Why you don’t feel good enough as a data scientist and what you can do about it

Have you ever felt like you weren’t qualified to do something that other people trusted you to do? Have you thought that somehow you managed to fool them into giving you an opportunity but it is just a matter of time before they figure you out? Have you felt like you are a fraud or you are not good enough and you’ve just been lucky?

I have been there. Even though I was completely confident of my capabilities and my skills, I still felt like there were many things everyone except me knew. I felt like somehow I managed to trick the system into getting a job and now I had to protect my cover.

If you have been in a similar situation, that means you have experienced impostor syndrome. And if you haven’t and you are working on becoming a data scientist, there is a chance you might feel this way at your first job.

Impostor syndrome is simply not feeling up to the job, thinking that you’ve come this far by luck and that others will figure you out and call you out on it. Let me tell you why I think this feeling is particularly common among data scientists and why it is normal to feel this way. I will also give you some advice on how to change your perspective and have a healthier mindset.

Data science or data scientist are not terms that are well defined yet. It is possible to see many contradicting definitions. And so it becomes likely for aspiring data scientists to see definitions that do not include them and feel like they still haven’t achieved the title of data scientists because they are lacking a certain skill that was mentioned.

What’s more, data science is many times used as a gigantic umbrella term that has many other fields living under it. When you see a constant stream of new topics, disciplines, techniques, algorithms going about, and all being described as part of data science, it is normal to feel overwhelmed and unqualified. Remember not everything you hear will apply to you.

I know it’s harder when you hear colleagues, friends, people on the internet discuss certain topics you have never even heard before. It is natural to think that you are the only data scientist (candidate) in the face of the earth who doesn’t know about it.

In addition to all this, the internet itself doesn’t help with impostor syndrome.