Carl asked on X if this imposter syndrome thing will ever go away.

The short answer? Nope. It is like that persistent troll in your comments section, always there to throw shade when you least expect it.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t care about your degrees, career level, age, or gender. It hits everyone differently, but the feeling of “I’m not good enough” or “someone else is better” sticks around, no matter how experienced you are.

Here’s a list of ways it might follow you around, especially in tech (just my opinion, so feel free to take it or leave it):

CS Degree? Who Cares!

You’d think getting that degree would make you feel legit, but no.

• You still compare yourself with others from better universities.
• Your code sucks! Guess you didn’t learn enough after all.
• Your mapping is weird—didn’t you learn this in CS50?

Self-Taught? Ha, Prove It!

• No degree? I can see it in your build.
• JS? My grandma codes in Go!
• Can’t keep that spacing centered? Guess Udemy didn’t teach you that.

20 Years in Tech? Obsolete!

• You have AWS certs? Oh, we don’t use AWS.
• You’ve never heard of Vercel? Seriously?!
• You just learned serverless? We just moved to our own server. Heard of Kamal? No, not the Indian actor.

There’s plenty more to add, but I just listed what I’ve experienced and seen others go through.
So, yes, imposter syndrome will stick around as long as you let it. You just need to find ways to deal with it and keep busy with projects you love.

PS: I still have it, so while this post doesn’t help in “curing” it, I just want to show that you’re not alone in this.