I don’t think we’ve got imposter syndrome down right.
Imposter syndrome is when you excel at something to a great degree, but feel inadequate anyway. Like if Victor Wooten felt like he was a noob on bass. That would be imposter syndrome.
“Imposters” in this context feel like they’re faking it despite how much they know or can do.
This applies to everyone across the board — from beginners who know just enough to be dangerous to those with far more education/experience who still feel insecure about their ability to contribute anything of real value to the performance of a given skill.
It also can get to a point where it’s just fishing for compliments, and I don’t think anyone likes being on the other end of that. It’s like the meme about how you cook for someone, loudly declare “NOT MY BEST WORK”, and wait for them to reassure you.
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depending on the sample group, between 9% and 82% report being affected by criteria that supposedly belong to the syndrome.
Some studies find 9%, some 825, some in between. It means, numbers are all over the place like it should be for an ill-defined syndrome. This means, nearly everyone and nearly no one is experiencing this, meaning it is not a thing.
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Often lack of definition resulting in inadequate tools for evaluation is responsible for percentages being all over the place. Happens a lot with kitchen sink syndromes.
Well, it’s important to recognize that if the incompetence is real and verifiable, it is not imposter syndrome.
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Back in the 70s it was the Peter Principle. You keep getting promoted until you’re incompetent
I have a good friend of mine in the UK Civil Service who once told me a great story about one of his employees who was completely useless, but because of various complicated reasons he couldn’t sack him.
Solution? Write him up as utterly brilliant and promote him out of his department 
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I have actually done this (or the equivalent, trade them for a lateral hire I knew was just so-so, and still come out ahead).
“This person is super bright! It’s just a case of them being on the wrong team.” You know, a team that expected work to get done.
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