Started at a large tech company 8 months ago, new grad SWE. The first few weeks I was convinced my offer was a mistake. Like someone in HR mixed up files and they'd figure it out during my first code review.
I'm not exaggerating. My first PR had 40+ comments. Not because it was terrible, apparently that's just how it goes there. But I spent a whole weekend thinking I was about to get fired.
The thing nobody told me: everyone around me seemed totally confident. Seniors would look at my code and immediately see what was wrong. PMs would ask questions I hadn't even thought to ask. My manager always seemed to know exactly what was needed. I was comparing my internal experience (confused, anxious, faking it) to their external performance (calm, competent, direct).
Eight months in and it's... slightly better? I shipped my first solo feature last month. I got positive feedback in my mid-year review that I genuinely didn't expect. But the background hum of "do I belong here" is still there.
Thing that helped most: a senior eng on my team said something like "the people who are most confident here are usually the ones who stopped noticing what they don't know yet." Kind of a brutal reframe but it unstuck something.
I've also started tracking wins. Not in a forced gratitude journal way, just a running list in Notion of things I shipped, bugs I caught, times someone thanked me for something. When the spiral starts I look at the list. It's longer than I expected.
Does this get meaningfully better at 1 year, 2 years? People who are further along, what changed?