“Help! I Landed A Job, And I Have No Idea What I’m Doing!”

Do you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing… like you’re a fraud?

Impostor syndrome is common in our industry.

Wondering when you’ll “just know” something and not be so reliant on Google & Stack Overflow? That day never comes.

Anxiety comes from chasing an ideal that doesn’t exist. Everyone relies on external resources. There is no “10x” developer that just knows the documentation from memory, that doesn’t have to reference.

Every single developer makes mistakes every day. Every developer has moments they have to reference the language docs for a particular function, even if they’ve used it 1,000 times before. (It was probably this one.)

What you know isn’t what’s important. What you get done is. Shift your mindset from “how good am I?” to “what can I get done?” It moves your focus from internal to external. Stop worrying about yourself, start worrying about others

Break the problem down. Solve the smallest part. Get something done. Start writing code before you understand. You don’t have to commit. Work with others, it’s a good reminder that everyone deals with the problem.

Most of your job is novel. You do things you have never done before and solve problems you have never seen for a living.

Everyone Googles. You can Google. I’m giving you permission.

All you have to know is the next actionable step, And go for it. Don’t read and study and noodle around the problem. Take action. Find answers as problems arise.

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