Actual impostors don't get impostor syndrome
A lot of the discussion here is treating impostor syndrome and qualifications as binary: You&#x27;re either qualified or not. And your evaluation of your skills is either above your actual skills or not.<p>But it&#x27;s more nuanced than that.<p>I&#x27;m a Principal Engineer at a FAAMNG company. I have impostor syndrome all the time. Why? Because I measure myself against 1) role models that are ahead of me in many ways - I&#x27;ve always done that, and it&#x27;s how I grow, 2) against those with strengths in areas that I have weaknesses.<p>I think my impostor syndrome is absolutely fact-based. I am not as good in the technical areas I care about as those I measure myself against.<p>My fallacy is that there is a billion things that I <i>am</i> good at, but I don&#x27;t consider them difficult (how could they be, if <i>I</i> am good at them), or I consider them insufficient to a fully rounded engineer, if I don&#x27;t also have the skills that I know I&#x27;m missing (but some of my peers are not).<p>It doesn&#x27;t help that I&#x27;m the epitome of a &#x27;Generalist&#x27; - I&#x27;m good at a lot of things, but I don&#x27;t know if I&#x27;m the BEST at anything.<p>I get lots of positive reinforcement - from my management chain, and from those more junior than me. But it never resonates. I always think &quot;damn, I&#x27;ve actually fooled them all&quot;. And then I feel guilty that the management is putting so much trust in me, and that the juniors actually look up to a fraud.<p>The only feedback that resonates is from my technical peers. Luckily I get this just often enough that I don&#x27;t fall into a catatonic mess of anxiety. And sometimes I believe it...