Imposter Syndrome · Primly Community

why imposter syndrome hits differently at the staff and principal engineer level

staff_steph · 4 replies

people expect imposter syndrome to fade as you get more senior. in my experience it doesn't fade, it just changes shape.

when i was a junior and mid-level engineer, my imposter syndrome was about technical execution. "can i actually write good code? do i really understand distributed systems? am i going to get found out?"

at staff level the technical stuff mostly resolved itself. i KNOW i can build things. but a new version showed up.

the new version is about judgment and influence. staff and principal eng isn't coding all day. it's making architectural calls that will affect other engineers for 3-5 years. it's convincing people in rooms where you don't have authority. it's deciding which problems are worth solving and which are distractions. and the feedback loop on all of this is way slower.

with coding, you ship something and you know in days or weeks if it worked. with influence and judgment, you might not know for a year. and there's no test suite for "was that the right architectural decision."

so i sit in senior leadership meetings and recommend things with confidence and then go home and wonder if i'm right. the stakes feel higher, the feedback is slower, and the expertise is harder to verify in yourself.

the thing that's helped most: writing down my reasoning at the time i make a call, so i can look back and evaluate whether my PROCESS was sound even when outcomes are uncertain. i'm less interested in whether i was right and more interested in whether i was reasoning well.

anyone else at staff+ feel this? the junior versions of imposter syndrome are well-documented. this one is quieter but it's there.

4 replies

director_dee

at director level it's similar but you also add the people management layer. am i growing my team correctly? is the culture healthy? am i coaching well or just managing tasks? the feedback is quarterly at best and by the time you can measure it, half the team has changed. the imposter feeling at this level is mostly about "can i tell if i'm doing this correctly at all."

staff_steph

the "can i tell if i'm doing this correctly at all" is exactly it. junior IC imposter syndrome has a relatively clear signal: did the code work, did the PR get approved. senior/director imposter syndrome is operating in signal fog for months at a time.

ml_mike

i feel this specifically around ML architecture calls. a model architecture decision i make today won't show its failure modes for 6-12 months when we're at 10x scale and some edge case shows up. so i make the call with current info, document my assumptions, and then try to forget about it. otherwise i'd second-guess everything.

careerveteran

the writing down your reasoning practice is underrated. i've been doing something similar for performance reviews and reorgs. the goal isn't to be right, it's to make your decision process legible to yourself. it's the difference between learning from experience and just having experience.