Wrestling with impostor syndrome
Dec. 11th, 2021 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcAt work, I am in an interesting position. I know I am good at research, I just don't have the public paper record to prove it, my best work was on confidential projects. Much of my work in more recent years requires less inventive creativity, it has been a more pedestrian form of software engineering, which is just fine, I can do it well, but so can many others.
In a sense, I am somewhat of a generalist: I like to learn about some technical application domain then figure out how software could address problems in it, even when it is not clear initially even how one could formulate a solution computationally. When I have done research in the past, it has been without having much in the way of local expertise: part of what I have been funded to do is to bring myself up to where the field now is, and I enjoy doing that. However, a crucial difference with my current workplace is: I am surrounded by smart experts. Whatever the fundable application domain, in many cases it does not make sense for me to lead the research because there is always somebody else who looks better on paper and is already prepared to hit the ground running.
My supervisor is happy enough with what I do for projects and raised the question of if I am comfortable with my current work. The answer is, I am not, because it makes little use of the more valuable, less interchangeable, part of my skill set: by the time I get the tasks, much has already been figured out. They hired me on a decent salary band and I like to exceed expectations. I am minded to try not being inhibited by the local expertise, just go ahead, do some reading, and put forward research ideas anyway, even if I doubt their relative merit, people can fund them or dismiss them but at least I will have shown what I can. It feels a bit like addressing imposter syndrome by: act as if you are not an imposter and see if it flies. If it doesn't, well, at least I know that, in this case, the research aspects do appear to be in good hands even if mine are not among them.
It is a real possibility that I am best suited more as a follower here. In the defense industry, my competition, even among the major contractors, appeared to be better at consuming funding than producing anything novel and effective, so it was easy for my work to shine. Here, at a national laboratory, if I can find my way even just to simply contributing to any dimension of projects that are producing something impressive and useful then I am in a better place than many.
In a sense, I am somewhat of a generalist: I like to learn about some technical application domain then figure out how software could address problems in it, even when it is not clear initially even how one could formulate a solution computationally. When I have done research in the past, it has been without having much in the way of local expertise: part of what I have been funded to do is to bring myself up to where the field now is, and I enjoy doing that. However, a crucial difference with my current workplace is: I am surrounded by smart experts. Whatever the fundable application domain, in many cases it does not make sense for me to lead the research because there is always somebody else who looks better on paper and is already prepared to hit the ground running.
My supervisor is happy enough with what I do for projects and raised the question of if I am comfortable with my current work. The answer is, I am not, because it makes little use of the more valuable, less interchangeable, part of my skill set: by the time I get the tasks, much has already been figured out. They hired me on a decent salary band and I like to exceed expectations. I am minded to try not being inhibited by the local expertise, just go ahead, do some reading, and put forward research ideas anyway, even if I doubt their relative merit, people can fund them or dismiss them but at least I will have shown what I can. It feels a bit like addressing imposter syndrome by: act as if you are not an imposter and see if it flies. If it doesn't, well, at least I know that, in this case, the research aspects do appear to be in good hands even if mine are not among them.
It is a real possibility that I am best suited more as a follower here. In the defense industry, my competition, even among the major contractors, appeared to be better at consuming funding than producing anything novel and effective, so it was easy for my work to shine. Here, at a national laboratory, if I can find my way even just to simply contributing to any dimension of projects that are producing something impressive and useful then I am in a better place than many.
