"Well, You LOOK Like a Coder!"
Tags: bootcamp, juniordev, imposter, imposteryndrome
Published: 2021-02-01 01:32:20

This is the first thing my friend Anthony* told me when I joined our scheduled Zoom call. He was sitting in his sunny Bay Area home, and I was in Brooklyn, standing on an ergonomic mat, my notebook open upon my homemade standing desk, staring into a new webcam perched on my wall-mounted second monitor. Anthony may have been referring to my home office setup—did I mention the whiteboard to my left?—or my shaggy appearance and hoodie; regardless, I was buoyed by his observation. Because while I may *look* like a coder, I sure didn't *feel* like one.

**_"Oh no, not another blog about imposter syndrome!"_**

Yeah, well, when you live most of your life with a millennial's cursory knowledge of computer science, then spend four-to-six months working your butt off in an coding bootcamp and come out the other end digging through hundreds of job postings for "entry level" positions requiring three-plus years of experience, it's a syndrome you're likely to develop! 

While you're in the midst of a grueling bootcamp, you only have time to focus on the task at hand. Although projects often lead to a substantial amount of independent learning, most of your time is spent learning what's assigned. In the first couple months after leaving graduating, you start gathering data. Who's hiring? What are they hiring for? *What skills do candidates for those positions need to have if they want to be successful?* In other words, you start getting a sense of how huge the software engineering world really is; you start to know how much you don't know. And it's at that point that you're expected to throw yourself into the ego-destroying machine that is the Big Bad Job Search.

Essentially, you're trying to pitch your commercial value from the pit of Dunning-Kruger's Valley of Despair: 

<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_Effect_01.svg/1200px-Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_Effect_01.svg.png" alt="dunning kruger effect graph" >

**"Why should you hire me? Great question!"**

For those of us (bootcamp-trained junior devs) coming from [non-traditional backgrounds](https://www.jacobfromm.com), it's certainly satisfying to submit applications peppered with technical skills and projects, but let's not kid ourselves—these experiences don't stack up against engineers with real career experience. And that's ok! You're a lot more than those slightly-better-than-beginner dev skills you were so proud of just a few months ago, presenting your final bootcamp project on the cusp of graduation. 

**"My guess is, junior developers are a dime a dozen." **
My dad blessed me with his version of a compliment with that sentence over the phone the other night. He meant that while I now have skills that make me *better*, they don't make me—in a sea of other junior devs—*different*. The good thing (and the point, really) is the things that *do* make me different were—major cliché alert—inside me all along.

As a developer, sure, you might not be the belle of the ball. But companies don't hire developers. (I mean, they do—at least I hope they do! Ahh! Panic!) Companies hire people. And you're a people! And I'd bet that, if you're still reading this article, you're a curious, hard-working, talented people—all the more so since you did that bootcamp. So keep going! You can't be an imposter when you're being yourself. You can be a stressed-out, inexperienced, bug-prone junior developer for sure. But not an imposter.

*name changed