Impostor syndrome
Most engineers specially the good ones suffer from it
Nov 21, 2025
A couple of weeks ago we had lunch with a friend who happens to be one of the top software engineers at one of Europe’s best scale-ups.
Halfway through the main dish, he mentioned something that surprised me: despite his insane talent and track record, he still feels impostor syndrome hitting hard sometimes. And he told me that using Pensero helped him get perspective on how impactful his work really is.
If you think about it, it makes sense: impostor syndrome specifically targets people who are not impostors. The more competent you are, the more visibility you have into the vastness of what you don’t know.
Why do we feel like a fraud?
Engineers are trained to challenge, doubt, break things apart and rebuild them better. That mindset is great for systems, but it can turn on us: we start applying the same skepticism to our achievements, our skills, even our careers.
Add the reality of today’s industry:
New frameworks, languages, and architectures appear every month.
What was “state of the art” six months ago might now be considered outdated.
And we’re surrounded by self-declared “experts” loudly proclaiming how wrong everyone else is, despite rarely having built anything meaningful themselves.
With all this noise, how do you stay sane?
I don’t want to be another hustler promising magic formulas, so I’ll just share what has worked for me.
Build a “body of work”
Creating features is great. Saving costs is great. But creating value is better.
Keep a record of your contributions and not only the software you built, but the problems you solved, the people you helped, and the impact you created.
Then do the following exercise:
Define a wildly ambitious 3-year version of yourself.
Break that down into a 1-year version.
Then into a 3-month version.
Then into what you can literally start doing today.
Suddenly, the unrealistic becomes achievable.
You now have a roadmap of the skills you need to grow.
Reflect weekly.
Look at your gaps.
Seek out challenges that force you to grow into the person you want to become.
For example: if you want to lead teams, communication becomes essential.
Explaining a Q3 roadmap to your engineers is not the same as presenting to a board.
Different audiences, different expectations and different muscles to build.
Choose your environment intentionally
In a job you earn either money, experience, or both.
Surround yourself with people that stretch you in the right dimensions.
Look at your skills wishlist and identify who around you can help you level up.
And be proactive:
Ask your manager, “Is there anything important I could help with that I’m not currently tackling?”
Almost every time, the answer will be: “Actually, yes…”
Those unclaimed, ambiguous problems? They’re gold.
They’re where growth hides.
If a challenge aligns even remotely with where you want to go, take it.
Learn as you go.
If there’s a will, there’s a way.
Measure and improve
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
Pick a metric, any metric, that reflects the kind of engineer you want to become.
It could be:
People you unblocked
PRs reviewed
Money saved
Customer pain removed
Systems stabilized
Incidents prevented
What matters is that it’s consistent, unbiased, and directionally correct.
There is no perfect metric, but many can guide you.
Set a benchmark, follow the trend, and commit to the journey.
Compare yourself, not to random people on Twitter, but to relevant comparables.
Use their trajectory as inspiration, not discouragement.
If you chase the right indicators long enough, you will get where you want.
If this resonates with you, then you’re likely not an impostor at all.
You’re just someone who cares enough to keep growing.
