LUMP Depot
Imposter syndrome is the kind of thing you mostly hear about from newer workers. The feeling that you don't quite belong, that everyone else has a handle on things you're still figuring out, that someone is about to notice. I've been there. Most people have, if they're honest.
The world moves fast enough now that the feeling doesn't really go away either. You master something, and six months later there's a new tool, a new workflow, a new way of doing the thing you finally had down. Confidence is hard to hold onto in a moving target.
But here's the part that isn't getting said enough: AI is getting very good at being an imposter too. Better, in some ways. And it does not have the self-doubt.
The superior imposter
The version of imposter syndrome that actually concerns me isn't the one newer workers carry around. It's the one AI is quietly becoming.
It can write emails that sound senior. It can draft reports, write code, summarize meetings, and pitch ideas. It doesn't freeze when asked a question it doesn't fully know the answer to. It generates a confident response and keeps going. No hesitation. No second-guessing itself at 2am.
That's not a knock on AI. It's actually a pretty accurate description of what a lot of office work looks like: pattern-matched confidence on a deadline.
The uncomfortable part is that a lot of tasks that felt secure five years ago, the writing, the research, the boilerplate coordination work, those sit squarely in the zone AI performs well in right now. And it doesn't feel like an imposter while doing them. It just does them.
You're not done yet
Here's the thing about imposter syndrome, though. The feeling is real, but it's not always accurate.
Your actual skill level is something you build over time. The years of context, judgment, and real-world pattern-matching that come from actually doing a job: those don't evaporate because a model can now draft the memo faster than you can. They matter more, not less, in a world where anyone can generate the surface layer of a deliverable on demand.
The problem is when that imposter feeling convinces you to disengage. To wait it out, or avoid the uncomfortable new tools, or hope the whole situation stabilizes before you have to learn anything new. That's how you become the slow deer. The wolves, as I've said before, are already circling.
Work with the expert imposter
Every category of job that survived a wave of automation survived because the people doing it learned to use the new tools. Not perfectly. Not immediately. But they picked them up and figured out how to extend what they could do with them.
Same deal here. AI is a genuinely capable imposter. The ceiling on what it produces goes up considerably when a person with real context and judgment is directing it. That's not a feel-good conclusion, it's just how it actually works in practice. I see it every day.
The tools are uncomfortable at first. Prompting well takes some learning. Knowing when to push back on what the model gives you, knowing when it's confidently wrong versus actually right: that's a skill, and it builds. The faster you build it, the harder your spot is to fill.
You've felt like an imposter before. You kept going anyway. Do that again, but this time bring the expert imposter with you. You don't have to love the tools. You just have to be willing to work with them.
tl;dr: Imposter syndrome is real and the world changes fast. Your accumulated skill is real too, though, and it's what makes the difference when you put it in front of a capable AI. Pick up the uncomfortable tools. A topic for next time maybe.