's concern with YouTube is that they use proprietary JavaScript and they use patented media formats. However, RMS has always made it clear that if you have the ability "at hand" to rip DVDs then purchasing a DVD is not unethical. Both of the pieces of software I mentioned allow you to avoid running proprietary software.

His other concern is that RMS wants people to publish things he appears in in a way that is much easier to access with only free software. The Internet Archive and CCC provide video hosting that is completely free software, with non-patented formats like VP9, and is easy to use. The idea is to make those forms of publishing more widely known about.

[1]: [https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl](https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl) [2]: [https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe](https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe)

<comment><USER28> You can also just pass the url as an argument to mplayer or one of it's derivatives (all of which use youtube-dl under the hood, I believe). Not even concerned with freedom here. It's just a better user experience when the video is longer, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I feel like we're not far off from a digital version of the Amish. "Technology was perfected by the FSF in 2003; everything developed since is evil."

<comment><USER30> Everything developed by big companies that deals with our data on their premises is evil.

We should simply not allow that, and let big companies just develop the hardware.

<comment><USER4> ""We" should not allow that"... Yeah that sounds like freedom to me.

You are free to deal with these companies or not. Whether you agree with these companies and their ways is irrelevant. This is same as not agreeing with another persons' religion, you are free do choose a way to lead your life, don't try to force your way upon others. Others happily share their data with Google and reap the benefits of a very helpful Google Home assistant.

Direct your efforts towards educating these people about the potential downsides, yes, but don't try to use law or other forms of powers to change their ways. That is not freedom.

<comment><USER23> Worrying about free software advocates using the law against others is hilarious. It's like worrying about Walmart cashiers demanding to make more money than software developers.

<comment><USER31> I see someone hasn't had GPL conflicts in their code base before. There is a reason companies specifically look for them and it's because the FSF and it's communities will make your life hell.

<comment><USER23> Try using proprietary libraries in your software without complying with their licenses and you'll see what having your life made hell means. GPL license holders barely ever sued anyone, and when they do (like FSF v Cisco), it's usually after _years_ of trying to get them to comply. That they (rightly) complain about your practices is not _using the law_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Geez. I just realized a problem here.

If he doesn't want to use any commercial software. This includes IntelliJ or other IDEs? Good luck writing software! Then again, the time he saves from not dealing with iOS provisioning might give him a couple extra years to write other software.

Man that interviewer is dumb. Says he is surprised he didn't vote Trump? Eh?

<comment><USER32> Use emacs?</comment></comment>


Facebook is Japan's LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://www.tokyodev.com/2011/01/23/facebook-is-japans-linkedin

<comment><USER2> Maybe I'm too close to the subject matter, but the article seems to gloss over a few things...

1\. Mixi essentially IS Facebook; they've constantly been updating and adding things to the interface that make it more and more facebook-like. All they need to do now is take all of the feeds they've made and integrate them in popularity/chronological order.

2\. The communities he talks about are the same as Facebook groups. You can make friends in either one, though mixi communities tend to have topics people talk in more than in most Facebook groups I've seen.

3\. Mixi not only allows you to control who your friends are, but also allows you to see who's visited your profile (and when!). It also allows you to delete your OWN footprints from visiting other people's profiles a few times every month. On top of that, you can see how recently someone's been active on Mixi. It's terrible (great?) for OCD stalkers.

Perhaps this author's article is based on selection bias; though; of all of the people I know on facebook who are Japanese, a number of them are Japanese people interested in English or who have been to America -- they largely use it for the same reasons that everyone else in America does: to keep in touch with friends and post stuff. Others are simply Japanese people using it with pretty much only Japanese people: they seem to do the same thing, without the influence of Americans "teaching" them the "right" way to use facebook. I also have a few professional acquaintances that I'm friendly with; they use it in the same way as the people I mentioned before.

Perhaps the professional accounts the author is encountering are accounts made solely for professional use. Some Americans I know do that as well, since there really ISN'T a requirement that you use your real name.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right on these points. Mixi is basically the same from a functionality perspective, and what kind of activities they perform. However, there is a nuanced difference with the degree of sharing.

Also, Japanese who have been abroad defiantly do use it differently. One example is photos. I notice Japanese who have been abroad or have lots of foreign Facebook friends share far more photos than those who haven't.

Perhaps my article overplayed the professionalism of Japanese Facebook account. The accounts I've seen aren't on par with LinkedIn on their focus towards being professional. However, I get the feeling that Japanese Facebook users are much more conscious of what non-friends will think of their account than western users are.

<comment><USER2> I'll definitely agree about the photos -- Japanese people with foreign friends or who have been abroad are also much more aggressive with the photo tagging.

I wonder how much of that is just Facebook, though; when I started using Facebook heavily about a year ago after having an account since the beginning, I was completely lost about how to upload/tag/organize pictures. Facebook wasn't much help with its cluttered interface.

As far as self-consciousness, I don't think it's necessarily a Facebook thing... Mixi users are just as self-conscious and "groom" their profiles to be just-so -- the same for their profile pictures, which are their public face. I would argue that it's more a facet of Japanese society than of Facebook in particular.

I sort of think that the Japanese Facebook population of frequent users is still a bit too small to judge, too...

Edit: I meant to say this before, but mobage and gree are both much, much more popular with people under 18 than adults in my area. I wonder how much of that has to do with the commercials.

Edit 2: I just realized this, but I wonder how much of LinkedIn's lack of popularity has to do with the conservativeness of business culture in Japan in general. I mean, they have standardized forms for resumes and personal history here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Facebook is Japan's nothing. It is not that well known in Japan.

<comment><USER4> I know a few Japanese people on Facebook: those married to foreigners. There are practical limits to the scalability of this customer acquisition method.

[Edit: I need to remember not to make Japan jokes because people take me seriously. FB accounts are also popular with Japanese people with recent experience abroad and those with many foreign friends, at least in my social circles in central Japan (like Kansas, minus the white people). Of approximately 70 people at my previous day job, two admitted to having Facebook accounts when asked for a show of hands at a meeting, and one of those was me.]

<comment><USER5> > There are practical limits to the scalability of this customer acquisition > method.

:D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The ONLY Japanese friends I have on Facebook are entrepreneurs and biz professionals. Pretty much lines up with this article if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER7> _Facebook requires users to use their real name._

I don't use my real name and neither do many people I know.</comment>