About 3 years ago I quit a job, I just didn’t match what they had wanted, and a lot of tiny things were stacked against me. I thought maybe I can work through it, I could not. It was not imposter syndrome, but it felt exactly like it was in the beginning, and so I agree with @ajwilson . It’s a hard conversation to have with yourself about whether there is a skills gap, or a confidence gap. You have to have the conversation with yourself, and then with your manager. If you feel unable to talk to your manager, than it’s more likely to be that you really should find another job. I quit after 11 months.
I walked into the HR segment of most of the interviews that I set up after that and explained that I was just at a point where I need to slow down and rebuild, and not aim too high. It worked, one interview came back with feedback “you probably wont like the high pressure”, even though technically they liked me. That was such a life-saver, a stress-bullet dodged. Because the next job interview said I was a fit. I’m so glad that I took a year of “going slow”, because I’m stronger than before now. And I know that I’m competent, I just needed less stress and negative energies.
In a previous job to my big questioning moment, we had a good amount of personal achievement celebration going on, and I think that, that is the biggest buffer against the personal confidence dips of imposter syndrome. Celebrate, and also seek feedback from your manager, and give them feedback in return, they might also be needing your help. People I hear complain about feeling like an imposter and blaming it on the role as a QA are right to do so though. Identifying the source of the ailment as being your role is really raying that you are taking your role too seriously, bugs that escape into the wild are not your fault, the release manager has to carry some of the can and ask good questions before they sign off, the developer who coded it up also has to not inject bugs in the first place, and the product owner has ultimate responsibility to verify that the product generates profits, not you. A lot of the uncertainty we face as QA’s is because we don’t think it’s OK to be honest sometimes and say, “testing won’t catch every unknown risk”. The job we do is hard, and we clearly do it because nobody else likes this kind of work, so every QA is already pushing themselves to do a job others do not find to be fun to begin with.
But mainly, be sure to be getting enough good sleep, that was my mistake that led to my quitting.