Seriously, what's going to happen when everyone sees that I'm a fraud?
Why Do I Feel This Way?
I'm pretty sure we've all felt it, that questioning feeling, wondering how you got into this position. You're thinking, "I don't belong here.", or, "I'm going to screw up and everyone will know that I'm an imposter." These feelings are pretty common no matter what you are doing, but especially when you didn't go through the "normal" training path.
I never went to university, not even community college, but yet I'm a senior software developer and people pay me to write code and design applications for them. Starting off as a software developer was super scary for me. I knew, that I knew what I was doing (at least most of the time), and I knew there were plenty of things I didn't know. I did extra practice work at home that helped me understand what I was working on in the office. I had a senior developer that was patient (thanks Guido), and answered my questions. However, it was difficult because since I couldn't take myself seriously as a developer, I thought others didn't take me seriously either. Why could I not take myself seriously? Because I lacked self confidence, and I really had a hard time dealing with these feelings.
How Do You Deal with Feeling Like an Imposter
After working as a software developer for a number of years, my confidence grew, and as it grew my feelings of being an imposter didn't come as often. At least until the company I worked for started having major financial issues, and I realized that I had to find a new job. Then all of those wonderful feelings of being an imposter, and everyone was going to see I didn't belong started coming back.
During one interview, I had someone asking me very deep questions about Java, the language that I primarily use, things that honestly if you didn't have the schooling to understand the low level parts of the language you would never know. Then there were the online "test" work where you couldn't switch tabs in your browser to look things up, you just had to know exactly how to implement a sorting function off the top of your head. These things exasperated my feelings of being an imposter. Eventually I found a place that hired me, and I got started deep diving on their tech stack so that I was ready on day one. Now I'm working as a co-team lead. So what happend? I found my confidence.
Find Your Self Confidence
There are no perfect, one-size-fits-all way to find your confidence. It takes time and patience, it helps to have a good team and a strong team lead who provides you feedback, helping you see where you did well, and where you can improve. While it's great and really helpful for others to point out when something you did had a good impact on the project, you can't expect others to do that for you. You have to see these for yourself. You have to find the internal power to say to someone, "hey I think we need to do this because ...".
It's hard as a junior developer to say what's on your mind. That's also part of the imposter syndrome. You assume that the seniors know everything. Seriously we don't know everything, we have lots of experience, but not on everything. Stepping up and finding your confidence to speak your mind about a topic is tough, but it will help you in the end. And if your senior developers or leadership aren't interested in taking the time to discuss your thoughts then maybe you are in the wrong team.
Final Thoughts
Imposter Syndrome is tough, and it can make you feel real low, especially when things aren't going well. It can be managed though and you should remember you are where you are because someone else saw your potential, or you have shown that you can do the work. If you can do the work, if you can keep up with your team, then you aren't an imposter, you are right where you need to be ... for now.