Are you even good enough to have Imposter Syndrome?

This week marks 5 years since I started at my current employer, SpaceX. It's a massive understatement to say time flies here. Half a decade down in what feels like the blink of an eye. I feel accomplished in what I have been able to achieve up to this point but deep down I still feel like a newbie, constantly asking myself if I truly am good at my craft.

There’s this thing no one really prepares you for when you start a career in IT: imposter syndrome doesn’t go away. If anything, it scales with you.

I used to think that once I gained more experience, earned certifications, or solved harder problems, that nagging feeling of “do I really know what I’m doing?” would finally quiet down. It didn’t. Instead, as I grew professionally, so did my awareness of the vastness of the field. I started seeing not just the things I didn’t know, but also the things I didn’t even know I didn’t know. And that’s a wild realization.

There was a moment early in my career where I was handed a PowerShell-heavy project that touched Intune, Azure AD, Power BI and a handful of systems I barely understood. I remember staring at the requirements and feeling frozen. “Shouldn’t someone more experienced be doing this?” But instead of backing away, I leaned in; painfully, slowly, and with a lot of debugging sessions. That project turned into one of the most pivotal learning experiences of my career. Ironically, as soon as I completed it, imposter syndrome came back again whispering, “You just got lucky.”

But here’s the part I’ve come to embrace: imposter syndrome isn’t a weakness. It’s a signal. It means you care. It means you have the humility to recognize how complex and fast-moving this industry is. And most importantly, it means you’re not coasting.

Over time, I’ve learned to stop trying to kill it off. Instead, I treat it like fire. And like fire, it can serve or destroy.

Used well, it fuels late-night learning sessions, deeper research, cleaner code, and better design decisions. It keeps me sharp. It pushes me to earn the confidence I want to feel.

But left unchecked, it can just as easily burn you out and make you doubt your every decision, hesitate to speak up, or second guess work you’re more than qualified to do.

The trick, and it really is a practice,  is learning to control it. Use it as motivation, not a measuring stick. Let it drive your curiosity, not your insecurity. And remember: nobody knows everything. We’re all just building, breaking, learning in loops collectively.

If you’ve felt it, you’re not alone. If you’ve figured out how to use it as fuel rather than fear then you’re probably further along than you think.