T-SQL Tuesday #122 – Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome.

If there was ever a phrase that brings about the dreaded Writer’s Block it would be Imposter Syndrome. I’m going to fall back to what I know I can talk about while the back part of my brain ruminates on what to write.

T-SQL Tuesday

T-SQL Tuesday is the brainchild of Adam Machanic ( Twitter | Blog ). It is a monthly blogging call by the Data community. Each month a topic for the community is offered up and a blog post is written by all wishing to take part.

This month we have John Shaulis ( Twitter | Blog ) as the host and John has given the topic of Imposter Syndrome.

I want to read your stories about when you’ve experienced, seen, or overcome imposter syndrome!

John Shaulis

You can find the invitation to this month’s topic at John’s blog post here.

Imposter Syndrome

I’ve gone through 2 cups of coffee staring at a blank page while waiting for my brain to dredge up some relatable Imposter Syndrome moment. It’s taken this long for me to realise that it’s a futile exercise. Imposter Syndrome is, by the definition that John has kindly given us, a personal experience. 

One’s success […] result of one’s […] efforts or skills.

Imposter Syndrome Definition

So, with a third cup of coffee in hand, and a deep refusal to believe that I have a caffeine dependency, allow me to tell you about the times that I feel the Imposter Syndrome the most.

Unsurprisingly

Normal working days are not the days that I feel Imposter Syndrome.

Fielding questions at work doesn’t bother me.

There’s a sense of investigation, an aim to teach, and a feeling of joy that people are taking an active interest in SQL Server.

Investigating issues and researching requests don’t trigger it either.

There are set goals here; either fix the issue or can the request be done? Plus, there is an amazing community out there that can be called upon on Twitter, Slack, etc. for answers or guidance.

Unsurprisingly the days when I am the sole person interested in SQL Server are not the days when I feel Imposter Syndrome.

Surrounded but Isolated

Imposter Syndrome hits like a brick when I’m not alone. Conferences, User Groups, and meetups are the main culprits.

Probably stemming from being a Junior DBA going to my first User Group and realising the extent of the topics I didn’t even know that I didn’t know!

Trying to learn the basics of administrating databases and going to a meeting where people are arguing about single-thread CPU performance and NUMA nodes…

Talking to people who are dealing with columnstore partitioning problems and massive memory grants because they’re bulk-loading 3 trillion rows at once.

All the while I’m there thinking my main problem was telling developers “set-based = good, row-by-row = bad”.

The same is true for conferences. 

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Please don’t get me wrong. I love going to conferences, I do! 

There are few other places where you can get curated knowledge to that extent! Where you can talk to people who get it when you say “Can you believe that they wanted sysadmin privileges just to take backups!?!”.

I love seeing what people are doing, what new technologies are coming up, and catching up with people who experience the same problems that I do.

And there’s no way I’m going to stop, the “fors” don’t just outweigh the “againsts”, they completely smother them!

But it fires off my Imposter Syndrome like nothing else does!