I hate this "fake it til you make it attitude" and I see it both in the startup industry and the one we work in (photography). This works for Conan and actors because the worst-case is he has a bad show. It can work in an investor pitch meeting because the worst-case is you bomb and they don't invest. But once you're providing a professional service to someone else (consulting, wedding photography, training) or leading employees at a company, you have no effing business pretending to be something you're not.
- If you've never at least attempted to start a business, you have no business coaching people in lean startup methodologies and taking their money.
- If you've never assisted at a wedding and learned your camera, you have no business buying an SLR at Costco and taking money to photograph someone's wedding.
- If you don't know anything about basic web app security, you have no business taking someone's money and building them an ecommerce site.
Yes, at a certain point you can learn new things as you go. But IMO too many people are straight-up lying about what they are and what they know.
I feel the concepts of humility, apprenticeship, and a desire for learning/mastery are being lost in favor of "act as if" and "get big fast".
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EDIT: I get now that this article is addressed to those with impostor syndrome and not actual impostors. Personally I think actual impostors are more endemic and just as likely to latch onto advice like this.
Fair enough ... but ... I feel like actual impostors are way more endemic in startup/tech than those with imposter syndrome. Plus, actual impostors are just as likely to latch onto advice like this.
Totally agree, I've lost track of the number of people I've had to deal with who try to mask their lack of competence in an area with bluster, bravado, and bullshit. I've seen companies flush millions of dollars down the drain because the people who ran it were too worried about looking like they might not have all the answers, and would rather temporarily save face than actually try to make it work.
Imposter syndrome is not about "fake it till you make it". Overcoming imposter syndrome is realizing that you have made it. "Acting" as if you have is just a cognitive hack to convince your brain of something that is already true.
If you haven't made it yet, you don't have imposter syndrome.
Though true for a certain subset, otherwise this is not entirely accurate. Impostor syndrome is common among those with extraordinarily high IQs: the highly gifted (3-4 standard deviations from the mean), exceptionally gifted (more so; 5-6 SD's from the mean), and profoundly gifted (in particular; more than 6 SD's from the mean). This is true even for children, who obviously can't be considered to have "made it" or not.
Impostor syndrome is insidious. You know what you know/are extremely fast to spot patterns others don't seem to notice, especially others of your age/experience. But you're just you, like you've always been; and you realize that at any time, someone could call you out for being just like anyone else, because how do you know how everyone else's thought process works? After all, you're just spotting patterns, accumulating data, and winging it. Little do you realize that that proficient/effective pattern-spotting is intelligence (or at least, one measure; measurement tools don't really count creativity, for example, which may be core to true genius, along with a host of other characteristics).
It's also about the humanization of others. Many who feel this come to realize that they have built up fantasy Übermensch and that the people who still qualify as geniuses and greats are fallible and carry with them many of the foibles that come with the human condition.
> Imposter syndrome is not about "fake it till you make it". Overcoming imposter syndrome is realizing that you have made it.
I'd have to disagree here. Impostor syndrome is an emotion. People overcome them in different ways. Mike's and yours suggestions are just two different solutions. The way I overcome it is by mentally preparing myself for the emotion and having a plan on how I can overcome it (ie - writing tests, working on a smaller problem, etc).
Actual impostors already know/don't need this advice. And the actual impostors will always be there. If we want to increase the percentage of effective non-impostors, we need the experts to learn to accept their expert status.
I also think that you are misinterpreting what the advice is. It is not that you should mislead other people about your skill. It's that when someone wants to pay you to do something and they are aware of your expertise, you should take them up on it.
If you've read a lot and written about lean start up methodologies, but have not yet tried to start a business yourself, and someone come to you, aware of your level of experience, and asks to pay you to come and look at their business model and take them through your reactions and feedback, you shouldn't refuse just because you have no direct experience. They know what they're getting, and they want to pay you for it? Do it.
If you've never assisted at a wedding, but have posted some nice pictures from your phone on Instagram, and someone wants to pay you to take photos at their wedding, you should do it. You should make it completely clear to them what your experience level is, and that they probably should hire a professional, but if they still say they want to hire you, do it.
