The Dunning-Kruger Effect and Imposter Syndrome
Last week was a frustrating week in my life of software testing.
The old Imposter Syndrome hit hard, and for good reason. There were several times that I ran into a wall testing new functionality in this new service, and had to go back to the developer several times for clarification and to help unstick myself. One of those times resulted in us delaying the deployment.
It was my fault. Total PEBKAC moment.
So, after swallowing my pride, apologizing to the developer who, by this point, was really tired of hearing from me, I’m sure, and uncrossing all of the proverbial wires, I was thoroughly exhausted and feeling pretty low.
Riding that less than awesome wave, I started down the whole “Maybe I should go back to banking” and “I’m not the QA Engineer that deserves this job” rabbit hole. I normally come back from this via some awesome bug that’s found, or writing some truly beautiful code that boggles the mind in its simplicity (Maybe I’m just reenacting that scene from Silicon Valley in my head). This time, though, I came across an article.
This article was written as a response to current events, and illustrated something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The DKE is a cognitive bias where a person who is not actually good at something cannot see their deficiencies, and thus believe themselves to be above average in that area. Therefore, people who are actually not well versed in a subject believe themselves to be close to experts on it. Conversely, an individual who is more knowledgeable can see the areas that they are deficient. It’s one of those “You don’t know what you don’t know” scenarios: By understanding that you have things to learn, you’re actually doing pretty well in the subject.
Learning this, I started feeling better about my abilities to break stuff on purpose and find those areas, those dark corners of code where big, nasty, insidious bugs like to hide out. By understanding that I don’t know everything, and am not an expert in my field, I must be doing pretty good, then, right?
[ This whole process feels like Vizzini in The Princess Bride. “I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.” ]
My point, the reason for all this rambling, is to say that the next time you’re sitting there, staring at some tests or some code that you feel is sub-par, and you’re thinking about calling up that old boss to see if they’ll take you back so you can sell credit cards again (ugh), take heart in knowing that just by realizing your deficiency, you’re actually doing pretty well.
If you have any comments, please feel free to reach out!