I'm a Fraud

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and I've not really given it a voice except to Berta and maybe a couple of others.

I've been writing code for a pretty long time. 25 years now, actually. Sure, a lot of that is not professionally, but I think it's relevant in that programming has never been a tinkering kind of hobby with me. Programming is not something that I picked up like many people do a musical instrument in their childhood and then forget when they get older.

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To give you an idea of what I mean, know that I didn't go to college to learn programming. I went to school to be a math teacher. And when that didn't work out, I turned my passion for programming into a career, which has worked out fairly well for me, thank goodness.

And that's what it is, really, a passion. I don't have much formal programming training. I never needed it. And that doesn't really bother me - or does it?

Although I've personally built reasonably large software projects used by Fortune 50 companies, I still occasionally feel that twinge of doubt. Am I really capable of this? What really makes me an expert at this? An expert? - Ha!

It feels very strange when people start to trust my word on these things. I suppose that with demonstrated experience you earn that kind of respect. It's just odd when people who I respect look to me with that kind of respect. I mean, I'm glad - I just wonder what I did to deserve it.

I wonder at what point people who do consulting in any field come to reconcile themselves as experts at what they do, enough that they accept money for their services and feel good about it. It's not that I feel bad about taking the money, just sometimes... I'll explain.

I've been told before that I don't charge enough. The explanation for why I should be allowed to charge more is: For my clients to do what I have done for themselves, they would need to somehow acquire all of the training, experience, and natural ability that I have, and then apply it to the problem. Although it might only take me ten minutes to perform a task for them, it could take them days, or it might take less time and not be done as well. So certainly ten minutes of my time is worth some greater fraction of their time's value to do the same thing.

Still, I wonder if I'm really worth all that.

Some recent personal projects have brought some of my own skills into question for me. It's not that I have to prove I can do the work - I know I can do it. I think it's that I need to prove it to people who also know this discipline well. I want them to see me as successful and seek my input and insight. Do I think that I've earned that level of trust from them? I have not yet, and I'm trying hard. I hope I will.

I just wanted you to know that sometimes I feel really confident about my abilities. Top notch, top of the world, I'm so great I can do no wrong. But I sometimes have doubt. I feel like a big kid, and when I look in the mirror I don't really see myself as the accomplished 30-something coder that other people see.

I look in the mirror and remember that kid who didn't play outside with the other kids, but hacked endlessly on a Timex-Sinclair to get an animated graphic of ET to appear. I don't see that kid, but he's still here. He just has bigger projects, and better equipment, and people who apparently rely on his skills. It's kind of freaky.

It's a bit like that movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer. He's so great at chess that losing a game can really throw him. Well, I'm pretty good at programming, but it turns out that my self-perception of that skill is pretty fragile.

I'm not sure what the lesson is here. "It's ok"? "I'll overcome it"? Sure. Of course. I guess I just thought it was unusual to have these thoughts, and wanted to make mention of the oddity.

James McKay

Dec 31, 1969 07:00pm

I sometimes feel a bit intimidated by the fact that my degree isn't in computer science but physics. However, someone once told me that some recruiters actually prefer physics graduates to CS graduates for programming positions because they find that we tend to write better code. So I try not to let things like this bug me too much.

jez

heads up man, the work you are publishing is great;
I kind had similar thoughts when choosing my university and future studies. Even though if I was disciplining myself hard enough life from webdesign or PC work I decided against doing any pc related courses but study economics. I hope it pays out.. thanks for your article!

Owen

All of this is good supportive advice. Sorry I didn't get back to everyone individually, but I appreciate your sentiments greatly. :)

Joni

I've always admired your work and you make a great argument about charging more. I run into that all the time as a web designer, prowling sites like elance.com and guru.com. You all know those projects, the ones that say, "It's an easy job, it will take half an hour if you know what you are doing." And of course the imbecile wants the job (the easy job) for peanuts. If it was that easy, we'd ALL be doing it, but we're not. But I'm glad YOU are!

Face it, Owen, some things just cannot be taught. You have a knack for this that likely no college course on earth can teach, and this gift, this knack, may be so much a part of your reflex that you yourself could not teach it, could not put a finger on it. And that is worth far more than gold in this business. :)

Alex Boschmans

We all want to be respected for what we do and what we are. And personally, I think it's only normal that you sometimes doubt yourself and your abilities.

If you become very good at something you do you start to wonder if you are really as good as the others out there in the same field, because you can still see all the problems you haven't solved yet. What the others can see is what you have already accomplished.

I believe that everybody has these feelings, but that some are more adept at hiding them than others so that you only see the shiny mark of their success and not their doubts and questions.

Doesn't mean you should stop doing what you love doing. And in the end, who are you doing it for - for somebody else, or for yourself and your passion ?

[Of course, some people just *are* egoistical narcissists who feel they can do nothing wrong, but that means *they* have a problem, not me.]

Ellen

As someone whose taught math for years of my life without an education credit to my name (and am similarly out of synch w/ most of my jobs on a resume level), I get those thoughts too.

But in all these situations, I think about people who (on paper) look like superstars but in real life have something missing that makes it all fall apart on a performance level.

So I guess it all evens out in some weird way.

There's a study that shows that optimists, given a knob that seems to control a randomly flickering lightbulb, tend to believe they do indeed control the lightbulb's flickers with the knob. The realists (who tend to be pessimists) can see the truth; they usually know that that the flickers are random.

There's just something different about brilliant people. Most inventors and people who make a difference are not optimists. They don't maintain the same delusional enthusiasm about themselves that normal people do.

Just throwing that in there.

Anyway, after reading your post I have no doubt that you are the guy who actually knows what he is doing.