I’m 10 years into my tech career and yet I constantly feel so, so stupid.

It’s entirely self-originating; not because others are mean to me. (Ok maybe partly also because I’m lucky to be around smart people).

Why do I feel this way, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary — that I’m not stupid, and know a thing or two about what I’m talking about? Is my self esteem really that bad?

I think it’s also because I’ve been learning so much. The more I learn, I more I realize I don’t know. And I posit that the weight of a known unknown feels disproportionately bad to the relief of converting it to known known.

So, the equation looks like:

All Knowns = Known Knowns + Known Unknowns

Perception Of Intelligence = Known Knowns / All Knowns

(Smaller = Less Intelligence = More Stupid)

This makes sense to me. I think I accumulate known unknowns at 10x the rate of known knowns — it takes so much more energy to learn something, than to learn merely of the existence of something.