When I first joined Affirm, I experienced an imposter syndrome. I felt like they hired me by mistake. Think about it. I was some 18 year-old guy from Asia who only worked in small startups and who was just the first year at university. Why would $10B company hire me as a full time engineer (not even an intern) when there were so many better candidates? To a very large extend, they were right. I didn't know tons of stuff that I should have known.

Because there were so many acronyms, terminologies, engineering methods, etc. I didn't know about, I couldn't differentiate which ones I should have known and which ones I should have learned at Affirm. So, I made the worst decision possible and didn't ask any questions. To hide my lack of knowledge from my colleagues, I pretended, I acted, as I understood everything.

Few months passed by, I still don't know a lot of stuff, but I am not a new-hire anymore. I cannot ask stupid questions anymore. If I ask someone "what is DT?," they would probably respond with "You have been using DTs for the last 2 months without knowing what they were." And that thought alone kept me pretending for another month.

Everything backfired. I was not performing well. I was not learning well.

And there came the Feedback and Development (FnD) session, where my colleagues had to write a review about my performance, which, as I expected, was mostly negative. I was ready to get fired and almost started looking for a new job. However, instead of firing me, my manager sent me a zoom link and told me she wants to talk.

After I explained the situation to her, she said "you know what you should have learned at affirm - anything that you didn't know. You know when you should have stopped asking stupid questions - never, I still ask stupid questions and so do my managers. Asking questions saves both your's and your mentor's time rather than wasting it."

I did as she told me. I still ask my seniors and managers some weird questions that I think I should have known. But now, I know that knowing answers saves more time than pretending to know them. My next FnD session was pretty positive.

P.s I have an important exam tomorrow, which is why I couldn't polish the post and sent it "raw."