My entire career path.
I knew I liked concerts, and knew that people had to run that equipment, so I decided to get a job in an event company warehouse to learn what was happening. About 2 months in a sales guy apparently oversold a job and came running downstairs asking if anyone knew how to do video. No one did. So I said “have you got the manuals? I’ll learn.” He said, “Great! You’re going out on a North American arena tour in 6 weeks, good luck.”
Talk about getting thrown into it. I was the projector tech for a show that was running 10 screens and I had never touched a projector before then. I thankfully had a director who realized the crap I was in and helped me out.
That was almost 15 years ago now, I’m no longer on the road, but I’m still in it. Every show is different and every show is a learning experience.
System administrator
It has been 18 years and as of yet no one has mentioned my being a dog , so I guess no cares or has noticed…
I read a metric ton on everything, and yet I know less than Jon Snow.
Mgmt is always asking about things and we just mostly figure it out. And they are very good about supporting us.
But yeah; imposter syndrome is real. I don’t feel like I’m the adult in the room and feeling like it is all fake
Try 35 years
Somehow I’m a “Unix Wizard” because I know how to read log files?
Oh, and now I’m DevOps because I pythoned my way out of wet paper bag.
I’m in this comment and I don’t like it.
I just finished up a ~700 line PowerShell script to send input/keep a login session from timing out due to inactivity, and prior to that was a Python script to format LetsEncrypt SSL certs in a way haproxy likes + an accompanying Bash script to make sure those certs are correct, check in the current good haproxy config to a git repo, and then restart it if there are new certs.
The only thing that I know is that I know nothing.
Performing in any capacity is 100% fake it till you make it. People always ask how you can get up and play music or even speak in front of an audience. The secret behind confidence is that it’s all a lie. As long s people believe you have it, then you have it.
First bunch of times, it’s difficult to pretend, but pretty quickly, you’ll forget you ever had to pretend in the first place.
I was listening to comedians talking on a podcast recently where they agreed that confidence was the biggest boon for them. If you’re not confident, the audience can feel it.
That’s essentially what practice is. We’re all pretending to be something we’re not until we become that thing. Anything you can practice, you can do. Keep at it.
I work in IT as a self-taught developer. I tried so hard to prove myself that I ended up stepping on the toes of my team-mates, who had to basically tell me, “You’re doing a great job, fucking relax.”
Meanwhile we hire 3rd party contractors and new developers who talk and talk about how great they are… and then everything they do is a mess that we have to clean up.
Many successful people are just putting on a show. They’re imposters without imposter syndrome. Confidence is half the battle. You can learn everything else.
I act like a functional human everyday.
I’ve had a terrible time whenever I tried to fake it. Something goes terribly wrong, or I’m completely at a loss of how to play it off like I know what I’m doing, and I’m super stressed out the entire time.
I’ve had a much better time admitting when I realize I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I have permission to try to figure it out as I go, so then mistakes and failures are expected by everyone involved. Sometimes admitting my ignorance opens up training, or at least advice on where to start on a project.
Sewing. I just figured I could, and did. Not like a tailor but whatever I needed I could make.
Driving a manual shift car. Learned when I was 15 because everyone else was too drunk. Absolutely love driving manual ever since.
And, the one I really don’t understand still - reading. I was 3 years old and told my mom I could read. I couldn’t read, was lying, had memorized a book she used to read to me. But after I “read” that book to her, I felt I could read anything. The newspaper, novels, anything with words I could read it, like a switch flipped. The next book I remember reading is Grendel.
I’m a locksmith. I’ve been a locksmith for… a little over 4 years.
I’ve been calling myself a locksmith for 10 years. A rich combination of overconfidence, Dunning-Kruger, and bootstrapping myself into competence over time
I was training in IT networking but my first job was desktop systems. I was supposed to be trained but instead I spent months just being assumed I knew how to do anything.
I think that’s every IT job out there. Training sucks; and is usually biased around loser add-on products that wouldn’t make it themselves but they piggy-back the main offering to sell licenses (hellooo RedHat).
So there’s a lot of “yep but lemme go look that up” and crushing imposter syndrome. Like paramedics, there’s just no way we know all of this; I’m glad that usually no one dies on the bad days.
IT jobs and trainings are like two things that are mutually exclusive.
I cheated on my finals if that counts.
So how’s homeless life been treating you?
Fortunately I haven’t lived that life for a few years now.
Dancing.
I knew as a teenager I need to learn to dance. Not skillfully, but disinhibitedly.
So I started with moving my head in rhythm to the music. Nothing more.
Eventually it just clicked and started working automatically, and now I love moving my body to music.
Just got an employee, things are going well. Just trying to copy the good things other managers do
