In the tech industry, everything moves fast. A tool that worked perfectly yesterday is broken today. A technology that you relied on suddenly shifted its license and now you have to move to a competing technology. You’re constantly being asked to conjure up new solutions to problems that involve vocabulary terms you’ve never heard of.

It’s a lot, and it’s not for everyone.

But here’s the rub. Because you’re constantly in a state where you don’t know the exact syntax of a new language you need to use or you’re fumbling to find the words that you just learned yesterday, it can quickly make you feel like you don’t know anything.

After all, you're a technician, not a magician.

When it becomes too much, a lot of people get a complex about their lack of control. It’s called “Imposter Syndrome” and it affects some of the smartest people I know. In fact, one of my buddies is the CEO of a tech company in Austin, and he once told me that he still gets Imposter Syndrome from time to time. This is a man who has been quoted in magazines, given conference talks at the cutting-edge of his field of expertise, and someone who is more “Sheldon-esque” (Big Bang Theory) than anyone else I know. If even he gets Imposter Syndrome, what choice do we have?

Well, interestingly enough, he’s managed to cure me of it, and I want to share this trick with y’all.

When I was a young hacking apprentice, I was put on some vulnerability assessments that were a smidge beyond my skill. I was a network tester, and webapps were still a bit beyond my grasp at the time. I approached this friend and told him that I thought I wasn’t cut out for this.

He listened patiently to my gripes, and when I was finished he completely shattered my Imposter Syndrome.

Your clients don’t know what you know

The first thing he brought to my remembrance was another test that I had done where I had managed to own the domain controller in an environment. He told me that even though the exploits that I had used were old, year one, script-kiddie level attacks, they still worked on the client’s environment. I asked him what his point was. He told me the following:

You may not know anything, but your client knows even less.
If you just take them one level higher, you've brought them value.

This revelation changed the way I thought about my relationship to my clients. I may not be some savant, but if I can help my client in any capacity, I am doing my job.

What are they going to do? Hire some one else?

The next thought my friend had given me was about the logistics of business. I was still in freakout mode and I told him, “but if I do poorly at this test, then I’ll be exposed for my lack of skill and it’ll get me tossed.” He laughed at that.

Dude, how long did it take them to hire you?
You really think they have better options?
You were the best candidate that they had,
otherwise they wouldn't have hired you.

This was a breath of fresh air. Yeah. It’s true. Even if there are better candidates, there is a cost to hiring, training, and advertising. They aren’t going to go looking for other candidates unless there is more money to justify hiring new candidates. They’re stuck with me for now.

You’re still new, and they know that.

This conversation had occurred when I had been on the job for just a few months. It was my first job out of college and I was so nervous to blow a golden opportunity. This was my friend’s like 5th job, so the pressure wasn’t as great on him.

Dude, you just learned your skillset recently.
Chill and give yourself time to catch up. You
think we got this good over night? Nah, it takes
like 3 years to get really good at anything.

I’ve been working in tech for about 5 years now, and he’s right. Problems that used to tank my entire day now can be solved in minutes. It really is a matter of just steeping yourself in the environment and adapting.

The Big Secret of Big Tech

The last trick that he taught me was that my understanding of my job was just wrong. He pointed out that I thought I had to be the expert at everything, when in reality, I just had to know a little about everything and know where to look for answers next:

The real secret about hackers is that we are
really good at googling things, and pretending
like we knew it all along. THAT'S the job. You
don't have to know anything, you just have to
figure things out at the speed of business.

My big take away

After that conversation, there was a line he had mentioned at the end that changed my entire perspective on my career. This is the line that killed my Imposter Syndrome forever and I want to share it with you.

Dude, you might not be the best in the world, 
but you're the best they got right now.

Whenever I feel like I don’t know enough, or I’m overwhelmed, I think of that phrase and consider all the times I managed to come up with a solution in like 20 minutes with a quick google search. I still get butterflies in my stomach whenever my boss comes to me and asks me to do something I’ve never done before, but I get over it really quickly now. I know that the only thing that’s standing between me and any answer is just time and banging my head against the problem until it submits or my boss finds a better use for my time.

Either way, I don’t feel like an imposter anymore. I’m the best they got, otherwise they would’ve hired someone else.