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Anyone know when the "making it" step starts happening?
Imposter syndrome sucks, doesn't it. I've been a professional software developer and engineer for more than two decades, and I still find myself worrying people will realize I have no idea what I'm talking about, even on topics where I absolutely know what I'm talking about.
Especially on topics where I absolutely know what I'm talking about.
The "make it" step is already happening. It just doesn't feel like it, because there is no single moment the switch occurs, no time you can point to and say, "before that I was putting all my effort into presenting as a competent person, and after that I just was a competent person." The mental effort to see yourself that way will always be there.
What changes is the degree of effort it takes, and that change is gradual.
Ugh. I just finished dealing with what turned out to be a simple configuration problem that took me three days because the tool's documentation sucked. Turned it in feeling bad only to hear that four other devs had previously failed to get it to work.
One important lesson on life is that everyone is bumbling around all the time. (Like me with autocorrect in the first version of this comment...)
Yes, absolutely. And when I get kudos for accomplishing something like that, I always have to fight myself to allow myself to feel like I've earned them and not go, "If I were smarter and not a complete fraud, I'd have solved it sooner."
What I've learned is that if I solve it in a day, my brain will try to make me think half a day would have been better, and if I solve it in half a day, my brain will try to make me think four hours would have been better. Rinse and repeat.
Sometimes my brain will do everything it can to sabotage any feeling of accomplishment I might have. And I've had to learn how to say, "No, fuck you, brain... I did this, and I deserve to feel good about it."
It depends on what you are faking and what the barriers are.
I gave a long example post, but wouldn't assume that the same thing would work for everyone. Some people have anxiety and no amount of faking it will overcome that level of anxiety for some things.
There are also things that people have other barriers to succes. I don't believe I will ever learn to be fashionable because it changes constantly and never makes sense to me, and faking it was a spectacular failure. Taking basic fashion here, like I even fail at things like brown belt with brown shoes because they are the wrong browns or materials or something.
So there won't always be success and it will vary widely based on the person. I know of people who figured out riding a bike on the first try, some in a week, some took a year, and a few that never succeeded despite their best efforts over several years.
When people stop questioning you and start accepting what you are saying within reason.
I've been "faking it" (with varying success) for over twenty years. I'll let you know once it kicks in.
My opinion is that if you can comfortably pay your bills and have a steady job, you've "made it" as far as the saying goes. But there's always more "up," so the faking it never really stops.
I've been faking being nice to people over the phone for like 10 years now. I hate it but it's the only jobs I can seem to get that will pay above minimum wage . All my bosses say that I sound so pleasent on the phone but I'm always doing my best to get off the call as soon as possible and hate every call . With my current job it's so boring I can't even think of something notable that happened in months .