I lied on my CV and somehow convinced the world I was a coding wizard. Now I’m stuck in a never-ending cycle of Google searches and caffeine-fueled coding sessions.
This is when I regret it and I do, indeed.
My browser history is a treasure trove of “how to fix syntax errors” and “what does this error message mean?”?
I learned to code on the job, which is just a fancy way of saying I’m making it up as I go along.
My colleagues think I’m a genius, but really, I’m just good at hiding my panic.
When they ask me to explain my code, I launch into a confident-sounding jargon-filled monologue, hoping they’ll get lost in the technical mumbo-jumbo.
The best part? I got a promotion and a raise, which basically translates to “we’re paying you more to keep pretending you’re good at this.”
Comments
You sound like the average programmer to me
Have you installed AI copilot etc
You are not alone who is doing this 😁
Here that’s how it’s working in the government. No one is coding, they all use google.
Their thinking is “Why would you waste time creating it when it was already done before.”
Pretending or not, you are doing your job and deserve this promotion
As a contrast, I once lied on my CV. I got the job and was fired 24 hours later 🙂
Wait… CVs are supposed to be the truth? Who knew?
That’s a skill too, which I lack! If you can manage things who cares?!
there are plenty of people on r/overemployed who are mediocre at 3-4 jobs so it not completely unheard of for someone winging it in 1 coding job.
Obviously, I couldn’t possibly comment from personal experience, about having perpetrated an untruth on one’s resume.
What I could suggest, however, is that, every time one secures a bigger, better role, one could perhaps omit a fiction from the sheet, so that in the fullness of time, their CV would be squeaky clean.
Excellent work.
So did your job not have a technical round in the interview where they checked if you can actually code. This is why faking CVs to the extent you did doesn’t usually work out in tech.
Fake it till you make it
If you are doing all the required work, who cares about it? You got the promotion because you are meeting your targets.
I don’t buy this. If someone’s still using Google
To fix coding issues something’s off.
i’m tempted to lie on my CV for jobs when i move. like there are jobs in my field that i can take but i need to get out of manufacturing for my health (found out i have a genetic disorder this year that is simply put just going to get worse.) i just don’t even know what to try and get into where lying won’t be that big of a deal and it’s something i can pick up easily. i mean i do learn pretty well and all but still. idk. it’s just hard because i never had the chance to go to college or trade school.
glad you landed yourself something good and have seemed to make the most of it. sounds like you picked it up better than you probably think if your coworkers think you’re a wizard. i always liked programming as a hobby but it seemed too mentally stressful a job for me personally.
“Fake it until you make it”
This was the advice I got from a person in a senior management position when I applied for my first tech job
Take your imposter syndrome and turn it into infiltrator syndrome.
‘Haha these fools don’t even realise I have no idea what I’m doing.’
Well, you delivered. Better than many PhDs who are paid a lot but can’t do their jobs even when they have real qualifications.
You are apparently better at pretending than your coworkers are.
Let me guess, corporate america ?
‘My colleagues think I’m a genius’: no they don’t. If they are coders as well, that’s is.
They know exactly what is going on and know you panic when they ask something.
Your confession sounds like a vent – I think it’s awesome you are succeeding at your role in tech but it sounds super stressful to maintain the game!
I was going to make this exact same post. I’m starting my 3rd week as a dba and they think that I’m proficient in sql and I’m not… I don’t know if the anxiety is worth the paycheck
You are a disgrace, and I am not even joking when I say it. You are taking up the space that somebody who toiled and sweated to prepared for the role. All the “self-empowering” people cheering you on are missing the point. There is only a finite number of positions available. The role you are occupying could have been the break somebody who had spent years preparing for it was looking for. At the same time you are contributing to the problem of CV-padders and CV-liars who make outstanding CVs appear not so great in comparison. Because it normalizes the CVs with “6 years of experience” with people like you who are just winging it. Fie on you.
King, is that you?
I hope your code will just blow up a business and not cost anyone their life or health. Better take a few classes online.
You might go bald from the stress, it happened to me.
That sounds actually miserable, but also good job
Basically how all coder learn
Honestly, you’re not any different from any other programmer. Even programmers with 10+ years of experience have history logs looking about the same. You’re doing fine. Keep up the good work.
if you were honest about it.. i wouldn’t care because it shows you’re willing to admit that you have no idea what you’re doing but willing to learn.
Don’t think anything of it!
My daughter has special coding classes and certificates. She’s a coding superstar at her employer and she said she could not do her job without ChatGPT
As someone in automation, I must say half the people I work with survive off of manuals and error message tables.
Ive been faking it till i make since high school 🙂
I was in a similar position, but got tired of the constant panic and applied for a position as a product owner at my company, and got it. Now I’m even more stressed though, but not because I feel like I’m faking it but rather that I’m stuck in middle-management-hell with people above mad at me for not making the ones below me deliver everything they want, and the ones below me mad because I try to make them do things they don’t want to do or push them to deliver what the ones above want.
Bravo!!!!! Fake it till you make it! 😁👏
I don’t mean to sound flippant but isn’t that the majority of us? I hope it is, at least. Are there genuinely people out there who know how to code without using the internet, or at the very least, some reference docs? It’s more so AI-assisted for me these days, but this just sounds like every developer I know.
Good for you, fake it ‘til you make it is legit – trust me, I did it too.
Dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullshit. Keep it up op
Googling code errors and stealing someone else’s code is probably 80% of what coders do…