Struggling with a lack of female role models and the idea that her geography degree was not ‘tech’ enough, Denise Hill challenged her own imposter syndrome in the industry to reach success. A software engineer and manager at Discover Financial Services, she’s passionate about bringing your whole self to work and a powerful advocate for neurodiversity in business. Here, she talks to everywoman about how we can undermine ourselves with self-perception and the importance of support and diverse workplaces to help us feel comfortable to challenge imposter feelings.
What first drew you to work in the tech sector?
My earliest memory of tech was the world of Amiga in the 1980s, early computer games which involved basic coding. Back then, computers were more targeted at the boys, so although that fascinated me, I would always have to do it on my brother’s computer. I did well at school, but I had no idea what I wanted to do in life, so I read geography at university, followed by a Master’s in geographical information systems. For my post-grad, I submitted a thesis on epidemiological and spatial analysis of mortality data for Leicester that involved writing scripts to get the computer to work out complicated formulas — and that’s where my real interest into the potential of technology started.
When did you first notice imposter syndrome around your career in tech?
My now-husband got a job with a big consultancy firm just after I’d just completed my post-grad, and, looking back, I had imposter syndrome even then, because I never even thought of applying for a role like that. Now, I wonder, why shouldn’t I have? Instead, I started my career in a small firm working in geographical information systems and because many of the tech people there had physics degrees and I had a geography degree it meant I felt for a long time that at some level I was not as good as they were. My next job was a support analyst role in a firm where all the developers were men, and the only other woman was the receptionist. One of the guys told me he had exaggerated his coding experience before taking the job but he was prepared to knuckle down and work through the massive learning curve. I think many men don’t feel they have to have ‘done it’ to know that they can do it. My attitude was more ‘I haven’t done it, therefore, how can I say that I’ve done it?’
How did imposter syndrome hold you back in your career, and at what point did you start to move beyond that?
If you’re confident, you’ll try more things, but when you come out of school or university, you’re often carrying programming from your upbringing — ‘I’m not as good as everybody else’ or ‘somebody else could do better than me’. It can take a long time to reveal to yourself — let alone anyone else — what you actually want. Women also have assumptions put on them about what they can or should be doing and where their place is such as ‘you’re going to be a mum’ or ‘your career will be secondary to your husband’s’ and that can affect you to the point you don’t even bother thinking about what you actually want.
How do you think imposter syndrome manifests itself most in women?
Imposter syndrome can come about in a few ways, for me. The first, is when you feel you can’t do something, but other people think you can. Secondly, you can feel like an imposter because you’re secretly wondering, ‘is this the role or job what I actually want to be doing?’ And then you’ve got something that can come up for women particularly, where you think you can do something, but other people are giving you the impression that you can’t. You need to consider what is really holding you back here? Is it because you don’t want to be doing this, but haven’t admitted it to yourself? Or you think that somebody else is putting you down? Or you’re in a job but just feeling you’re somehow ‘blagging’ it?
Do you think that women often have an unconscious belief that they don’t quite deserve to be wherever they are?
To some extent you can hide your imposter syndrome from yourself because often it’s quite unconscious. There are times when you get more frustrated by it than others, but often it’s a pull inside you that will tell you. You can’t articulate what is going on really, it’s just that you feel like something is wrong and needs to change. I wasn’t hiding anything back in my early career and it feels weird to think that perhaps I wasn’t being ‘authentic’ or ‘bringing my full self to work’ because at the time, I probably thought that I was. But it can be the frustration that comes through you that is telling you that you’re not.
Did imposter syndrome show up when you became a manager, and how did you deal with that?
I was a software engineer for 18 years and became a manager in 2018. A lot happened along the way to build my skills and confidence, but it still challenged my sense of imposter syndrome. Each new experience levels you up though — like playing a game, if there’s no challenge then you don’t progress, you just get bored because you’re playing the same game over and over. I pivoted from software engineer to manager because I wanted to challenge myself and kept that at the forefront of my mind. I’d always said to myself, ‘I’m not interested in people, I just want to stay technical’. But that wasn’t congruent with the reading I was doing at the time, the activities that were interesting to me and the opportunities I was looking for. So again, it was a case of asking myself how truthful I was being in wanting to continue to just be an engineer.
You volunteer with the charity Neurodiversity in Business — how can allowing for difference help challenge imposter syndrome more generally?
Neurodiversity is close to my heart — when my son was diagnosed as autistic, I had to become an advocate for him. He’s at a mainstream school and neurodivergent children have to work within an environment that was not created with them in mind. Working at your best in an open-plan environment — at school or at work — with people and noise everywhere is going to be hard for anybody, let alone if you have sensory processing issues. What’s struck me doing this work is how little known neurodivergence still is: you’re reliant on people speaking up, and a lot of people don’t even know they are neurodivergent. I think this can feed into imposter syndrome too. There’s always an element of ‘am I the only one who thinks this?’ and if you’re neurodivergent that can be amplified. Ultimately everyone’s different and we need to challenge ourselves more around ‘this is the way we do our work’. Why? Why does everyone have to do it the same way? If we can support that difference then we can support people bringing their whole selves to work.
What advice would you give to someone who’s feeling their difference?
Learn about yourself and be open. I feel comfortable in my work now because I’ve got support around me, but you can only get that connection by being vulnerable. People are scared to say things because they don’t want to be wrong or worry about what people will think of them but if you say things then often you’ll find other people are thinking it too. You may feel like an imposter at times, but the more you open yourself up to experiences, the more you bring barriers down with other people even if you’re not feeling confident. Also, understand that action speaks louder than words — you’re not going to think yourself into confidence or a leadership role. You’re going to act and when you do those things, you’ll get confidence — and then you’ll do more than you ever thought you ever would. Don’t overthink it.
