
You're a better engineer than you think.
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I was quite surprised to discover that thousands of people were members of the “Imposter Syndrome” Google+ group within my first month at Google.
I always thought that getting into Google was probably the best social proof of “making it” that an engineer could receive. The interview process is hard, gruelingly technical, relatively unforgiving and riddled with rollercoasters; many incredibly talented Googlers had to go through the process two or more times before getting in for good. (I went through it twice…sort of.) The engineering talent at Google is nearly limitless; many of the world’s most formidable and accomplished computer scientists, sysadmins and software engineers work or worked at Google doing all sorts of things.
So imagine my surprise when literally tons of engineers join a group expressing how they feel as if they aren’t good enough to be at Google or working alongside people with Wikipedia articles written after them. Perhaps it was a big joke that completely went with my head, but given the many, many internal jokes made about not being good enough to be a Googler that I came across (mostly thanks to Memegen), I had my doubts.
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