One Quote By a Top Apple Designer Reveals an Unspoken Anxiety Successful People Feel

September 11, 2015

Alan Dye, Apple’s vice president of user-interface design, is an accomplished designer.

And yet, sometimes Dye thinks he’s an amateur who isn’t really that good at his job. In an interview with Bloomberg, Dye revealed:

“I’m scared to death that at some point I’m going to get found out. You know, Tim [Cook] is going to realize the truth about me, which is I’m terrible.”

But Dye isn’t terrible at his job, he only thinks it. His anxiety is is known as Imposter Syndrome, which, according to Business Insider, is a really trendy condition in the tech world right now.

With Imposter Syndrome, no matter how successful someone might be, at times they fear that everyone around them will suddenly realize that they’re just an amateur who has no clue what they’re doing. All of their past accomplishments mean nothing and some feel like a fraud or just the worst in the world at their job. Call it a side-effect of a culture of always having to give 1,000% to always be winning.

However, one man claims to have a simple cure — Scott Roberts, a security engineer at Github, said, “Imposter Syndrome is like the boogie man: Open the closet, turn on the lights, look around, and you see that nothing is there.”

And there you have it — you know you’ve made it to the top when you feel like shit about yourself and fear everyone will see the real loser in you.

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