But of course the e-commerce site is a different story. If you actually don't know anything about basic web app security, and somehow you know that you don't know anything about it and that it's important (we are talking about approximately four people worldwide), then no, you shouldn't build an e-commerce site without insisting that they also hire someone with security expertise.
>But IMO too many people are straight-up lying about what they are and what they know.
There are a fair number of those yes, but I suspect that the majority of people who seem to be doing that are really just completely ignorant of their ignorance.
> If we want to increase the percentage of effective non-impostors, we need the experts to learn to accept their expert status.
I'd argue that a good part of what helps some of these people achieve the expert status is their impostor syndrome. It pushes them to continue to be better all the time and never be satisfied with themselves (to a fault). Challenging them to "accept their status" is like telling them to change a core part of who they are.
I completely disagree. In my experience, the most knowledgeable people are the ones who are genuinely interested and curious and crave more knowledge, no matter what. You could convince them that they were the most knowledgeable person in the world, and that wouldn't prevent them from learning more.
> You could convince them that they were the most knowledgeable person in the world
I agree. I'm just saying that the challenging part (especially for those with impostor syndrome) is actually being able to convince them they are the most knowledgeable person in the world.
I agree with your point, but I don't think that's what the article meant. I don't think it meant pretending to be something you're not, but instead pretending to be something you feel like you're not when you actually are but haven't internalized it due to impostor syndrome. It's for people that feel like they have no idea what they're doing, but they really do.
The reason the strategy works is that generally the people you are selling to know far less than you do. So you are the "expert". And you are providing value.
I've done no less than 3 businesses in things I knew zero about when I started. One of those was photography which I did in high school and college and made money to start my first real business (I had a darkroom). Never had a problem being taken seriously. And the photos I took were good enough that people paid me for them (many clients were lawyers by the way). At the time I didn't even know the expression "fake it till you make it".
The bottom line really is whether you are able to deliver to the expectations of the people who are going to pay you money. If so, to me that's fine.
By the way in none of the things I ever did did anyone ever ask me (even on day one) how long I had been doing what I was selling them on. Had they asked I would have told them but it never happened. In fact the opposite in another (not the photo business) I went cold calling on day one and a business owner handed me some marketing materials and said "you're the expert".
I read your edit and I have to say this is a pretty naive way to go about your business. I'm certainly not advocating deception, but I've seen plenty of very inexperienced people accomplish things and sell things that anybody could objectively say they had no business selling. Everybody, that is, except the customer they sold to.
One of my best friends runs a fairly successful design and marketing business. She had previously worked as a financial adviser and had never even heard of Adobe InDesign or Photoshop or Joomla. Nowadays she charges in the thousands for marketing consulting despite never having held any position in the field of any kind. Yet she makes good money and her clients are very happy with her work.
If you wait for universal acceptance for what you are doing, you're going to wait a long time. Again, I am not advocating lying, but I also don't think there is anything wrong with acting as if you are a pro when you are just starting out. Confidence is a very strong force.
>> I also don't think there is anything wrong with acting as if you are a pro when you are just starting out
Then why do tech startups do coding interviews and look at GitHub profiles when hiring engineers? Why do they have a problem hiring people who are "just starting out"? I don't see how hiring a photographer/consultant/coach is any different.
I think your design/marketing friend is just an example of specific tools. She didn't know Adobe tools but she may still have had design or marketing expertise.
It's akin to hiring a programmer to work on your Python project. If you're smart, you'll consider someone who only knows Ruby or C but is an experienced programmer/problem solver. They'll figure out Python quickly. But you're not going to hire someone who knows nothing about programming.
I'm not asking for people to seek universal acceptance. I just think there is a threshold (which, of course, varies by domain) and I see a lot of people on the wrong side of it.
I don't think that's what this article is getting at. My interpretation was that if you get put into an intimidating situation, you should act like you belong even if you don't feel like you do.
This has nothing to do with impersonation, but rather moving up a level in something you already do.
