How imposter syndrome made me a better engineer

When I started my first job, I was thrown into a huge, messy codebase written in languages I didn’t know. I recognized that I wasn’t expected to know everything (or anything, at first) when people came to me with questions, but my imposter syndrome made me worry I would have trouble finding the answers fast enough.

My company had three tiers of support. Tier one was customer care, tier two the product team, and tier 3 engineering. I began eavesdropping on the product team’s conversations (both in person and via slack channels), so that any question they fielded that could possibly be elevated to me was on my radar as soon as possible. I figured that if they were keeping a timer of how long it took me to find an answer to their question, they would start that timer when they asked me the question. By eavesdropping on the conversation from the start, they didn’t know I had a 5 to 10 minute lead on figuring out the answer.

In truth, I didn’t need the lead time. I could find most answers in a reasonable time, but eavesdropping on questions helped me find answers to questions nobody actually asked me, which inadvertently rounded out my knowledge of the system and made me much more familiar with code nuance. And when they did ask me, I usually had the answer nearly immediately after being asked, which gave me a reputation as the one with the answers.