Heavy Networking 672: Overcoming Your Imposter Syndrome

Lots of folks suffer from impostor syndrome. I’m one of them. It’s easy as a deep technologist to feel this way. Tech is complex–inscrutable at first glance. How could you possibly know what you’re doing? And yet, many of us have found ourselves responsible for incredibly complex IT systems. Fake it ‘til you make it, we think to ourselves. To handle the cognitive dissonance of impostor syndrome, we overcompensate. In doing so, we pay a personal price. Our guest today is Matt Vitale. Like me and perhaps many of you, Matt has battled impostor syndrome. But unlike most of us, Matt’s dug deeply into the topic to figure out how to cope with it, and how to overcome impostor syndrome. We discuss: * What imposter syndrome is and how it manifests * How imposter syndrome applies to networkers and IT professionals * Balancing self-doubt and overconfidence * How to handle external praise and internal negative talk * Whether imposter syndrome can be motivating * How imposter syndrome can affect others around you * More Sponsor: Paessler Think about a podcast ad about a mattress. No one needs another podcast ad about a mattress. But here’s the thing: your choice of mattress is one of the most important decisions you can make in your life. Same thing with infrastructure monitoring: you don’t think about it often, but it’s one of your most important decisions as an IT professional. Get your monitoring hosted in the cloud with Paessler PRTG Hosted Monitor, now with 50% off monthly subscriptions for new customers for the first three months. Go to Prtg.com and use the promo code “packetpushers.” Sponsor: Palo Alto Networks Join Palo Alto Networks for a virtual event to learn what’s next in SASE, with the latest innovations in Prisma SASE, ZTNA 2.0 and SD-WAN. See how these new capabilities help your customers consolidate multiple point products into a single platform to reduce TCO. Sign up at https://start.paloaltonetworks.com/sase-signature-moment-2023.html. Show Links: The Impostor Cure by Dr. Jessamy Hibberd – Book How To Be Yourself by Dr. Ellen Hendriksen – Book Matt Vitale On Impostor Syndrome – Talk from NANOG87 (YouTube) Overcoming Impostor Syndrome in IT – NetworkToCode Blog Matt on NetworkToCode Slack Matt on LinkedIn