I was offered a position at Cloudera because of my past work history, my understanding and ability to work within the government sector, and my ability to get stuff done. I was (and still am) a generalist and my knowledge of Apache Hadoop was minimal, but we thought that my years of experience in the world of infrastructure and operations would prove useful to customers. It still does, I think.
I live comfortably, have my health, enjoy flexibility in my work schedule and locale, am granted the autonomy to run customer engagements how I see fit, and have wonderful coworkers that feel like family despite our geographic separation.
By all accounts, things ought to be lovely.
But after more than two years as a consultant in the niche but oft-glamorized "big data" software market, I still have days where I feel like I don't know what I'm doing.
I feel like a fraud.
The software ecosystem surrounding Hadoop is expanding at a dramatic rate. In the last two years, we've added a half-dozen software components into our product stack. None are simple. For those not familiar with the scope and complexity of the Hadoop ecosystem, it'd be like Microsoft introducing six brand new prime time components into Office, each with their own peculiarities, configurations, and use cases. Just when I thought I had a handle on the previous N components, we go and integrate yet another thing. This doesn't make things easier and it often feels like a futile endeavor, trying to learn in all of these directions at once.
Whenever I'm asked to consult about something deeper than normal, warning bells go off in my head. I feel like the customer is going to figure out that I don't belong here, that I don't know my shit, that this is not what they paid for and that they're going to complain, refuse to pay, and that it'll eventually all fall on me. All this before the gig is even locked in on my schedule.
I usually get over it, albeit after losing a bit of sleep.
These moments make me wonder what I'm doing with my career. With my life. I don't ever remember having these sorts of feelings at previous jobs. Was I not being challenged or did I feel comfortable being lost in the noise of a large corporation? Would I be happier doing something else? Would I be more content making furniture up in New England? photographing conferences and social events? teaching fundamentals to college students?
I don't know.
When friends and family ask how the new job is going, my usual response is "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up, but I'm having fun in the meantime." That's true, except when these moments come along.
Performance anxiety is very real: the concept of stage fright applies to consulting. When on a consulting gig, you're effectively onstage for eight hours a day for the better part of the week, away from your familial support system, working from a script that is often complicated and incomplete, or being rewritten day by day. It's actually worse than acting, given that your cast, crew, audience, and patrons are usually the one in the same. And everyone is looking to you, taking cues from you, and seeking your guidance; you're always a quick step away from feeling unqualified, even after years of experience.
I'm not alone.
One of my mentors has routinely admitted to faking it when he's not 100% sure. I'm not sure how he feels about it, other than it's what you've got to do sometimes.
Another colleague who has an excellent reputation (both technically and as a customer-happifier) confessed to me that he feels clueless about certain topics and that he has to ask others for help. It was a jarring revelation; this is the same guy who routinely offers advice to others, answers questions, and provides solid-sounding recommendations. I never would have suspected that he felt uneasy about anything.
I take some comfort knowing that those who I view as possessing superior knowledge have similar doubts and feelings that I do, and themselves have people they look to as all-knowing, and that those people probably have similar feelings too. It's like a house of cards, built on FUD.
It feels like a roller coaster.
Elaine Marino and Jessica Goulding gave a stellar talk entitled From Madison Avenue to git Checkout at OSCON 2014 that chronicled their journey into software development. It really hit home. You don't need to be a software developer for the notion of impostor syndrome to resonate. Changing careers is scary.
There's been a lot of press lately on impostor syndrome, especially within the open source community. When reading about the experiences of other men and women, a lot of it feels familiar. Most of the recommendations for combating impostor syndrome focus on accepting that it's a thing, that these feelings are common amongst high-achievers, and to try to externalize our contributions (because we apparently suck at realizing the scope and magnitude of our accomplishments).
I take daily notes using a dinky little script, usually in a past-tense format:
In an occupation filled with constant email and instant messaging, it's easy to forget about reading a particular article or taking a phone call. Not only do the daily notes provide me a written log of work activities, which is useful when doing end-of-quarter reviews (grep -iR sales daily/), but the action itself serves as informal writing therapy. The little things don't feel like big accomplishments, but they matter.
It helps.
Last Modified: 2020-08-09
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