You Don't Need to Know Everything. Really

Every time I open some tech blog and see someone building a "recursive orchestrator for differentiated antimatter clusters," I start wondering if I'm even a real developer at all. Then I remember that one time I took down production because of an extra comma. So yeah. I'm real.

What's the Problem

It feels like everyone around you is better, smarter, more successful. Everyone is building something complex, trendy, and exciting. They follow all the best practices, every project they touch is DDD, Clean Architecture, CQRS, Event Sourcing, all neatly running on Kubernetes and split into microservices. Meanwhile, you're stuck working on a PHP 5.6 monolith that's older than you are, with an architecture made of pretty much every bad decision imaginable. And of course, they still hit the gym after work while you spend an hour debating whether to make tea.

You start spiraling, thinking you just got lucky landing this job. Because honestly, you don't really know anything special, you just know how to Google and ask ChatGPT. Sooner or later, everyone will see it, realize you're not as competent as they thought, and fire you. Next time, you won't get so lucky. Then it's just you, a cardboard box from an old fridge, and that familiar dumpster behind the office.

That's exactly how impostor syndrome shows up. When you can't bring yourself to believe you're a real professional or a valuable employee. When you're not even sure you're worth anything at all. Because you know you make mistakes. You know the gaps in your knowledge and skills. It's easier to believe you got hired by accident. Or maybe out of pity. But definitely not because the company actually sees value in you.

Unfortunately, it's a really common problem, especially in IT. A lot of people feel exactly the same way, even the ones you see as true professionals. They just don't talk about it much. Maybe they're afraid of being exposed.

Why This Happens

We know ourselves a little too well. We know every strength and weakness, every doubt, every time we tried to Google something and gave up. And unfortunately, there's no escaping that. Other people, though, we see through the filter of what they choose to show. And they definitely don't show everything. Especially not their mistakes.

Everyone's heard of the Instagram effect, where it feels like everyone else is richer, more successful, smarter, living a better life. Unlike you. But that illusion doesn't just happen on social media. In real life, most people are just as careful about what to show and what to hide.

We all learn to cover up our failures and polish our successes. Everything you see online or hear from friends is most likely a curated success story, not an honest tale of failure. Few people want to admit they took down a service for hours just by commenting out a single line. Or that they made the wrong decision that completely derailed a project's deadlines.

And in IT, there's the extra pressure of constant progress. New technologies, new approaches, new frameworks. Everything changes so fast that you're always learning and trying not to fall behind. You haven't even wrapped your head around the latest Symfony release, and there's already a new one, forcing you back to reading and experimenting. The problem is, there will always be someone who dug deeper into PostgreSQL or knows Docker and Kubernetes better. And instead of being proud that you mastered a new tool or figured out another framework, you end up downplaying your own achievements.

How It Shows Up

Impostor syndrome doesn't hit you all at once. It creeps in quietly, almost unnoticed. At first, it's just small doubts that feel normal. But over time they pile up, and you catch yourself thinking more and more often that something's wrong.

You start being afraid to write code because you're sure it's going to be bad, unoptimized, and sent back for rework during review. Whoever checks it will see that you actually don't know anything.

Even touching old code for refactoring feels hard. You're convinced it will either fail completely or end up worse than before. That you'll use the wrong patterns, and everyone will realize you don't really know them or even fully understand how SOLID works.

And even when things go well. When the task is solved, everything works, and the code review passes without a single comment. Instead of feeling satisfaction, you start discounting your work. You convince yourself it was just luck or that the task wasn't that hard. Maybe anyone in your place would have done the same. Maybe the reviewers just missed the mistakes.

Even during a coffee break, talking to a colleague, you can't help comparing yourself. He tells you about his pet project that he turned into an open-source tool with a thousand GitHub stars. On top of that, he's constantly contributing to popular projects the whole team uses. Meanwhile, you can't even remember your GitHub password because the only time you log in is to update your avatar every three years.

And of course, there's procrastination. When you're scared to write code, make decisions, or even just ask a question, working normally becomes impossible. Deadlines start to crumble, and you're paralyzed by the fear of doing something wrong.

That's why impostor syndrome isn't just a bit of insecurity that adds a little discomfort. It's a real and serious problem that robs you of the joy of work you actually like and keeps you from performing at your best.

You Don't Have to Know Everything

Modern development has so many practices, technologies, and tools that it's physically impossible to know them all. The core issue for developers with impostor syndrome is that they don't realize this. The truth is, even Seniors, Architects, and Tech Leads are constantly looking things up and don't know absolutely everything.

What really matters in development is understanding, the ability to think, find solutions, and solve business problems, not just memorizing method signatures. Gaps in your knowledge don't make you an incompetent developer because it's literally impossible to cover every area at once.

You can't possibly work with every PHP framework out there and be equally good at all of them. They differ a lot in the approaches they use. Laravel and Symfony, for example, are completely different experiences. And they're always evolving, which means if you're not actively working with a particular framework, you fall out of context pretty quickly.

If you have to choose between breadth and depth of knowledge, always bet on depth. Nobody needs a so-called "universal specialist" who knows everything on a shallow level but can't actually help. Someone who learned every programming language only at the "Hello World" level will stay at that level, bringing no real value to a company. It's far more valuable to know one language well and understand it deeply.

And believe me, not every developer needs to dive into Kubernetes and Helm. In most companies, there are dedicated, highly specialized engineers whose main responsibility is infrastructure.

This realization didn't come to me right away. It hit me while talking to very experienced developers. When you hear someone you consider an idol say, "I don't remember what this function does," or you watch them make mistakes, sometimes even really silly ones, it shifts your perspective. I've heard those words and seen those mistakes from more experienced colleagues more than once or twice. And slowly you start to understand that we're all human, we all don't know something, and nobody knows everything. The key is realizing you don't have to.

What Actually Helps

Stop comparing yourself to others. You only see what they allow you to see. Yourself, on the other hand, you know completely: every doubt, every failure, every flaw. In that kind of comparison, you will always lose.

Remember, perfect people don't exist. We're all stronger in some things and weaker in others. If your colleague is a wizard with relational databases and seems to see the entire system in his head, that doesn't mean you should throw in the towel. Maybe he's completely unsure when it comes to Docker, which is the very thing you feel way more confident about.

Once you understand that everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, you'll be able to look at your own with more calm. Accept them. It helps you feel more secure because you know where your gaps are and you're not trying to hide them. Asking questions and talking about them becomes much easier than staying silent and pretending everything's under control. Trust me, it changes how work feels in a big way.

Find small things to praise yourself for. A small project you successfully wrapped up. A bug fix that saved the team hours. These moments help prove to yourself that you're not an impostor, that you actually know what you're doing. And step by step, they build your confidence.

Final Thoughts

You can't completely get rid of impostor syndrome. Sooner or later you'll end up in a situation where the doubt creeps back in. But that's exactly when you'll remember everything from this post. You'll already know how to handle those thoughts and what to do. And every time, it gets a little easier.

We all don't know something. We all make mistakes, sometimes really dumb ones that could've been easily avoided. But that doesn't define whether you're a good or bad developer. What matters more is understanding what's going on in your head and learning to work with it. The willingness to learn and become a better version of yourself means far more than any amount of knowledge or status.

And you don't need to try to be better than everyone or prove something to anyone. The only person worth comparing yourself to is who you were yesterday. If today you took a step forward and grew even a little, you're no impostor.

By the way, if this topic resonates with you, check out my article Why No One Cares About Your Perfect Code. I share my experience of how chasing "perfect" code can pull you away from real project needs and kill all the joy of writing it.