This really resonates with me, I was the first person in my family to go to university, and my grandparents had to work multiple jobs when they migrated from Europe in order to survive. My dad did slightly better, but both my parents only had high school education and worked blue collar jobs.
It does make it really hard to change your mindset when you come from this sort of background, when you've achieved more than anyone in your family and therefore can't really talk to them about your ambitions or career objectives.
It sounds awful, but sometimes I wish I had been born into a different family, with highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more.
I find I constantly have a mindset of "I'm not good enough" and it's paralysing. I want to interview for the top tech jobs out there, like Google or Facebook, but my brain keeps telling me I'm not good enough, it's awful.
> with highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more.... I find I constantly have a mindset of "I'm not good enough" and it's paralysing.
I went to Medical school and for a period of time was surrounded by people who, for the most part, came from affluent or otherwise successful families. My experience was the opposite of what you might have expected: I met many people who felt like they weren't good enough, whose parents weren't encouraging to them, and in several cases had no relationship with them whatsoever. Which I guess is only to say, if you want to be "Good enough" you just have to accept yourself for who you are and continuously try to be better. If you want to apply for the top tech jobs, you should. And if you fail, you should ask how you can improve, do so, and try again. Ultimately, you can only ever be good enough if you try. Failure isn't a disastrous outcome; its absolutely a part of the process of getting better.
> highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more.
I realize you may not be implying this, but I just wanted to point out that highly-educated parents don't always have amazing conversations with their children, or encourage them to achieve and grow even more, or even accept or approve of the accomplishments their children have achieved.
If you feel like you are not good enough - maybe you aren't. Maybe it will take another few years to work on something you are proud of and then you'll feel ready.
You sound relatively young - there is no rush to join google/facebook this year or the next. If you look at the bigger picture - you'll likely be working until you're in your 60s.
That's a long time. So I'd say don't sweat the goals you set for this year or the next so much, once you have the bigger picture, things will fall into place much more naturally.
Why in the world are you _hostile_ to the kind of accomplishments he's describing? Are you from pre-colonization India? 13th-century Europe? Christopher Columbus called, we don't despise upward social mobility anymore!
Off-topic, but I wanted to say that I really appreciate this comment/clarification - the matter-of-fact tone makes the point without getting anyone's back up, which (IMHO) is exactly the right way to reach hearts and minds.
I'm pretty bad about defaulting to masculine pronouns myself, and this simple exchange has done a lot to motivate me to break that habit (I would have also assumed your gender to be male, and would not have really thought about that assumption if not for this comment). Conversely, I think that would have just glazed over an angry/offended response, since I think it's clear that the person you're replying to meant no offense. So, thanks!
More on-topic (in response to your GP comment):
I have a pretty similar family background, and have also experienced a lot of self-doubt. I think a lot of us (people in tech) suffer from impostor syndrome at times; the approach that helped me to overcome it is "fake it 'til you make it", especially in your internal dialogue. Try your best to project confidence in your abilities, and (more importantly) squash that little voice in your head that says you're not good enough whenever you hear it - even if you're inclined to agree with it.
I know this is easier said than done, but I think that it really helps improve the situation. For example, say you disagree with something said in a meeting:
<self-doubting inner voice>: "Keep your mouth shut, you're just going to look stupid!"
<self-affirming inner voice>: "No! I may not know everything about this subject, but I know a lot, and they haven't considered X!"
<out-loud>: "I'm not an expert on this topic, but it seems to me that we might be overlooking X...<make your argument>...Does that make sense, or am I missing something?"
As long as you're careful not to come off as hostile (note that the "out-loud" part has a deliberately humble tone and invites further discussion if others disagree), the worst-case scenario is you get some free education from someone more experienced than you; best-case, you get some immediate, external validation that you do know what you're doing. In either case, you're working towards breaking the habit of self doubt.
Anecdotally, I helped a friend get his first job in tech a couple of years back (he was previously a trash hauler), working as my assistant (I'm a DevOp) because I knew he'd be great at it if given the chance. His impostor syndrome caused him to totally choke in the final interview (upper management actively didn't want to hire him, but I managed to convince them that he'd be worth the low salary he was willing to take). It took him over a year to begin to believe that he wasn't an impostor, rather just new to the field. He worked hard, and followed my advice above, and his confidence gradually improved. Today, he's the Senior DevOps Engineer at that company (my old job), leading a team of 6, and making twice as much money as when he started. If he decides he wants to move to a "top" company at this point, he should have no problem.
I guess my point is that impostor syndrome really sucks, but if you actively work at it, it gets better.
Also, based on your comments on this thread, you seem pretty cool to me. If you're interested, shoot me an email (in my profile), and I'll gladly help you get an interview at my current company (Cloudera).
Thank you for this comment. I suffer severely from low self esteem and impostor syndrome. Coworkers from several previous jobs have even gone so far as to tell me they thought I was a genius, and it made me feel immensely guilty every time.
I'm going to try putting some of your suggestions into practice. I'm at a crossroads in my career, having recently been separated from my job due to budget cuts. Even though my job loss wasn't an indictment of my worth as a person or the craftsmanship of my work, my confidence still took a significant blow.
Staying motivated while looking, applying, and interviewing for jobs you believe you don't deserve to get is challenging, to say the least.
I totally understand if people are just downvoting me for being off-topic (I tried to keep the majority of my comment on-topic, but might not have done a very good job), but if the down-voting is due to the content of the post, I'm genuinely interested in understanding why. Thanks! (And apologies for the wall of text, it's just that this topic has stirred up a lot of feelings for me.)
It does make it really hard to change your mindset when you come from this sort of background, when you've achieved more than anyone in your family and therefore can't really talk to them about your ambitions or career objectives.
It sounds awful, but sometimes I wish I had been born into a different family, with highly educated parents I could have amazing conversations with, who would encourage me to achieve and grow even more.
I find I constantly have a mindset of "I'm not good enough" and it's paralysing. I want to interview for the top tech jobs out there, like Google or Facebook, but my brain keeps telling me I'm not good enough, it's awful.