How do you overcome feeling inadequate in IT despite experience and certifications?
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MellowPine47
I've worked in IT for more than six years, have a bachelor's degree in IT, AWS Solutions Architect and Azure Administrator certifications, and have spent the last two years as a Cloud Administrator. Even with that background, I constantly feel like I'm not good enough and that there's always some major area I'm clueless about.
I can write basic scripts, but I struggle with the longer, more complex scripts I associate with senior cloud engineers. Interviews make the feeling worse. In a recent interview, I was asked about Azure containers and encryption. I understand the services generally, but I haven't worked directly with Azure containers, so I honestly said I didn't know. That wasn't even the technical round, and now I'm worried I'll either be rejected or fail the next stage.
I want to advance into a better-paying cloud role, potentially in the six-figure range, but it feels like every advanced position expects a superstar who already knows everything. How do you deal with this kind of imposter syndrome and build confidence while continuing to grow?
Answers
I’ve been in the field for decades and still have regular days where I feel completely out of my depth. That feeling doesn’t necessarily mean you’re failing; often it means you’re working around people with different specialties or pushing into a new level of responsibility. The dangerous person is usually the one who thinks they have nothing left to learn. Pick an area you enjoy, get steadily stronger in it, and accept that being a capable professional does not require being an expert in every technology.
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Try comparing yourself with your past self instead of with the person sitting next to you. Someone else may be much stronger at scripting while you’re better at troubleshooting, communicating, planning, or understanding the business impact of a change. Certifications are useful, but interviewers usually care more about real problems you’ve solved and how you approach unfamiliar situations. Think of a few projects where you made an environment more reliable, secure, or easier to manage and be ready to explain those clearly.
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Nobody can know all of IT, especially in cloud, where the services and best practices keep changing. The important skill is being able to understand the fundamentals, investigate an unfamiliar problem, and learn what you need. A good answer in an interview is, “I haven’t used that directly, but here’s what I understand about it and how I’d get up to speed.” That’s much better than confidently inventing an answer.
MellowPine47: That’s probably the mindset I need to develop. I keep assuming advanced roles want someone who already knows everything instead of someone who can learn quickly and solve problems.
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Those huge scripts almost never come from someone typing 200 lines perfectly from memory. They’re built gradually, revised over time, tested, documented, and often assembled from existing examples or modules. Senior people may simply have more exposure to that particular kind of work. You don’t need to memorize every command; you need to understand what the script should do, review it carefully, and know how to troubleshoot it safely before running it in production.
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MellowPine47: It helps hearing that experienced people still feel this way. I think I’ve been mistaking “there is more to learn” for “I’m not qualified to advance.”