Impostor syndrome strikes men just as hard as women in technical interviews

It doesn&#x27;t help that job ads are wanting &quot;Top 3% only!&quot; or &quot;Only top 1% Ninja Rockstars need apply!&quot;. Kind of reminds me of the market for singers or concert pianists, you <i>absolutely need</i> to be the best, even imperceptibly worse makes you unemployable.<p>Should those of us who aren&#x27;t top 5%&#x2F;didn&#x27;t go to a top school just find another industry, one where sub-perfect work doesn&#x27;t actively make other people&#x27;s jobs harder?

It makes me thrilled to see that we&#x27;re finally talking about data around gender issues, regardless of what that data actually says. It seems like we&#x27;re finally getting over the taboo and we&#x27;re mature enough to look at facts.

Of course it does, it&#x27;s not a gender problem, who said it was? How many of you have heard your friends and colleagues tell you, &quot;wow I&#x27;m so lucky I got through that interview, there&#x27;s no way I would pass it if I did it again today.&quot;<p>You shouldn&#x27;t walk away from a good interview feeling like you nailed it. An interviewer should push you to your limits and the more you know, the more they should push. It doesn&#x27;t mean you failed, it means you reached the limits they could push you in the time you had.<p>If you&#x27;re rejected from the role, most likely you didn&#x27;t reach the bar they needed you to be at, or you failed at the behavioral parts. Or, the interviewers you had weren&#x27;t properly calibrated, which isn&#x27;t to say anything about you other than bad luck.

As someone with no credentials or official training, and someone who also works at a big megacorporation as an engineer, imposter syndrome hits me fairly hard, especially during interviews. It&#x27;s really hard to compete with the people who actually have proof that they know what they&#x27;re doing, and I&#x27;m usually interviewing for a job that has a strict requirement of a &quot;bachelors in CS, Math or Physics, Masters preferred&quot;.<p>I&#x27;ve managed to pull it off somehow, but I rarely go a day where I don&#x27;t wonder if I really should have as good of a job as I do.

The practice interview point strikes me as odd. In large, because I have never done one. Do folks really typically do that many practice interviews?<p>I don&#x27;t even know how to study. I sometimes consider it, but have never spent more than an hour prepping for an interview. :(<p>It worries me, because I know that interviewing is a skill. But are we not setting folks up to over index on that skill such that they have difficulty with actual job performance?<p>If anyone knows any literature into that general topic, I&#x27;d be very interested in perusing it.

When I was younger I was able to go into interviews with the mindset of, &quot;it&#x27;s their decision and it&#x27;s okay if they don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m a good fit.&quot;<p>It made interviewing easy, and in a lot of cases even enjoyable. Unfortunately for reasons still unknown to me, I&#x27;m not able to get into that mindset anymore. Interviews are extremely stressful now. No amount of rationalizing will help.

I genuinely don&#x27;t understand why there&#x27;s any surprise here. Lack of confidence &#x2F; fear &#x2F; worry... it&#x27;s a <i>HUMAN</i> trait. Not a gender-specific one. Of course, this would strike men just as hard as women. Why would there be any difference at all?<p>On a related note... one of the best articles I&#x27;ve ever read on the subject... it&#x27;s a Seth Godin blog post.<p><i>HIGHLY RECOMMENDED</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seths.blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;imposter-syndrome&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;seths.blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;10&#x2F;imposter-syndrome&#x2F;</a>

I frequently wonder if my impostor syndrome was acquired in graduate school, or if it&#x27;s an artifact of working at a job that is primarily intellectually driven. I didn&#x27;t experience it until grad school, but I certainly still get it, not just in tech interviews, but in my regular programmer&#x2F;tech lead job as well (making proposals, submitting high level features, etc.). I manage it fairly effectively at this point because I know what it is and how it feels, but it hasn&#x27;t gone away and I doubt it ever will.

I&#x27;ve gone through interviewing recently and it was a rather frustrating experience. I thought that the most challenging thing will be some tricky algo questions I don&#x27;t use in real life or never heard of it. It turned out that the problem was to get to the tech interview at all by convincing the interviewer to believe that I actually have the experience that I claim. Didn&#x27;t always work. It was mostly because they didn&#x27;t care to assess my skills because I think my resume sucks: I couldn&#x27;t provide any big or even local big names thus they probably went with someone who could actually namedrop. This was in Eastern Europe, to add some context.<p>I finally got two offers, dropped the ongoing processes and accepted one, but before I had some dark days thanks to these negative experiences. My takeaway from this is that interviewing sucks, but one company will realize what you can do and happily accept you as-is. I was lucky that I was not forced to take a sub-par offer by giving it enough time.

