Trust me, I am the most competent one in the art of being incomoetent.
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
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I’ll tell you a secret. If you just show up and do things without fucking up most of the time, they’ll never know you’re an imposter. Like fools, they’ll attribute your mistakes to human error and not being incompetent. Just because you show up reliably and do halfway decent work the majority of the time. The absolute imbeciles.
There’s also the flip side of imposter syndrome.
Inherent in the belief that people are going to figure out that you are actually a fraud, and really bad at something, is the implicit idea that all those other people are actually competent and good at stuff themselves.
Here’s the thing - most of them probably aren’t. The older I get (mid 40s now…) the more I realize that incompetence is far more widespread than I used to think it was.
This is not to give anyone an inflated idea of their own ability or intelligence, including myself! It’s just a reminder that, in most situations, the people whose judgment you are worried about are probably just as bad off as you are… and are probably worse!
That's basically how I got over the imposter syndrome.
Half the job is just showing up and telling your boss that things are on track and that you will take care of it.
If you ever feel nervous before a progress meeting, remember this.
The CIA released a guide once in how to subtly resist a hostile government from the inside, in a corporate setting. It said things like “Always set a follow-up meeting to every meeting”, “Never commit to anything”, and “Reject everything you’re asked to review with vague comments”. It was practically a perfect portrait of my boss at my last company, who was lauded as excellent by management.
It got me thinking: If he was considered indispensable while basically following a guide on destroying the company to the letter, then how bad could I ever be?
This is going to sound fucked up, but a few years ago I was really struggling with a job and there was immense pressure for me to quit.
At the lowest of my lows, I was browsing the internet and stumbled upon some incompetent fuckery shit that Trump pulled off and immediately understood his appeal to people: if he can fuck up so obviously and on a large scale and still show his face, why can't I?
It's easy to hold someone accountable for messing up a small thing, but holding someone accountable for messaging up something massive? You kind of have to admit some fault in allowing that to happen yourself. By trying to hold them accountable you have to admit that YOU also screwed up. That's harder for people to admit.
Agreed, and I had fucked up big and it took me years to make up for it, and I eventually did, even become good friends with my boss over time.
But at that moment, back then I was so ready to end it all, and the realisation that - yes, you can get away with being an absolute fuckup in full public view and survive - was a weird comfort for me at the time
Yeah but I hate showing up, and doing things..
And the possibility of fucking up is pretty much the root of my concern.
Not sure how this helps.
You gotta kill the fear of fucking up. Or better, relegate it to reasonable caution. You will probably fuck up, and that's ok. Systems that can't handle any failure will usually let you know and take active steps to make it hard to fuck up.
Bold of you to assume I won't fuck everything up all of the time
lol they'll believe anything. I usually just tell them I don't know and that I'll figure it out and learn it in the background, and they don't even care as long as I deliver it, those suckers.