{"id":14344,"date":"2018-01-23T18:18:01","date_gmt":"2018-01-23T18:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.intercom.com\/?p=14344"},"modified":"2025-01-07T16:12:01","modified_gmt":"2025-01-07T16:12:01","slug":"please-apply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/please-apply\/","title":{"rendered":"Please apply"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them that I had imposter syndrome at Intercom.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d spent the previous 7 years at Google and Facebook, and through public writing and speaking, I\u2019d built a solid reputation for myself. Intercom at the time was a tiny startup. I was the 14th employee, and the first \u2018public profile\u2019 type hire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But 3-6 months in, I wasn\u2019t sure if I should be there. I didn\u2019t know anything about startups. Or SaaS. Or venture capital. Or building a business from scratch. Or people management. I\u2019d made some bad mistakes, redesigning parts of Intercom and breaking workflows for customers. We were growing fast. I couldn\u2019t keep on top of everything. People were asking me questions I couldn\u2019t answer.<\/p>\n

I wondered if I was just a bigger company kind of person. I doubted myself.<\/p>\n

Common syndrome<\/h2>\n

Imposter syndrome is common in our industry, and common at Intercom. It eventually passes for everyone, we all recognize it by now, and we know how to talk to new people about it. Joining a new company is overwhelming. Especially one growing as fast as ours. It\u2019s very normal to feel like you don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

It takes vulnerability to apply for a new job at a company you admire.<\/p>\n

A realization I had recently was that imposter syndrome also happens to people long before they join a company. Many of our very best people nearly didn\u2019t apply for a job here. They read our blog, saw our growth rates, saw us hire other people with solid public reputations, and saw us hire from big successful companies. Companies they hadn\u2019t worked at. They didn\u2019t think they\u2019d be good enough. Or that we\u2019d be interested. But they were wrong.<\/p>\n

It takes vulnerability to apply for a new job at a company you admire. All of us working in tech have likely got a pretty good job already. Fear of failure is real and very human. It\u2019s easier to not go there.<\/p>\n

Anticipating potential<\/h2>\n

But at one point our very best people felt this way too. And I\u2019m very thankful they did go there, they did put themselves out there. Our success so far, and our incredible potential for the future, would simply not exist without them.<\/p>\n

When I was trying to decide whether to leave Facebook and join Intercom, my wife was the one that closed the decision for me. She asked me:<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think you\u2019ll regret it someday if you don\u2019t join now?
\nWill you wonder about what might have been?\u201d<\/p>\n

My answer was yes, and I\u2019ve never looked back.<\/p>\n

Please apply<\/a>. We\u2019d love to talk to you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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