So I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late thirties and before that I was a mess, job to job etc. then got lucky and worked for a company that afforded me the chance to study for my dream job without work pressure.
I am now a software developer and although I went from being the smartest person in the groups I roamed to the dumbest person at work I still have half a foot in my old life of drugs and poor decisions (although the usage has dropped by 95% and I’ve got a good routine and go to bed early).
I feel like a pretentious dick when at a party and someone asks what I do for work, I kinda feel ashamed saying I’m a software developer. Like a fraud I guess.
How to stop this?
Fellow adult with ADHD here, welcome to the club! What you’re feeling is referred to as “imposter syndrome” and it’s one of the more pesky symptoms of our particular affliction.
Just knowing it’s a symptom of ADHD has been a huge help to me… When those thoughts creep in, I just remind myself how hard I’ve had to work to get here.
I know for a fact that I had to study for some of my licensing exams three or four times longer than some of my coworkers, for example. Those coworkers don’t know that, and I wouldn’t care if they did, but I know how hard I’ve had to work to get where I am and I’m proud of it.
I had heard of imposter syndrome before, but I wasn’t sure if this was it or not.
It’s good to be aware of I guess, and although my mind can be quite irrational with these kind of things I will try to keep it in mind.
Thanks.
Yeah, I was thinking “Hello, Imposter Syndrome” when reading your last paragraph. I deal with it a lot, even after 15 years in my area of expertise I still tend to downplay and undersell myself. Being aware and recognising it is a good step to dealing with it, I think.
The most fun part about imposter syndrome for me is that i even have it for ADHD. I was diagnosed at a young age, and then again - independently - as an adult. Still there are moments where i feel like i might not even have ADHD. I just have a collection of Symptoms that match the characteristics of ADHD but if i just wasn’t so lazy I would totally be able to do things like all the other “normal” people. Like multi hour study sessions and shit.
I have to constantly reaffirm myself that I might have to do things differently, and medication is something i can and should maybe use to help with getting my shit together and that’s okay, because I really do have ADHD and I’m not just pretending to have it because i’m lazy… I think …
It sounds like you’re feeling imposter syndrome, which is normal. Just try to realize that you do belong, you made it because of your own hard work, and you aren’t alone in those feelings.
It’s honestly rare to meet a developer without imposter syndrome - It’s something we all suffer from.
In my experience, there’s two ends of the developer spectrum.
At one end is uptight. They have all their shit on lockdown and the confidence that comes with that.
The other end is creative. They are developers because they enjoy creating, and development is a rare high-paying but creative outlet. They stumble through everything and get bored with reading too much documentation.
I have seen many cases of both of these, and another, underlying metric is their perception of their own intelligence.
It’s unfortunate, but a lot of them grew up in an environment where they were the smartest person in the room and were rarely challenged. Now, being in an environment with many other smart people, they only feel smart by making others feel less than.
They purposely show off their knowledge and when you give an idea they shit on it and make you feel stupid.
There’s also this thing where if you know a system really well, it’s hard to imagine someone not having the knowledge you have. This is just how memory works because our brains abstract things away and then we can’t recognize when others don’t have that abstraction yet.
This is all normal. Humanity has a lot of work to do to change this, but it’s embedded into how everything works, so it’s not going to happen in our lifetime. You can change you, but you can’t change anything else.
With that being said, here are some things I have learned, being from a similar background as you:
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Recognize that you are smart or you wouldn’t be there.
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Accept that others will make you feel stupid. The best response is to act like it doesn’t phase you.
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Don’t make others feel stupid if you can help it.
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Be enthusiastic. Any shortcomings you may have, will be forgiven if you show up with a big smile on your face.
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Talk to your managers. Ask them what would make you better at your job, and ruthlessly pursue bettering yourself. This will give you a lot of confidence.
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You will lose touch with your old party friends. They will die young, and you will feel sad. When you do get a chance to catch up, talk to them a lot and consider journaling it. This will help a lot when you lose them.
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You will feel guilty because you are doing so much better than them. Accept it and move on and try not to brag about your new life.
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You will feel out of place because your new friends don’t have the same background as you. Accept it and move on. Nobody else is worried about it.
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Your new friends will probably not be as interesting as your old friends, and you will feel yourself becoming less interesting. This is the price we pay for our new life. If you want to stay interesting find a way to be in touch with other creative people: musicians, teachers, English majors.
As someone who is the stupid
partystoner friend to a big friend group of (mostly) tech bros, this list is pretty hilarious to read from the other side.Also fuck you for saying I’m gonna die young.
I hope you don’t. And I’m sorry.
I lost my best friend in February. It fucking sucks.
He was a big partier. Once he hit his late 30s he ballooned to probably over 300. He took a nap one day and had a heart attack in his little attic room of his friend’s house, where he had lived for 10 years. Our big friend group from back in the day is wondering who will go next.
My comment was supposed to be kind of wink wink tongue in cheek in tone, I’m sure that didn’t come across.
I’m sorry for poking at fresh wounds. I lost my best friend too, many years ago. He was only 21, but there’s no such thing as “old enough” because life is too short. And there’s not enough time in this life to truly move on from something like that. There’s nothing else I can say, I just hope you’re doing well bud
Thanks man
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Hey OP, it sounds like you’ve worked hard to make positive changes in your life. After a lot of self activation like that it’s not uncommon to feel some side effects - namely a bit of anxiety or depression. A therapist would be beneficial.
Make a joke out of it. One of my jobs was software support. When people asked what I did for work, I told them I provided technical and emotional support for frustrated lawyers.
