The impostor syndrome

Just over a year ago, I started this blog. More than a hobby, it has helped me to gain confidence in myself and my abilities.

I've already talked about it in the past, because of my non professional training, I'm often surrounded by highly qualified and competent people, and I've always had this discomfort of not feeling in my place, of being an impostor in my position.

A human problem more than a technical one

When I look, however, in all my missions, I have very rarely had negative comments. My clients have always been satisfied with my work. Nevertheless, I felt like I was usurping a job that I didn't deserve as much as people who had studied long and hard to achieve it.

This problem became more acute a year and a half ago, when I switched to cloud architecture at Médiamétrie. I had the impression that I was less deserving than my colleagues and not good enough for this position which requires a good vision of the company's IS landscape.

Luckily for me, I had great colleagues who supported, encouraged and motivated me to make everything go as smoothly as possible.

Gaining confidence in your skills: a long way to go

At the beginning of last year, I made a presentation for colleagues about the new features presented at the November Re:Invent, to be exact, I redid the presentation that AWS had made in our premises for remote colleagues who had not been able to take advantage of it due to technical problems.

Nevertheless, for this second presentation, I took the initiative to record in video the whole presentation (made through Microsoft Teams). I think you can easily imagine the difficulty for someone who doubts as much about his abilities as to record himself... This means that the slightest word, the slightest mistake will be visible to everyone.

I made this video, and although I was afraid of feedback, I decided to communicate it to the whole ISD. Contrary to what I feared, the feedback was not long in coming, and was very positive, with some people praising the educational effort I was making, and the fact that I was recording it for the benefit of as many people as possible.

The spark that ignited this blog

I'd been wanting to write a little blog about what I like to do for a few months now, but again, I was convinced that nobody would be interested and that I would make a fool of myself.

Doing this video internally gave me the confidence to start this blog that you are on today.

My first hesitant article, which took me several days to write, made me see that I liked doing this. A few dozen articles later, I've now found my cruising speed, and writing seems more natural to me.

Knowledge is a wealth that must be shared

I believe that knowledge and experience are things that must be shared, that must be expanded and that we must be able to question them.

This blog has allowed me to share my experiences and what I know, but it has also allowed me to exchange with many people from different backgrounds.

It also gave me the opportunity to gain self-confidence. Even if I don't necessarily feel like I belong, I feel more confident than a year ago, knowing that my posts are read, shared, commented, questioned allows me to see that I am accepted by my peers.

This is for me the real success through this blog, it allowed me to open up and see that I'm not as bad as I think I am.

Having a good entourage is important

When I doubted my abilities, I was fortunate to have colleagues and friends who have always supported and motivated me. People who believed in me when I didn't. These are the people who allowed me to go further and further. Through this post, I would also like to thank all the people (who will undoubtedly recognize themselves) for their precious help during all these years, which allowed me to get where I am today.