Career

I'm a self-taught developer and I feel like an impostor every day

Lakshay Desai

8/5/2025

358

No CS degree. Learned everything from YouTube, documentation, and building projects. Got a decent job too.

But every day at work, when my colleagues discuss operating systems, networking, or compiler design concepts, I feel so out of place. They'll casually mention things like "cache coherence" or "TCP congestion control" and I'm just nodding along pretending to understand.

Does this ever go away? How do self-taught devs deal with these knowledge gaps?

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Comments (2)

Ahmed Kim9/1/2025

Totally feel you, Lakshay! As another self-taught dev, I find it's really about learning what you need when you need it. Have you tried online courses like Coursera or edX? They can help fill those gaps.

Tushar Gupta8/26/2025

Hey Lakshay, I think a lot of devs feel this way, degree or not. Impostor syndrome is real! Maybe try pairing with a colleague on a task where those concepts pop up. It can be a great way to learn in context.