“women leave interviewing.io roughly 7 times as often as men do, after a bad interview.”<p>To me that means that imposter syndrome is striking women much harder than men, but that’s not what the headline was talking about. They’re defining imposter syndrome as whether someone is mis-estimating their own performance. Unfortunately, a lack of accuracy doesn’t necessarily demonstrate imposter syndrome, in fact imposter syndrome is defined as self-doubt in the face of evidence of competence. So, imposter syndrome wasn’t measured here at all.<p>The data shows women estimate their competence as well as men, and perform as well as men, and then when there are any signs of trouble they bail <i>seven times</i> faster than men. To me that could very well be much greater levels of impostor syndrome, or it could be much lower confidence, but to actually measure it you’d have to actually ask questions about how people rate themselves against others, not measure how accurate their responses are.

Isn&#x27;t this really just a fancy way of stating that (some) people tend to become anxious when put into a high pressure environment?<p>The whole concept of &#x27;impostor syndrome&#x27; seems to rely on unexplored assumptions, like the idea that it even matters whether you should be working at Google or not.<p>I think that&#x27;s the key to solving it. Realising that actually, most of us are just rolling through life trying to get by and be useful. The rest is fluff.<p>If you&#x27;re playing in a professional football team, you&#x27;re a professional footballer.

&gt; Impostor syndrome<p>Does this refer to the company pretending they deserve better than you? I&#x27;ve seen enough incompetent people at companies declining good candidates because they are simply unable to recognise it. I&#x27;ve seen so many shitty companies pretending they are top tier, it&#x27;s just the arrogance of power. Only once you&#x27;re in you can see the flaws and mess it often actually is.

Worth noting that Scott Kaufman, psychologist at Columbia, has correlated narcissism with Impostor Syndrome for quite some time.<p>Here is a pretty easy to read overview from last month’s Scientific American: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;beautiful-minds&#x2F;are-narcissists-more-likely-to-experience-impostor-syndrome&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.scientificamerican.com&#x2F;beautiful-minds&#x2F;are-nar...</a>

This just seems so much myth making and gratuitous glorification so people can feel special just getting a job. The famed difficulty of getting hired creates a sense of elitism and exclusiveness and perpetuates a culture of insecurity.<p>This is very cult like, If people are indoctrinated to think that they are part of an elite group they will be devoted and would look at leaving as a step down. Cults are a great business model as the followers are very devoted.<p>It suits the agenda of employers to construct this and target individuals who derive all sense of identity and self worth from their jobs and when employed will work their asses off in a constant reaffirmation of &#x27;specialness&#x27; just to retain their sense of self worth. Very cult like.

One of the biggest factors I think affects the outcome of an interview are implicit bias in first few minutes. It can be related to gender, ethnicity, age, religion or nationality. This can heavily influence the interview process.

I didn&#x27;t see a link to the actual data. Be nice to see the sample size for women.

Anyone would think that men... are equal to...<p>...<p>nah, doesn&#x27;t seem to add up.

Can anecdotally confirm.

Who on earth said it didn&#x27;t?

“More experienced engineers are more accurate about their interview performance...”<p>Dunning–Kruger effect returns again!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect</a>

If everyone has impostor syndrome, does anyone have impostor syndrome?

If someone thinks that they may be an impostor, then they probably are.<p>Firstly, it means that they think that our society is a meritocracy (or close to it); this shows that they lack life experience&#x2F;wisdom. Once you realize how far society is from being a meritocracy, it&#x27;s literally impossible to feel like an impostor. There are so many successful people who are idiots that even if you were an idiot yourself, you would still be within the norm; I.e. not an impostor.<p>Another thing about people who have impostor syndrome is that it shows that they feel insecure about their intelligence and&#x2F;or abilities. Insecurities are typically rooted in past experiences or traumas. Smart people often get positive reinforcement about their intelligence; they don&#x27;t have traumas or insecurities when it comes to their intelligence.

Dang, I am so tired of hearing about imposter syndrome. I get it. It exists. Maybe I&#x27;m more comfortable knowing that there are lots of things I don&#x27;t know, even as an experienced engineer? It seems like such endless studies and banter about a relatively minor thing that is (in my opinion) easily gotten over.