How Imposter Syndrome Ruined My First Six Months At Google
And how you can better manage these painful feelings in your next career transition.
When I accepted my job at Google in 2011, I knew it would be a step up from American Express.
What I didn’t know –– and what nobody prepared me for –– is that it would take me to the brink of a nervous breakdown. One that would take me six months to fully shake.
This is a story I haven’t broadly shared, but that I think may benefit people who are considering a big leap in their own professional lives.
There are so many growing pains, personal demons, and traumas of workplace growth that we rarely put on the table.
Some of us are embarrassed to open up about these tough transitory times. Others fear that they will seem weak. And I suspect that some people simply block such things out of their minds altogether.
Now that it’s been over a decade, I feel ready to share my story in hopes of it helping others in similar chapters of their lives.
The whole saga began in 2011, when one of my college buddies introduced me to a Director at Google named Ben.
At that time, I didn’t have my eye on any specific role at the company. I was just fed up with the internal politics and below-market pay at American Express and I was itching to work for a sexy, high-growth company in tech.
Google was at the top of my list. It was at the top of many people’s list back then, and still is today. They built great products that millions of people used. I loved their simple yet powerful designs. They let people wear jeans to work and even bring their dogs. And I heard they paid well.
It sounded like the complete opposite of American Express and all I knew was that I wanted in.
So when Ben asked me if I was interested in being the Manager of Product Operations & Escalation Management for Google’s Publisher Products division, I instantly said: “sure!”
The truth was, I had no freaking idea what any of those words meant. I didn’t even know what the Publisher Products division was. My title at American Express was Director of Co-Brand Card Acquisition. I had about as much business at Google as a hockey stick on a baseball field.
The only thing I was thinking was: “It’s a role at Google. And I’ll figure it out.” When I look back on it now, I wince at my naivety. How utterly unprepared I was for what lay ahead in this mystery position.
Coincidentally, I did the same thing when my wife (Melanie) and I had twins. I thought “hey, there’ll be economies of scale and maybe raising two kids will be easier.” That turned out to be wrong also!
Nevertheless, I persevered through a nearly-three-month interview process and somehow put on a good enough show to get the gig. If you had been a fly on the wall for some of those interviews, you would have witnessed the epitome of a “fake it ‘till you make it” performance.
During one interview I was asked for my thoughts on something called “the PDLC –– Product Development Life Cycle.” I had never heard of that before. I literally had to google what it was after the interview to see how poorly I had potentially blown my response. Luckily, I was able to cobble together a decent enough answer on the spot.
I share that anecdote because it shows just how qualified I was for my new job at Google: not very!
After I accepted the Google offer, I had about two weeks before my start date. I used that break to take a wonderful vacation to Belize with Melanie. While the scenery, animals, people, and hotels were top notch, I could not fully relax and enjoy myself. Looking back, that was really when my impostor syndrome began to appear.
I tossed and turned most of those nights, unable to settle myself to sleep. “I just took a job at the highest performing company in the world”, I told my wife, “and I’m not technical at all.”
She did her best to comfort and reassure (thanks, Melanie) but with my first day fast approaching, the gravity of what I had signed up for cast a shadow over our trip and my mind.
My first two days at Google’s NYC headquarters felt a little like being tossed out at sea with a piece of rickety driftwood. Half of each day was spent in orientation sessions, which felt like a total blur. On top of that, my manager (Anant) wasn’t even in the building. He worked out of Google’s Mountain View Headquarters and I didn’t hear from him until Thursday of that week, except for a couple of pithy emails.
The most isolating feeling of all came from the fact that I didn’t have a phone on my desk. Back in 2011, we weren’t all tethered to, nor provided with a corporate cell phone. The missing phone didn't dawn on me until I had been sitting down for a few minutes, but I’ll never forget how cut off from the entire company that made me feel. I actually had to roam the halls and submit an internal ticket requesting that someone in IT set up a phone on my desk.
Making matters worse, I had inherited a, shall we say, suboptimal management situation in this new role. Anant asked me to work with a manager from Australia who was in the NYC office on a one year rotation as a first-time manager. This person had never managed before in his life, and no one on my newly inherited team wanted to report to this managerial guinea pig. My first task (you guessed it) was to assign some direct reports to him. Great way to make a first impression on those poor sacrificial lambs!
My first several weeks went on like that, with me feeling out of my depth and subjected to a constant barrage of confusing, chaotic commands. Every night, I went home to Melanie and vented my frustrations, and more often, fears of failure. Quietly (and often, not-so-quietly) I wondered if I had made a mistake leaving the sleepy shallows of American Express.
Two months in, I hit a new low: my first Performance Management Session with Anant. I thought I got butchered. I wasn’t adequately prepared for what the session would entail. I had done a calibration session (the precursor for Performance Management reviews where managers calibrate talent and assign ratings) at American Express, but Google’s version was much more thorough. Anant was a tough guy to please at that time and he provided me with a long list of extremely detailed feedback
Employees got graded on a scale from 0 - 4 in these Performance Management Sessions. I scored a 3.1 in my first one, which I thought was catastrophically bad. In fact, I later learned anything above a 3.0 in one’s first review was a sign of success. I had also received some positive feedback from Anant alongside his criticism, but all I could see at that time was the criticism. And the utter dejection I felt afterwards.
