<story><title>No-one knows what they are doing</title><url>https://successfulsoftware.net/2022/06/19/no-one-knows-what-they-are-doing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>This is a very comforting fiction to tell yourself when you’re faced with new and unfamiliar challenges. However, it’s not really true. Plenty of people within an industry or field know enough of what they’re doing because they’ve gone through it before and&amp;#x2F;or done all of the heavy research to prepare for these situations.&lt;p&gt;I see the “nobody knows what they’re doing” fiction brought out as an easy antidote for impostor syndrome or as comforting words to people struggling to learn. While intentions might be good, it had an unintended side effect of creating an illusion that expertise doesn’t exist or that everyone’s knowledge is equal regardless of their level of experience.&lt;p&gt;The dark side of this mentality is that it creates the same situations whereby people believe their own intuitions are equal to professional scientific research. If you believe no one knows what they’re doing and all adults are just making it up as they go, why would you listen to experts instead of inserting your own opinions based on your Facebook research or some quip you saw online?&lt;p&gt;The real key is to identify who really knows what they’re doing and to what degree, then leverage those people for advice as much as possible. Going through life assuming everybody is equally incompetent will leave you blind to these huge opportunities to learn from other people’s expertise and experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>louthy</author><text>I think a better phrase is &amp;quot;everybody is winging it&amp;quot;, because once you get good at something, then you tend to end up working on something that&amp;#x27;s at the edge of your current understanding, either through promotion or some sense of seniority in the industry.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily true for all jobs, but I think it&amp;#x27;s especially true in the software industry.  I&amp;#x27;ve been a CTO for 17 years, but I still feel like I&amp;#x27;m winging it.  It doesn&amp;#x27;t mean I don&amp;#x27;t know what I&amp;#x27;m doing, I have enough experience to make good judgements; but to be the best at something you often have to be on the edge of your understanding at any one point in time.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t remember exactly when I realised that everybody is winging it (to one extent or another), but it made it easier to trust my own judgement, it made it easier to push for something I believed in, but it also gave me a sense of how little I still know - which helps me to not get too arrogant about my current abilities.</text></comment>
<story><title>No-one knows what they are doing</title><url>https://successfulsoftware.net/2022/06/19/no-one-knows-what-they-are-doing/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PragmaticPulp</author><text>This is a very comforting fiction to tell yourself when you’re faced with new and unfamiliar challenges. However, it’s not really true. Plenty of people within an industry or field know enough of what they’re doing because they’ve gone through it before and&amp;#x2F;or done all of the heavy research to prepare for these situations.&lt;p&gt;I see the “nobody knows what they’re doing” fiction brought out as an easy antidote for impostor syndrome or as comforting words to people struggling to learn. While intentions might be good, it had an unintended side effect of creating an illusion that expertise doesn’t exist or that everyone’s knowledge is equal regardless of their level of experience.&lt;p&gt;The dark side of this mentality is that it creates the same situations whereby people believe their own intuitions are equal to professional scientific research. If you believe no one knows what they’re doing and all adults are just making it up as they go, why would you listen to experts instead of inserting your own opinions based on your Facebook research or some quip you saw online?&lt;p&gt;The real key is to identify who really knows what they’re doing and to what degree, then leverage those people for advice as much as possible. Going through life assuming everybody is equally incompetent will leave you blind to these huge opportunities to learn from other people’s expertise and experience.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ZephyrBlu</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m pretty junior in terms of YOE, but I hate when I see people say things like &amp;quot;don&amp;#x27;t worry, I have no idea what I&amp;#x27;m doing and I have x YOE. You&amp;#x27;re fine!&amp;quot; to people on the internet.&lt;p&gt;I have a decent understanding of what I&amp;#x27;m doing, but I worked for it by doing exactly what you described in your last paragraph and then synthesizing that knowledge into an explicit process.&lt;p&gt;If you don&amp;#x27;t know what you&amp;#x27;re doing you&amp;#x27;re either bad or don&amp;#x27;t have a conscious understanding of your process. Both are not good.</text></comment>