As the technical lead position wore on I found myself wanting to do something else. I interviewed at several places and was hired at Sourceforge as a member of the Systems Operations Group. Sourceforge was an amazing experience for me. I dreamed of working for an Open Source company, and few Open Source companies were as well-regarded as Sourceforge and Slashdot were in the Open Source community. But my insecurities and "impostor syndrome" kicked in. Would I be able to cut it? Would they hire me only to realize they'd made a mistake and I wasn't as good as I claimed to be? I was friends with and had gone to school with several of the people who worked at Sourceforge / Slashdot, so I wondered about their motivations for hiring me. Was my getting hired an elaborate prank, or was I hired because several folks in the company knew me? All of these thoughts ran through my head while I worked there. It didn't help that my position was primarily system administration at a level that I was inexperienced at. There was also a programming component to the position, but I constantly felt like I was in way over my head. I lived in constant fear that I was going to be found out and that the job that I wanted would no longer be available to me. Granted I learned a lot and had very supportive and kind management at Sourceforge but I lived in dread whenever my manager would check in on me because I feared that the conversation would only highlight that I wasn't really supposed to be there.
I'd love to say that it had a happy ending and that my fears were unfounded, but sadly I was let go from that position due to budgetary constraints. I'm grateful for the opportunities I had there, the friends I made, and the experiences I had but I'd be lying if the layoff didn't come with a mixture of sadness and relief. Sadness that I might never have a cool job like that again, and relief that I could put away those impostor syndrome feelings for the time being. In many ways I grew from the experience of working at Sourceforge and learned a lot about myself and my capabilities while working there, but it was also the position where I felt my impostor syndrome at its fullest.
As the technical lead position wore on I found myself wanting to do something else. I interviewed at several places and was hired at Sourceforge as a member of the Systems Operations Group. Sourceforge was an amazing experience for me. I dreamed of working for an Open Source company, and few Open Source companies were as well-regarded as Sourceforge and Slashdot were in the Open Source community. But my insecurities and "impostor syndrome" kicked in. Would I be able to cut it? Would they hire me only to realize they'd made a mistake and I wasn't as good as I claimed to be? I was friends with and had gone to school with several of the people who worked at Sourceforge / Slashdot, so I wondered about their motivations for hiring me. Was my getting hired an elaborate prank, or was I hired because several folks in the company knew me? All of these thoughts ran through my head while I worked there. It didn't help that my position was primarily system administration at a level that I was inexperienced at. There was also a programming component to the position, but I constantly felt like I was in way over my head. I lived in constant fear that I was going to be found out and that the job that I wanted would no longer be available to me. Granted I learned a lot and had very supportive and kind management at Sourceforge but I lived in dread whenever my manager would check in on me because I feared that the conversation would only highlight that I wasn't really supposed to be there.
I'd love to say that it had a happy ending and that my fears were unfounded, but sadly I was let go from that position due to budgetary constraints. I'm grateful for the opportunities I had there, the friends I made, and the experiences I had but I'd be lying if the layoff didn't come with a mixture of sadness and relief. Sadness that I might never have a cool job like that again, and relief that I could put away those impostor syndrome feelings for the time being. In many ways I grew from the experience of working at Sourceforge and learned a lot about myself and my capabilities while working there, but it was also the position where I felt my impostor syndrome at its fullest.