LARPing as a genius until it works
I consider myself good at what I do. I've gotten plenty of promotions, my co-workers would consider me a vital part of the team, and I'm on a good path professionally. However, I've hit a wall. From a professional standpoint, you can put me on just about any project and I'll get it done. Now, will I deeply understand what I'm doing? Not really. Will I get it done quickly? Perhaps. Do I have an opinion? Nah, just tell me what to do. This kind of living is... boring. I don't want to type on my keyboard and Create Shareholder Value™️ or be a very good glue engineer. I want to learn and understand things more deeply. So recently, I've started to pretend that I'm a genius.
This isn't just a good ol' fashioned ego trip. This is me seriously believing that I'm one of the smartest people ever and not letting any doubt crawl into my head that I'm not capable of accomplishing whatever I put my mind to. Normally, I would completely advise against this type of false pride. The issue is that it's working. Ever since this switch, I've noticed that my team trusts me more, relies on me for advice/unblocking, and leans on my technical expertise.
You want me to review your PR? I have opinions. We need to think about how to design this system? Don't worry, my big brain and superior intellect have thought through some possible solutions. On a serious note, I don't disparage any of my teammates. They're also brilliant. I have just personally decided to take my work and myself more seriously.
Comparison is the thief of joy, but a great personal trainer
For the past several years, I've been pretty detached from social media. The only account I would use was Twitter to follow some of my favorite sports teams. Then one day, a small thought popped into my head. What if I decided to put myself into a new ecosystem? Rather than becoming obsessed with how my Niners were doing, what if I started orienting myself towards my more productive passion: programming? So, I redownloaded Twitter and started following a bunch of tech accounts.
Immediately, the comparison started to kick in. I could see how much more accomplished others were than me. Some who were even much younger! But this helped light a fire in me. It made me feel like being technically excellent was possible and motivated me to work hard towards understanding challenging concepts. I was inspired to build an HTTP Server in C, do a write-up on the boar book, and start this blog!
Where I'm at now
The most important thing is that I'm taking myself seriously. In our industry, it's incredibly common to write disparaging comments about your code. "I'm just a professional googler hehe." "My code is just a bunch of spaghetti oopsie." And while I understand that's mostly said in jest, we should have some pride in what we do. This was something that I was missing. I was okay with just being good at what I do, but taking that next step meant shedding that blanket of insecurity.
In the past few months, I haven't become a guru. But LARPing has put me on the right track. I find myself more engaged in my work, and I think my team is noticing. My list of responsibilities has grown to the point where I'm pinged by people across all of engineering. Whether that's a good or bad thing is yet to be determined! However, I do believe that it means people think that I can be helpful, which has to be a good thing.
What's next?
I want to ride this out for a while and see where it takes me. My hope is that I'll be given more leadership responsibilities not because of my years of experience, but because I'm a true expert. This means continuing to challenge myself and expanding my mind. Even if the things I want to build in my spare time serve no practical purpose, the way they're going to affect my mental faculties will be critical to my technical goals. Will I ever professionally work with compilers? Probably not. But building one from scratch is going to stretch me in uncomfortable ways.
At the end of the day, this way of working has been way more fun and engaging. I have a new sense of pride in my work and a hunger for helping others learn. No more false humility; it's time to actually believe that I have something worth sharing.