Maybe the coding interviews which have nothing to do with the job are the problem. I'd say if you're going to be tested on something you don't actually do, for a job you are qualified for, it is rational to have imposter syndrome.<p>Also just to add - many REALLY good engineers have some form of anxiety disorder, and the standard practice for an interview is to put them in a pressure cooker situation.
I sometimes have a similar experience reading HN, where seemingly every question receives an expertly detailed answer, regardless of topic. I have to remind myself that it's a bunch of people, each with their own (probably small) set of areas of expertise.<p>It's often fun to read these "oh, I can say a lot about this" posts, though.
Regardless of whether you consider yourself an imposter, do ask clarifying questions! They are generally expected from candidates. If you're not asking them, you're probably hurting your chances.<p>Source: I interview lots of candidates for SWE positions.
Sometimes impostor syndrome doesn't need to be fixed. I am beginning to think there's one UC system school which is afflicted by Teaching assistants who shouldn't themselves be able to pass a programming job interview.<p>I've pointed out to interviewees that user input in one problem can result in circular references. I point out, as a hint, that thing A can refer to thing B, then thing B can refer to thing A, and you'd wind up with an infinite looping execution in one part of the code. How can we detect this? So then these 3.8+ GPA Comp Sci grads tell me to write a conditional that detects a 2-element loop. Not an algorithm that can detect the cycle, but just a conditional that only detects the 2-element cycle. Then I have to ask, well what about a 3-element cycle? To the credit of most of the applicants, they then try to incoherently describe an algorithm involving some kind of hash table, but then never give anything which is implementable. Once, the applicant didn't yet realize there can be n-element cycles, then proceeded to literally handwave away all graph algorithms.<p>These same applicants usually have a hard time writing their own recursive algorithm. Would you want to trust your startup coding to people who don't habitually think at least one step ahead? Come on! These things used to be covered in the first algorithms class! This should be Freshman Year stuff!
I always find impostor syndrome interesting. When I was in grad school I was ignorant of a lot of things and didn't try to fool anyone. Same thing with job interviews. I figured that the profs and potential employers were the ones that knew things and there was no way I could fool them because I didn't even know what I didn't know.
I did an interview a while ago. I first had a 30 to 45 minute chat with the business owner. After that he called his tech-lead into the meeting who was going to ask me technical questions. He was going to do a white board thing, something with a linked list or something. I refused and asked him what the value on the whiteboard interview was. "To see me think". Why wasn't he present during the first 30 to 45 minutes when I talked about all my experience, he could have seen me think then.<p>I have interviewed quite a bit because I work as a contractor. Most companies I have interviewed with have no idea what to actually do during an interview. They just copy stuff that they have read about on the Internet. Oh, Google does puzzles, well...<p>Interviewing is broken.
"For me, it was seeing the back end code wizard on my team—the one that always made me feel like an impostor—spend an hour trying to center an image on a webpage." To be fair, before flexbox this was also true of front-end wizards...
Why do people study for interviews? I feel like if I have to study for an interview, then I’m clearly not good enough for the position. Is this common in other fields of study?