Impostor Syndrome in Tech

There’s a certain feeling that most people have experienced in relation to their work. It usually happens right when they get promoted, switch to a career or job in an entirely new industry, or even accomplish a task. It’s that feeling like you’re a fraud and you’ll be exposed to everyone around you. That feeling is what is commonly known as Impostor Syndrome.

With Impostor Syndrome, people tend to have doubts about their accomplishments and feel like everything they’ve done is a result of luck. It comes with a plate of symptoms like anxiety, depression, and stress and can even be classified into one of five different subgroups of the syndrome. It happens to be a pretty common feeling, with about 70% of people feeling it at one point or another in their lives. Although this happens to the majority of the population, it is especially common in the tech world among women and minorities. You can feel it based on the demographics alone where white males dominate the scene. This, along with the false lives that people see on social media, can easily cause feelings associated with Impostor Syndrome to trigger.

In the startup world, Impostor Syndrome runs rampant, because small companies just starting out have the most risk and uncertainty tied to them. This is true for early employees, and is especially prevalent with the founder. Although founders may never show feelings of anxiety or stress, they may question themselves from time to time. It’s only natural, as they are the ones who carry the most risk of the startup flaming out and not coming to fruition as they would have hoped for. These feelings only serve to limit the performance of the company and the founder, which may in fact cause the entire situation to become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the business or its products don’t pan out.

The most helpful takeaway in dealing with Impostor Syndrome is that nobody is alone in this. Even well-known figures such as Sheryl Sandberg and Serena Williams have experienced it at one point or another. Some methods of overcoming the feeling is to simply divert your focus away from social media and onto yourself, understand that there are others like you out there, and acknowledge the fact that you are where you are because people thought you were competent enough to accomplish something. In the tech world and with founders of startups, that is especially true. It’s okay to make mistakes, fail at achieving excessively ambitious goals, and not know everything. Once this is accepted by founders, they can focus more on making their startup successful, which isn’t something an impostor can exactly do.