Aescetic Narcissism takes many forms, but once you start to recognize it for what it is (empty), creating value as a means of life becomes some sort of Art. From nothing, something.
I don't think Conan gets the point here, much. This is all about 'how to overcome ones weakness', but the question is still left lacking: to what end does it matter?
What matters, is: The User
If you don't have someone else agreeing with you that the widget is a widget and can be used to do blah, whether that widget is a meme, a joke, something electronic, physical, or whatever, then there isn't any chance for the Ideation to Perpetuate.
Without another human being agreeing that you are the value you assign to something, or that the value 'is', there isn't any value. Everything that leads up to that point in time in the universe is merely a shadow, reflection, or bump towards what has to happen: at least one other person has to agree with you, what is, is.
It may be true that one has to push hard to overcome the more base and banal afflictions upon the entrepreneurial spirit, but it simply does not matter if you have at least found one, then another, then many, to agree with you on subject 'x'.
I think that there is much to be said of the cult of the entrepreneur, but the word itself is merely an introduction to economy, at and of scale. If you really consider yourself an entrepreneur, but don't have a single user of something you have created, I don't think it matters who, or what you think you are.
This isn't faking it until you make it, this is faking it after you've made it. When you're interviewing Obama and you're like, oh my show is good enough that Obama wants to be on it, that's normal. That's not faking anything! You already do interviews on your show, it's not like you're doing anything new. But it feels weird. It's hard to believe that you're really "that good."
This is a rather hard line against what I would consider pretty good advice. Seemingly, unlike much of the HN crowd, I wasn't born with the immediate abilities I require for my work, as OP seems to allege having. Otherwise, how is it that you are able to do anything unless you took a swing at it while under qualified?
In my own experience, I've watch millions of dollars trade hands, after an advertising company remodelled a restaurant into a pub for their pitch to a large beer distribution brewery. They made their client feel comfortable about their abilities to create anything. They definitely were not masters of pub interior decoration, but act as if is what they did.
I think this misses the point of the article. The author says something like "even though you're successful you feel like you're not" (on my phone so sorry for paraphrasing). I think the idea of rhe article is that if you're already making it, act as if you're making it. It's not like Conan doesn't put in hours and hours of hard work offstage to make his show happen. Acting "as if" is just a way to psychologically get himself in tune with his success and project an air of confidence.
I see this all the time. people harp on about 'fake it until you make it' when I think the bigger unspoken problem is the tendency to overvalue confidence over competence. I would much rather work with someone who values both confidence and competence.
Agreed, but note that in business you tend to die due to confidence issues well before competence ones.
A mistake due to incompetence can almost always be fixed later, especially if you can look critically at it and learn from it--this is how engineering works.
A lack of confidence, though, means that your skillfully laid-out system never makes it into production because you can't bring yourself to flip the switch.
Yeah, for what it's worth I do agree with you. To my way of thinking this is something that's aimed much more at easing the social interactions surrounding a startup than the hard work of actually delivering the value. But, I think to really be successful you need both.
I hate this "fake it til you make it attitude" and I see it both in the startup industry and the one we work in (photography). This works for Conan and actors because the worst-case is he has a bad show. It can work in an investor pitch meeting because the worst-case is you bomb and they don't invest. But once you're providing a professional service to someone else (consulting, wedding photography, training) or leading employees at a company, you have no effing business pretending to be something you're not.
- If you've never at least attempted to start a business, you have no business coaching people in lean startup methodologies and taking their money.
- If you've never assisted at a wedding and learned your camera, you have no business buying an SLR at Costco and taking money to photograph someone's wedding.
- If you don't know anything about basic web app security, you have no business taking someone's money and building them an ecommerce site.
Yes, at a certain point you can learn new things as you go. But IMO too many people are straight-up lying about what they are and what they know.
I feel the concepts of humility, apprenticeship, and a desire for learning/mastery are being lost in favor of "act as if" and "get big fast".
---
EDIT: I get now that this article is addressed to those with impostor syndrome and not actual impostors. Personally I think actual impostors are more endemic and just as likely to latch onto advice like this.