In tech there is a growing awareness of this thing called "imposter syndrome" that has many engineers, sysadmins etc feeling like they are somewhere in their career or are being given responsibility well above what they are actually qualified for.

I'll fully admit I've suffered from this at various points in my career. I've wondered why I, an IT guy, was sitting in a meeting with a board of directors or a meeting with the executive staff of a company trying to explain something. But that's occasional, and I think a very rational reaction to have for someone not suffering from an over abundance of ego. What I want to talk about is that nagging day to day fear that makes you wonder if you belong where you are or are being given such huge tasks.

I didn't really understand these feelings myself until very recently. I'd always felt them, always heard them talked about, and knew co-workers who shared these fears. It's something inherent in an engineers DNA I think as we are trained to expect the worst, to always anticipate how things will not be good enough or go wrong. At least that's what I thought. A light bulb went on when I read an article written by an old co-worker of mine, Oscar, titled I have no idea what I'm doing. He hit on some very key points about embracing confusion and it got me thinking.

The truth was much more insidious and core to the high tech industry. When you work in high tech, silicon valley especially, you are surrounding yourself with the best of the best. Not to toot our own horn but you just don't survive here unless you have something incredible to offer. There are a few things that define really smart people I've found... never being satisfied with anything less than a perfect answer, being incredibly stubborn about finding said answer, and acknowledging what you don't know.

Think about that for a second. You are constantly surrounded by the top people in their fields who are also never satisfied with their own work as they KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it could be better. These are people who are smart and humble enough to acknowledge the huge areas of knowledge they do not have, and that is scary.

Want to know why engineers like conventions so much? We want to know what everyone else has figured out. It's that insatiable thirst for knowledge, that need to understand, that drove us into the field in the first place. Of course we are never satisfied, if we were that drive that got us where we are, that keeps us up and night pondering problems, would vanish, and THEN we would be unworthy.

We have the incredible fortune of living in a time where it is simply not possible to master a field. The best you can possibly hope for is to master one tiny specialized area of technology. It's ok to not know everything. That gives you the proper humility needed to keep learning, to keep pushing yourself. Those guys that claim they know it all? Idiots too stupid to realize what they don't know. They've stopped learning. The ones everyone ELSE says know it all? They feel just like you do every time they hear someone say that about them.

So next time you feel this pang of wondering if you deserve to be where you are, just remind yourself that you are comparing yourself to the best of the best. Look around you and think about everyone you work with on a daily basis. Do you respect them? Are they good at their job? Well they probably see you the same way or you wouldn't be there. Like I said, tech is very unforgiving in Silicon Valley. It's a VERY high bar to work here.

Of course a pro athlete is going to compare themselves to other pro athletes and measure themselves on that scale, just like you are. Just remember though, like you, they had to beat out a whole lot of competition to even be on that scale to begin with. Think about that. Your scale, your world, encompasses maybe the top 10%. Even measuring yourself on that scale says you've beat out 90% of the people who want to be where you are.

Don't let it go to your head though or you'll start slacking and loose that edge that got you where you are to begin with :) Humility at all levels is a good, healthy thing that keeps you moving forward.