When people ask you, tell them you are “in charge of writing code with bugs in it to keep the senior developers employed. It may or may not be intentional.”
This is something I do try to do as self deprecating humour is a trait I guess.
Last time I just said I type on a keyboard and sometimes stuff happens.
Thanks for the examples.
I am going through this right now, but without the drugs.
Mid 30s, waking up to realise my life is a mess, working on getting a diagnosis for ADHD and possibly bipolar, and getting help with depression.
I am now fixing my life.
The biggest thing that is helping me is talking about it. Asking for help is important, but just sharing your experiences is also important.
It was a friend that shared his experiences with me that has put me on this journey of recovery.
Never any problem solving, or offering solutions or fixes. Just sharing and talking.Anyway…
When I’m doing software dev stuff, I always feel out of my depth. I’m reading interesting articles from people way smarter than I am. I’m reading codebases that are a delight to read through and leave me in awe.
And I turn to my projects and work, and feel like a fraud. It’s all “standing on the shoulders of giants”, following tutorials just to get things to compile, locking myself out of VMs or network switches from dumb mistakes.
But I also work in live events, so still technical and a lot of smart people. But when there is a problem, or a unique problem to solve, I’m just like “yeh, the problem is here because…” or “why not just do this…”.
And these moments make me realise that perhaps I am not a fraud or an idiot. I just have different experience than my peers both in software development and live events. And there is some overlap.I think a huge part of it is: everyone is making everything up all the time.
Some people have made something up before, so they can draw on that experience.
It’s always worth spending a little time introspecting some of your progress.
Spending less time googling issues, and realising you can figure stuff out (make stuff up) for yourself? Huge win.
Remembering correct syntax? Huge win.
Writing code that only has 1 or 2 bugs? Huge win.
Recognising that a problem is best solved using whatever pattern/library/etc? Huge win.Imposter syndrome is real.
Dunning-kruger is also real.
And then the imposter syndrome makes you think you are in the dunning-kruger zone, and makes everything worse.
Recognizing the progress and successes helpsI will respond to this and the other comments on the thread. Just been very busy.
No rush. This comment isn’t going anywhere
Imposter syndrome is pretty common and it sounds like you’ve put in a hell of a lot of work turning your life around, so that’s something you can and should be proud of.
In the meantime though; remember that often it’s not that they actually want to know, they’re just looking for common ground or something to talk about. You can be vague or redirect; “I’m in I.T.” (not a lie) or “I work for a (whatever industry you dev for) company.” (also not a lie) and turn the question back on them. Then ask follow up questions. Most people love to talk about themselves, just give them an excuse.
Hey, this is the second imposter syndrome call out. I will be aware that this is a thing now.
Yeah I will try and be vague unless they prove further.
As for the other point, I am inherently curious so I do prefer to ask lots of questions and learn about others rather than talk about myself.
Thanks.
Stop caring? It’s just your job, there’s also doctors and lawyers and architects and …
You reply you’re a software developer. Either the topic ends there or how it often happens you get follow up questions like “What do you work on?” or “How to learn programming?”.
People are usually curious instead of jealous or annoyed. It’s just a conversation.
Stopping caring and ADHD don’t seem compatible, but I do think I can try and be less neurotic.
You’re correct with the follow ups, although the last one was “I don’t know what that is” and it ended after I said I hit keys and sometimes it works, others it doesn’t.
I too press keys in response to pixel patterns on a screen, hoping the presses yield new patterns that look pretty to others.
The syndrome is real. Undiagnosed ADHD until 42 and a hell of a time getting correctly treated thereafter. Im in therapy again because doing so very well after years of anxiety and depression is itself very disorienting.
Just know you aren’t alone in feeling like an imposter sometimes. You are also a survivor and are stronger than you will ever get credit for, unless you grant the credit to yourself!
I think what they are expressing is a sense of alienation, being between two socioeconomic strata and feeling like they don’t fit in with either and that maybe they feel they betrayed the former.
To me you turning your life around sounds impressive. Despite your condition you achieved something awesome. Software developer sounds like as good a job as any. Absolutely respectable in my book. And you got plenty of time to climb the career ladder.
Also if you hang with lots of smart people and don’t think of yourself as smart, chances are you are smarter than you give yourself credit for.
Thanks for the kind words, it was a struggle and I was fortunate to have lots of support.
You’re right in that I do devalue myself.
You had a journey, a struggle, to get where you are. You don’t need to impress everyone or check all the conventional boxes in order to have a compelling life story.
One of the long lingering effects of mental and socioeconomic afflictions is that we don’t ever believe we are worthy.
I appreciate you saying that, as it was a struggle which I guess makes it all the more frustrating that I don’t value my worth.
That said I should concentrate on the positives.
Thanks.
For what it’s worth I’m in retail and I have been most of my life, I don’t have much ambition to climb the economic ladder because it basically demands we sell our souls, that said I don’t begrudge anyone with a better paying and less stressful job. Also we absolutely need working class solidarity between tech workers and “blue collar” or “low skill” jobs. These are all preconceptions that are instilled in us to create divisions among working people.
Basically, it sounds to me like class consciousness and maybe joining a communist organization or looking into forming a union if there are points to agitate on among your coworkers might help you find what you are looking for.
Imposter syndrome is definitely a real thing though.
You’re not pretentious for telling people what your job is, you’d only be pretentious if you held to some notion that it is any more important work than that of the person serving you food or selling your groceries.
