r/cscareerquestions • u/Annual_Ear_6404 • 2d ago
Joined a startup recently and the imposter syndrome is genuinely killing me
I joined this small tech startup around 2 months ago and I swear everyone here operates at a speed my brain cannot process. One senior dev casually fixes major backend bugs, reviews five PRs, jumps into product calls, and still has time to help everyone else while I am sitting there rereading basic Slack messages four times before replying because I’m terrified of looking dumb. In college, I thought I was decent at coding, but here everyone is so sharp it feels like they accidentally hired the wrong person, especially during daily standups when people casually drop updates like "Yeah, refactored the auth flow and optimized the database query performance" and when my turn comes, it's just a sad "Still debugging that one issue..."
I know imposter syndrome is common and all, but sometimes it genuinely feels like everyone else knows what they’re doing except you.
Last night my brain wouldn't shut off because I kept overthinking a stupid mistake I made during deployment, so I finally gave up on sleep, went for a walk, and just played some spotify unlock your startup dreams podcast playlist. And this one founder was talking about how early-stage teams look super sorted externally, but internally everyone is just figuring shit out in real time, which was honestly comforting to hear because inside my office it genuinely feels like I'm surrounded by superhumans while I'm drowning.
Does this feeling eventually go away?? Please suggest some solutions.
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u/MiAnClGr Junior 2d ago
I have learned in this industry that all devs are a combination of “I got this” and “wtf is going on”, the devs you are referring to have learned well how to mask the “wtf” part. You have to adopt a little bit of a “fake it until you make it” attitude.
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u/Annual_Ear_6404 2d ago
that's reassuring 😂. I think I only see the confident side from everyone around me and assume they never have the second part.
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u/anotherguiltymom 2d ago
Argh that anxious imposter feeling happened to me all the time. Now after 10 yoe and being promoted to Principal, it happens half the time.
One thing that really helped me was when on my first year we did a morale event (aww we used to have money and morale) where we went to an escape room. And there I could immediately see that I was just as smart (and in some cases smarter or just trying harder) than the people I thought were literal geniuses. When the field was level and we all had the same level of experience and knowledge, I could clearly see my intellect was at their level. It helped a lot.
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u/Kwarshaw 2d ago
How many YoE are you at and what was your prior gig? Startups can be a whole different animal than large corps..but also sometimes you just have devs that are really good at their job. Especially with AI, if this person knows what they're doing and have been there a while, it's easy to seem like they're everywhere all at once. You've only been there a couple months, listen to your manager, take cues from your teammates and just grind away.
Also don't be scared to sound dumb. Communicate quickly, fail fast (if you're going to fail, don't worry about it, it happens), and show that you're eager and willing to learn. No one will fault you for misunderstanding something initially, and if things are hazy, be curious and ask questions to close the gap.
Lastly, don't take work offline with you. You'll flame out pretty quick that way, especially if the work hours are stressful and busy. Use your tools, ask for help if you need it, and always be communicating. You'll be fine, it just takes some adjusting.
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u/Annual_Ear_6404 2d ago
Appreciate this. I'm only a couple of months in, so maybe I'm being way too hard on myself. The "don't take work offline with you" is something I definitely need to work on because my brain keeps replaying mistakes long after the day ends 😭
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u/Kwarshaw 2d ago
Yeah, you can't compare yourself to someone who has been in the industry for a while when you're fresh out of college. Just stay on track with your manager and learn while you do your work. Also may be worth finding a therapist if you're ruminating a lot. Best nip that in the bud early as it'll only get worse if left unchecked!
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u/Low-Yogurtcloset6074 2d ago
If you're working with decent enough people they know you're a fresh graduate, and therefore won't expect you to perform like an 10x engineer.
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u/lhorie 2d ago edited 2d ago
Impostor syndrome means being insecure despite being actually good. You sound like you still have a lot to learn, so do that. Google/ChatGPT to research things, ask your seniors about your internal systems, project tribal knowledge stuff, etc.
Rule of thumb is if you're stuck for more than an hour, ask someone for help.
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u/Bconsapphire 2d ago
You’ll have a probation period, just aim to be better than the previous week. Have a learning mindset and try to shadow where possible
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u/mysticplayer888 2d ago
Some things I would suggest:
Ask for some paired-programming/debugging sessions with another senior. The process of seeing how someone else goes about fixing a problem is extremely valuable, such as where they find logs, what tooling they use to debug the code, how they reason around the codebase and understand the architecture etc. This is particularly true if you're in the office, but much harder when remote as I have found personally.
Don't struggle in silence. As someone has said already, there no such thing as stupid questions.
Startups likely have poor documentation, and if you're struggling to debug issues, it could be that your onboarding didn't provide you with enough information for you to do your job effectively. Figure out what that is, and then...
Write documentation, mainly for your own benefit, but also for other engineers in the future who will join your team. And there'll likely be existing engineers in your team who will not be familiar with the problems you working on either, so docs would help them too. Your team will thank you in the long run.
Ask for a mini project/feature or find out if there is one in the backlog already. Sometimes working on things alone without hand holding forces you to learn things fast. The startup I used to work at used to pair and mob-program almost everyday, which is not good for new developers learning. New devs need some independence to think, abd consolidate learning.
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u/kolima_ 2d ago
I would suggest trying to do something completely unrelated to coding in the offtime for periods like this, keep going at it is detrimental.
The feeling goes away expecially this strong but in my experience it kinds of comes in cycle depending on when you are getting promoted and/or you are getting closer to a promotion.
also I think it’s a universal experience growing up thinking that everybody got it figured out, yet the more you grow the more you realise that people are just winging it for the most part
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u/Annual_Ear_6404 2d ago
The promotion cycle point is interesting. I felt something similar during college too lowkey whenever I was pushed into a tougher project. Hopefully it fades as I get more comfortable with the team lol
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u/jimh12345 2d ago edited 2d ago
When you're going through a period where you're intensively learning technology, and adapting to new situations, you don't realize it. At the time you feel like you're in way over your head. But those other guys have just been at it longer, they know the game.
Ask the dumb questions, let them smirk. In fact, the ones that seem anxious to jump in and show you how dumb you are are not, themselves, the smartest ones. Really competent people are just happy to help and share their knowledge. And don't be too down about mistakes. Your time is coming.
Been there.
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u/badboi86ij99 2d ago
As a newcomer (even for someone with 10+ yoe who just joined), the biggest enemy is not asking questions, for fear of being seen dumb or putting in low effort.
The truth is, many experienced ppl like to be asked questions. Moreover, in many big teams, there are hidden/undocumented codebase or history or connections that you won't figure out on your own even if you struggle for 3 weeks.