Impostor Syndrome

Impostor Syndrome. I've heard that term for years and kinda just ignored it. But I must admit: I've suffered from it for years.

I "flew" my first airplane when I was just 5 years old. My dad has been a pilot my entire life. He struggled through college to earn his wings, and he worked hard flying jobs before I was born. That was well pre-9/11, when a corporate pilot could fly his family down to Florida in the company airplane (thus my "flying"). In 1978, he went to a tiny airline called Federal Express. His friends laughed at him for for taking such a chance on a tiny cargo hauler in Memphis, TN. After helping many of those same friends (and their kids) move to an airline job, he just retired as a 777 Captain at FedEx. I grew up in aviation, and ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a pilot.

Oddly enough, it was my father's pilot salary and his fondness for new gadgets that enabled me to initially become a geek. He saw a shiny new Commodore 64, paid a hefty sum for it, and plugged it in at the house. I taught myself how to "write code" with that machine and Family Computing Magazine. I played "online" in the days of CompuServe. I absolutely LOVED it. But not enough to not still be a pilot, much to my mother's chagrin.

In 1992, I realized my dream. I became a private pilot. Then I went to flight school, where I met interesting people and earned some advanced certifications. I went to Louisiana Tech University to earn a degree in Professional Aviation, and I spent a few years there as a Flight Instructor, training several people who are airline pilots today. I left there to continue my career and follow in my father's footsteps as an airline pilot. But as I began actually doing the thing that I always thought I wanted to do, I began having doubts.

I was still looking for another "in" to the big airlines, so I moved to Memphis, TN to work as an Unloader for FedEx while I sorted out what I wanted to do. My brother was fully smacked by the geek bug (and he listened to our mother), and he actually WAS a web developer there in Memphis working with FedEx. As fate would have it, two big things crossed. He had a Dutch developer who was going home for a month-long vacation, and I had a TON of PTO days that I needed to either use or lose. He asked if I could come help him with some basic website stuff for FedEx, so I took some half-days to work with him as a Java developer. I spent about enough time with Java to say "Hello, World" then was switched over to FedEx's language of choice: Allaire's Cold Fusion. I was hooked. I just didn't know it yet. When his developer came back, he asked me to stay on board. I did.

That was about in late 1999. The Internet was a wildly different place. Netscape, Geo Cities and the <blink> tag were still things. There was no differentiation between design and development. There was only ONE flavor of JavaScript. But none of that mattered. I enjoyed what I was making, for FedEx and for our other clients.

So now it's math time. I was an active flight instructor until roughly 2001. So, 2001 minus 1992 is about 9 years, give or take a few months. 2017 minus 2001 is about 16 years, again, give or take a few months. This is where the Impostor Syndrome comes in to play. Last year, I came to the realization that I have been an active developer almost twice as long as I was an active pilot. But I still sometimes think of myself as a pilot who is a developer. Check my Stack Overflow. As of today, I have more Answers in the Aviation forum than in the regular Stack Overflow forum. WTF???

I have had the fortune to work with some incredibly intelligent developers. I've met some people in the development world that make me feel like a complete fraud. I know these people are MUCH smarter than me. It took me a while to realize that technology has a pretty broad landscape. There are areas of knowledge where they make me look like a child. But some of those same people have also asked questions that I have thought were pretty basic. The answers have come to me about as quickly as if you'd asked me the size of a Cessna 152 engine.

I've been in this industry for a very long time. There are people that I definitely wouldn't want to compete against. Does that make me an Impostor? Not really. They know what they know. I know completely different things. I shouldn't think of myself as an impostor.

The moral of my story:
1) I know there are many things I don't know yet. I can't learn them all. But if I need to, I will.
2) Always listen to your mother. If she says you should pursue your love of computers, she might be on to something.
3) On second thought, I am who I am because I skipped #2. You don't have to do what your mother says when she says do it, but always keep it in mind. She's smarter than you think.