i just made this right now, after trembling at my first professional correspondence with an old highschool friend.

  • Rhaedas@kbin.social
    16·
    11 months ago

    Realizing you may not know something isn’t a bad thing, it’s a step to understanding. The people who think they know it all regardless of the evidence presented are the problem ones.

  • sweeny@sh.itjust.works
    111·
    11 months ago

    Both! You’re probably a lot better than you give yourself credit for but also haven’t made enough mistakes yet to see the error of your code

  • Jackolantern@lemmy.world
    101·
    11 months ago

    We don’t know shit. It’s just some of us are better at pretending otherwise. Just do your best OP.

  • MasterBlaster@lemmy.world
    8·
    11 months ago

    There are five levels of competence

    1. Incompetent and doesn’t know it.
    2. Incompetent and does know it.
    3. Competent and doesn’t know it.
    4. Competent, and knows it.
    5. Expert, but still often feels clueless.
    • Weirdfish@lemmy.world
      3·
      11 months ago

      I have 20 years experience, just cracked a project I’ve been working on for almost three years, and I still hesitate to consider myself an expert.

      Now, I’ll tell any lay person who will listen that I’m an expert, but man, some days I just feel clueless.

      I find the biggest issue I run into is lack of a peer group. I work in a large IS department, but other than one guy at my last company who works with a different language, I have no one to talk shop with.

      • MasterBlaster@lemmy.world
        1·
        11 months ago

        Once one gets to a high level of expertise, it seems there are fewer peers around - people who can teach something new, or give a perspective not already explored.

        It all depends on where you work, and whether there are any user groups frequented by veterans.

  • Uniquitous@lemmy.one
    114·
    11 months ago

    We all are. Even the tech lead at the top of your program is only good at what they’re good at (bad attempt at humor removed) Nobody knows everything and most of us are just googling stackoverflow like you are.

    • sweeny@sh.itjust.works
      82·
      11 months ago

      Rhetoric like this discourages women from becoming engineers, saying that a female tech lead isn’t even a possibility is pretty sexist. For the record, if you had just said “he” without the sassy parenthetical I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

      *Now that I think about it, pretty sexist is an understatement, it’s just plain sexist. Female tech leads exist, look it up, and stop perpetuating sexist ideas in tech

      • Uniquitous@lemmy.one
        31·
        11 months ago

        I apologize. That was meant to be a humorous commiseration on the state of a profession that tends to be gender biased, but clearly I missed.

  • moonmeow@lemmy.ml
    6·
    11 months ago

    We are human and we don’t know everything.

    You most likely have gotten to the level for a position, for which you then build into and become more skilled.

    You don’t arrive to a position (or anything for that matter) knowing everything. But you know enough to begin.

  • The Giant Korean@lemmy.world
    6·
    11 months ago

    Just became a director not too long ago. I’m still waiting for them to realize that I don’t know WTF I’m doing.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
    3·
    11 months ago

    When you’re a beginner, it’s both. The further you get into your career, it’s usually imposter syndrome. Then again the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.

  • VanillaGorilla@kbin.social
    3·
    11 months ago

    Talk to colleagues about it. I didn’t and the stress ate my soul until I had to take a mental health break. Most of the time you are not more of an idiot than they are and they have things to say about you that make them feel insufficient.

    Some are just idiots though, but they often feel too confident to realize.