(Happy footnote: Anant actually went on to become a Google Great Manager and someone I enjoyed working with. I was simply a long way from that at this point of his journey!)
The hardest part of my early days at Google was that I didn’t feel like I could talk to anyone in the company about the challenges I was facing. I was the new guy, after all, and didn’t want anyone to think that hiring me had been a mistake.
In truth, though, the wheels were coming off of my sanity –– and quickly. I was clinically diagnosed with depression. I saw a psychotherapist and later, a career coach. I also unburdened myself on a daily basis to my very understanding wife, who, fortunate for me, happens to be a primary care physician.
Before long, I was prescribed Valium, Seroquel, Ambien, and Lexapro (the latter two I still take today) to help me cope with all the stress.
Just to give you an idea –– there were days when I physically could not open the door at Google’s office. I would get up to the door, grab the handle, and think “I cannot do this.” Instead I would just do laps around the block, listening to sports talk radio on my Walkman (yeah, I still had one of those back in 2011) and trying to work up the strength to start my day.
Some weekends I would show the confusing emails that co-workers were sending me to my wife (which I wasn’t supposed to do because of my NDA) and ask her how I should respond. I even reached out to several friends and former colleagues at American Express to see if I could get my old job back.
Still seeking to relieve my anxiety, I spoke with Anant and asked him to re-level me from a Level 6 employee to a Level 5 because the pressure was too much. He chuckled and told me that no one had ever done that before. Thankfully, he brushed off the request. In hindsight, it wouldn’t really have reduced the pressure, just my paycheck. Still, that’s how bad I wanted the pain to stop. I was willing to demote myself in an unprecedented move just for some relief.
I was absolutely buried in confusion. During my first month, I cut myself some slack. “Hey, I’m a Noogler”, I thought. (Google’s term for new Googlers in their first year) “I shouldn’t know what I’m doing yet, so no biggie.” But as each day passed, the pressure I put on myself continued to mount.
“I’m leading a big team”, I scolded myself. “We work on major advertiser revenue deals with the biggest publishers in the world. The New York Times, ESPN, CNN. I have to step it up!”
This agonizing ordeal of adjustment lasted until around November. The six month mark. That’s when I shed my fear of opening up to others and started building an internal network at Google. Little by little, I began talking to people about some of the challenges I was having. I began to know where to go and who to reach out to in order to get stuff done. Maybe it’s because the medicine had kicked in by that point. Maybe I was slowly getting the hang of my job. I’m not completely sure, but whatever the reason, I became more willing to seek help from the people around me.
As surprising as it may sound based on how rough my first six months were, I did overcome my impostor syndrome. And I went on to have a rewarding and profitable career at Google. In 2016, I even won the Google Great Manager award as one of the best managers in the whole company.
However, I had some pretty significant advantages that not everyone with impostor syndrome has access to. For one thing, I’m a cisgendered white male, who the entire system is built by and for. I also had the financial resources to hire a psychiatrist and a career coach. Not to mention, as I said, I was married to a doctor.
Not everyone has it so easy. Women and underrepresented minorities may face impostor syndrome at even higher rates. According to a KPMG study, 75% of female executives across industries have experienced impostor syndrome in their careers. In my work as a Career Acceleration coach, I often hear from people of color who say that they lack confidence from not having seen very many people like them in the roles that they are in or aiming for.
I would love to see a world where companies proactively address the impostor syndrome problem, but I’m not optimistic this will happen. While in theory, any company could implement and measure better processes for onboarding new employees and first-time leaders, the company has to believe it’s a worthwhile investment of time and resources. It’s difficult to quantify the ROI and the exact impact of combating impostor syndrome. Especially when financial results are measured in such brief periods of weeks, months, and quarters.
Frankly, I think a lot of companies underestimate how common this problem is, and don’t even see a need to address it.
Therefore, I believe that you — the employee, the candidate –– need to understand that this is a very likely scenario that you are going to go through. Jumping from American Express to Google is a big deal. Getting promoted from Director to VP is a big deal. You achieved a great accomplishment and got past the next career milestone. You’ll want to celebrate and do a touchdown dance in the end zone and you should.
However, take it from me: expectations are going to be higher now. So you had better train hard, get the resources to support yourself at that new level, and be aware of the pressure that you may put on yourself.
If you have a good manager, some of these growing pains will be minimized. The best managers are aware of impostor syndrome and try to make the adjustments easier. Still, even with the best manager, it’s going to be a significant change for you. And it’s going to stretch you.
You likely won't feel comfortable asking for help at first. You’re going to feel, literally, like an impostor, alas the syndrome’s name. This will happen to you if you’re really leveling up. In my work as a career coach, the first 90 days of my work with a client who has just gotten a new job focuses on working through impostor syndrome.
Whether you work with a coach or not, impostor syndrome can be overcome. I did it, others have done it, and you can too. It all starts with being aware that it exists and fortifying yourself in every way possible to deal with it!