I still feel like the upstart who barely knows what he is doing.
The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything.
But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!
Yes, I don't feel any smarter but I see others missing what I think are obvious observations and actions much more frequently.
I'm also OK being the same fraud I've felt like since my 20's. Starting to be comfortable in my skin, I just wish it wasn't so wrinkly now that I can enjoy it.
> But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent
I feel as we gain experience we learn that most of the things can be learned! It kinda removes a lot of magic from the world but also is weirdly freeing. I dread if there's the other end of the bell curve somewhere out there where we start to think that learning is not possible or practical anymore.
Younger coworkers are inevitably much better than I was at their age. How could they not be? Everything is better, and enlightenment is always just a few clicks away.
But the internet can’t teach you everything. Like when to give up and try a different strategy. Or that there might be different strategies to even try!
I’m a CEO now. An employee who’s older than me looks up to me as knowing more, more about Xmx tuning, coredumps, AWS dogfighting, SQL data models and so on. This is so wrong. My job is mostly HR, presales and lawyers now, so by the sheer time he spends on tech, he’s much better than me, and I don’t know what I’m doing with my strategy orientations.
We all feel like that image of a dog in front of a computer with the subtitle “I haz no idea what I’m doing.” Some of us manage JVMs, some others are CEOs, no-one know what they’re doing, but we have a world to govern.
Some of us have countries and nuclear weapons to govern…
The only difference is the people around me. I used to be surrounded by people I looked up to, who seemed to know everything.
But now everyone around me has become mysteriously less and less competent and they're acting like I am the established authority, which just shows how little they must know!