Re:Healthy Self-Doubt
by vharuck on Saturday July 11, 2020 @01:21PM
(#23803790)
Imposter syndrome is hard to evaluate because it's comparing three levels of skill:
1. Your skill
2. The skill required to do your job well
3. (Implicitly) The skill of your peers
The third one is what gets a lot of people who don't directly work with peers. In that case, one can only go by what one hears. And people who blog are self-selected and biased toward having high skills. The non-self-promoting experts are famous for doing great work, so they're even more likely to have high skills.
But I think #2 needs to taken into account. You may not be an expert in your field. But if everyone you work with comes to you for help with a task, and you're able to help them, then you're the in-house expert. Unless you want to be a expert among experts, that's not bad.
1. Your skill
2. The skill required to do your job well
3. (Implicitly) The skill of your peers
The third one is what gets a lot of people who don't directly work with peers. In that case, one can only go by what one hears. And people who blog are self-selected and biased toward having high skills. The non-self-promoting experts are famous for doing great work, so they're even more likely to have high skills.
But I think #2 needs to taken into account. You may not be an expert in your field. But if everyone you work with comes to you for help with a task, and you're able to help them, then you're the in-house expert. Unless you want to be a expert among experts, that's not bad.