On: The most common failure mode is failing to show up

[ryanwaggoner]

Congrats on the job. If it helps, from what I've seen at a lot of higher levels of companies and organizations, no one really knows what they're doing. You're probably also suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect [1] and are doing better than you think you are.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

[bluepaper → ryanwaggoner]

Forgive me, after a brief look over the Wikipedia article surely it's the opposite of that? "unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average" - so they think they're better than they are, whereas you're suggesting they're doing better than they think they are.

[ryanwaggoner → bluepaper]

I'm talking about this part of the Wikipedia article:

Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.