**"The Unexpected Side Effects of Being Human"**
It's 9:02 AM in Portland, and my Slack notifications are buzzing with something unprecedented: a thread titled "Jake's Oops-Driven Development Framework?" started by someone else. My impostor syndrome is currently short-circuiting like a GPU rendering too many particles.
The Ripple Effect
Turns out, three weeks of publicly failing has consequences:
1. The Team Wiki Now Has a "Hall of Learning" Page
- Curated by our lead architect
- Features my most spectacular bugs alongside their fixes
- Header reads: "Why We Celebrate Broken Things"
2. My Calendar Has "Office Hours" Now
- Not by my doing
- Junior devs booked me as "The Guy Who Won't Judge Your Stack Overflow Tabs"
- First question yesterday: "How do I... ask for help without feeling stupid?"
3. My Own Mentor Came Clean
- "I've been faking confidence for years. Your streams made me stop."
- Now we pair-program our uncertainties every Thursday
The Paradox
The more I've:
- Shared unfinished thoughts
- Admitted knowledge gaps
- Laughed at my own spaghetti code
...the more people treat me like I know things. Not in the "This guru has all answers" way, but in the "This human finds them with us" way.
The New Fear
Now I'm scared of regressing. Of waking up one day and pretending again. Of deleting commit messages that say "No idea why this works lol".
So I'm institutionalizing my fragility:
- "Bug of the Week" channel in Slack
- Pre-PR "Dumb Questions" checklist
- Monthly "Show Your Worst Code" happy hour
The Merge
Yesterday, reviewing a senior's PR, I spotted a race condition. Old me would've agonized over pointing it out. New me just commented:
"Hey, I only see this because I caused the same bug last month. Wanna see the scars?"
Their reply: "Thank god it's not just me."
P.S. That "framework" Slack thread? Turns out it's a real proposal. They want to make intentional vulnerability part of our engineering values. I may have accidentally started a cult.
P.P.S. Found my old "Act Like You Belong" sticky note from January. Crossed it out and wrote beneath it: "You do belong. So does everyone else."
Growth isn't a solo quest—it's an open-source project. And suddenly, I've got contributors.