[jameshart]

I’m sure you meant well, but this response really comes across as saying “dont worry, you don’t have imposter syndrome - you’re too poorly educated for that. You’re actually an imposter.”

The point is imposter syndrome affects people who are high achievers but don’t feel they earned the respect that gives them. In tech, that high achievement status can be orthogonal to the level of formal education, so regardless of how highly educated someone is, they can look at their peers and feel like they don’t belong.

[kohanz]

With all due respect, I think you're reading something into my comment that simply isn't there. Perhaps I should have denoted 'formal education', because the OP is educated, just not formally.

The only thing I meant (beyond what I said) is that while there are many good reasons to pursue higher education, if one does so with the goal of ridding oneself of impostor syndrome, that could very well turn out to be ineffective or perhaps even counter-productive.

I'm simply relaying my own experience to the OP. I work in software with a post-graduate degree and am also licensed by a professional engineering body and while it's not with me all the time, I do endure bouts of impostor syndrome as well despite these things that should assure me. It makes sense; now I've got these extra letters behind my name that I'm supposed to live up to - and we know how our minds can take that and place unreasonable expectations on ourselves.

My experience, especially in higher education, was that the more I learned, the more I realized how much I didn't know. I noticed this amongst my peers as well. Some of the people I knew that suffered the worst had PhDs!

[optimuspaul]

> “dont worry, you don’t have imposter syndrome - you’re too poorly educated for that. You’re actually an imposter.”

I didn't get that at all when I read that.