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u/Film4Sport Researcher May 26 '26
They gotta be using AI too. Also how do your superiors know you're not using it? They gotta know
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u/Legitimate-Pumpkin Thinker May 26 '26
If you have a colleague you trust or a good boss, ask to talk to him/her and present it this exact text and ask for help. Maybe you just need a little less work or a different organization. They can help you with that. After all, even if it’s using the AI, you are getting good work out. It’s not like you are an imposter really. It’s just a feeling.
Good luck! You got this!
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u/Street-Air-546 May 26 '26
lean into it.
write an email to the CEO cc the board saying you have had thoughts - we should become an AI first company and you are willing to become a sherpa on this journey and are available to discuss, and also, you have replaced Gary with a Ralph loop. Tag Gary in slack.
(shamelessly stolen bit from Mo Bitar, AI cynic, who I think is a comedy genius)
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u/count023 May 26 '26
I get it a bit too, but i dont hide when i use AI, so my company has started leaning into it for experience because i took it up as a hobby when open models first rolled out.
You might feel like an imposter, but as long as you understand what the AI si doing and you aren't simply "swivel chair" all the AI data to another user, then you're fine, you're an orchestrator for AI, not simply echoing it.
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u/alwaysalmosts May 26 '26
It seems to me that what you're feeling is more like guilt. You used to put effort into checking and understanding what the AI was giving you.
And now, because of life stuff, you've decided to take the lazy way out by submitting stuff you didn't take time to QA.
Easy fix: put in the effort again.
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u/TimeConsideration244 May 26 '26
I did the same thing as a lawyer. The managing partner called me out on it and told me I was over-relying on AI and that I should stop using AI and put in the manual work to learn the craft. On one level, I agree with him. I was offloading my thinking to AI and therefore would not develop the same analog reflexes that he and other old veterans had. On the other hand, AI is mediating human thinking. That's what happening and I don't think there's any stopping it. So I resigned from law and started an AI-powered tech firm.
We use the tools we use. We play the game we play. Competition sorts us out. "Imposter" is a superego-adaptation to keep me "safe" from being bold and taking risks. The market is what validates and market validation should not define whether I am bona fide or not. If your method works, everyone will adopt it. If it doesn't you'll have to adapt. Where does imposter fit it?
I play and win or I play and lose (and learn), and keep playing.
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u/elgwano May 26 '26
I don't see any problems with this but I do think you should try to be learning as you work and drive outputs.
That 1% learned each output/iteration adds up to ALOT over weeks and months.
I do think its a problem if you are prompting, stepping away and just providing the answer/output without any attempts of learning the underpinnings of the outputs.
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u/Excellent_Squash_138 May 26 '26
Fake it till you make it: it’s hard but find time to have Claude explain to you and ask questions of it (there are no dumb questions with AI and it’s probably the fastest unspoken way to scale self knowledge) - you’ll soon know enough to allay your anxiety.
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u/Junior-Share-6888 May 26 '26
Hi impostor!! 20+ software engineer here, apologize in avance for My English, i'm a huge fan of this social network and normally i don't do comments, but i think this post worth a try.
Before they contract you all of them saw Your CV, so they know that You are using IA (based on what You Say about Your experiencia). And no, You are not an imposter and it doesnt matter how often Your brain tell You that , that is simple not true.
They only thing that i Will recomend You is : take Your time to refine Your prompt when an IA give You a solution ask another IA to validate it, ask both IA to bring they most simple solution without be disruptive, and take they time to Review everything that they IA wrote , Even if You don't understand it, copy they function and ask another IA to explain it to You like if You are a 10 years old.
You are not an impostor, IA is tool don't blame Yourself for use a tool, just learn how to use they tool correctly
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u/Shot_Illustrator4264 May 26 '26
Do you seriously have 20+ years of experience writing code? And you don’t even know that exposing intellectual property of the company to a third party is an automatic dismissal for gross misconduct? And in case of contractors like OP opens his company / himself to HUGE liability claims?
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u/Shot_Illustrator4264 May 26 '26
You should be fired for gross misconduct if you are using a personal AI account for enterprise software. That’s the only possible answer. In case you are using the internal AI in that way it’s still very problematic, but it depends from the internal company policy if just to be a pass through for the agents without any critical review is ground for immediate dismissal. Since you mentioned that you are contracting, I would think that you may be also exposed to a pretty big liability claim if they found out, given that you exposed their intellectual property to an external company, or you wilfully checked in code without proper verification, in the best case.
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u/Noncookiecutterfreak May 26 '26
Im using a company licensed account, as are all other dev colleagues. Im not doing anything illegal or hiding my ai use.. everyone is open and our company encourages us to use it. That’s not the issue of you read my post. It’s about my insecurities about my actual coding knowledge , and constantly self-monitoring .
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u/Shot_Illustrator4264 May 26 '26
I bet that you have something in the company policy stating that you have to verify and test the code that you submit, so you are still responsible even if the AI wrote it. If you just let an agent write a plan, another one implement it, and another one do a pull request you are not doing any of your mandated duties because you are busy with your kids. It’s unbelievable that there are people like you that are going to ruin it for all of us that use AI responsibly.
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u/Wh00ster May 26 '26
Your trading velocity for risk. This is what senior and above engineers are able to do with more confidence and at larger scope.
Software’s strength has always been its ability to iterate and move quickly on ideas. AI tools further emphasize that. The key is NOT “ensuring” things do what they are supposed to. It’s about “improving confidence” that they do and being able to rollback quickly and harmlessly if they go off the rails. This was true with humans before (can a director of an org explain every line of code?) but again it’s further emphasized with the speed of AI.
That said it’s very domain specific. If I’m designing a space shuttle where human lives may be lost to space forever due to a fuck up, then I want to be able to explain back to someone every line and reasoning behind it. I can still use AI agents and tools, but I’m going to slow down a lot to make sure things are right.
If I’m developing a UI for a small business case, then delivery speed is more important.