The Impostor Phenomenon (IP) is widely discussed in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and has been recently evaluated in Computer and Data Science students. There has been no formal research conducted on IP in software engineers in general, even though its consequences may contribute to mental health disorders, such as depression and burnout. This study describes a survey that investigates the extent of impostor feelings in software engineers, considering aspects such as gender, race/ethnicity, and roles. Furthermore, we investigate the influence of IP on their perceived productivity. The survey instrument was designed using a theory-driven approach and included demographic questions, an internationally validated IP scale (CIPS), and questions for measuring perceived productivity based on the SPACE framework constructs. The survey was sent to companies operating in various business sectors. Data analysis used bootstrapping with resampling to calculate confidence intervals and Mann-Whitney statistical significance testing for assessing the hypotheses. We received responses from 624 software engineers distributed across 26 countries. The bootstrapping results reveal that a proportion of 52.7% of software engineers experience frequent to intense levels of IP and that women suffer at a significantly higher proportion (60.6%) than men (48.8%). Regarding race/ethnicity, we observed more frequent impostor feelings in Asian (67.9%) and Black (65.1%) than in White (50.0%) software engineers. We also observed that the presence of IP is less common among individuals who are married and have children. Moreover, the prevalence of IP showed a statistically significant negative effect on the perceived productivity for all SPACE framework constructs. The evidence relating IP to software engineers provides a starting point to help organizations find ways to raise awareness of the problem and improve the emotional skills of software professionals.
Thu 18 AprDisplayed time zone: Lisbon change
14:00 - 15:30 | Human and Social 5Software Engineering in Society / Journal-first Papers / New Ideas and Emerging Results / Software Engineering Education and Training / Research Track at Almada Negreiros Chair(s): Alexander Serebrenik Eindhoven University of Technology | ||
14:00 15mTalk | High Expectations: An Observational Study of Programming and Cannabis Intoxication Research Track Wenxin He University of Michigan, Manasvi Parikh University of Michigan, Westley Weimer University of Michigan, Madeline Endres University of Michgain DOI Pre-print | ||
14:15 15mTalk | Mining Pull Requests to Detect Process Anomalies in Open Source Software Development Research Track Bohan Liu Nanjing University, He Zhang Nanjing University, Weigang Ma Nanjing University, Hongyu Kuang Nanjing University, Yi Yang National University of Defense Technology, Jinwei Xu Nanjing University, Shan Gao Huawei, Jian Gao Huawei | ||
14:30 15mTalk | Video-based Training for Meeting Communication Skills Software Engineering Education and Training Matthias Galster University of Canterbury, Antonija Mitrovic University of Canterbury, Sanna Malinen University of Canterbury, Sreedevi Sankara Iyer University of Canterbury, Ja'afaru Musa University of Canterbury, Jay Holland University of Canterbury | ||
14:45 15mTalk | Impostor Phenomenon in Software Engineers Software Engineering in Society Paloma Guenes Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Rafael Tomaz Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Marcos Kalinowski Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Maria Teresa Baldassarre Department of Computer Science, University of Bari , Margaret-Anne Storey University of Victoria DOI Pre-print Media Attached | ||
15:00 7mTalk | An Empirical Comparison of Ethnic and Gender Diversity of DevOps and non-DevOps Contributions to Open-Source Projects Journal-first Papers Nimmi Rashinika Weeraddana University of Waterloo, Xiaoyan Xu University of Waterloo, Mahmoud Alfadel University of Waterloo, Shane McIntosh University of Waterloo, Mei Nagappan University of Waterloo Link to publication Pre-print | ||
15:07 7mTalk | Understanding Developers Well-Being and Productivity: a 2-year Longitudinal Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic Journal-first Papers Daniel Russo Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Paul Hanel University of Essex, Niels van Berkel Aalborg University DOI Pre-print | ||
15:14 7mTalk | Decomposing and Measuring Trust in Open-Source Software Supply Chains New Ideas and Emerging Results Lina Boughton The College of Wooster, Courtney Miller Carnegie Mellon University, Yasemin Acar Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, Dominik Wermke North Carolina State University, Christian Kästner Carnegie Mellon University |