What its like starting my career as a programmer...

Psst, don't tell anyone, but we're all dumbasses pretending we know shit

If Stackoverflow and Google go down for a week at the same time, we are all out of a job. And the whole world burns.
- Everyone says ChatGPT can't tell if it's wrong. Well neither can I!
Speak for yourself.
I don’t even pretend.
Hay! I know things!!!
Like, uh, javascript sucks! Haha, amirite!?
(But no really I hate js so much)
- Bruh, at least it ain't Java
- Between JS and VB.NET, give me JS anytime, even if it's ES3.
  But modern JS is way better than what it was a decade ago. It's a pretty solid language now.
And we never stop pretending.

Realizing you may not know something isn't a bad thing, it's a step to understanding. The people who think they know it all regardless of the evidence presented are the problem ones.

I’ve worked with people like that. They’re the real dumbasses.

Not being sure about that is the essence of impostor syndrome.

Both! You're probably a lot better than you give yourself credit for but also haven't made enough mistakes yet to see the error of your code

We don’t know shit. It’s just some of us are better at pretending otherwise. Just do your best OP.

Eventually you'll realize those aren't mutually exclusive.

There are five levels of competence

Incompetent and doesn't know it.
Incompetent and does know it.
Competent and doesn't know it.
Competent, and knows it.
Expert, but still often feels clueless.

I have 20 years experience, just cracked a project I've been working on for almost three years, and I still hesitate to consider myself an expert.
Now, I'll tell any lay person who will listen that I'm an expert, but man, some days I just feel clueless.
I find the biggest issue I run into is lack of a peer group. I work in a large IS department, but other than one guy at my last company who works with a different language, I have no one to talk shop with.
- Once one gets to a high level of expertise, it seems there are fewer peers around - people who can teach something new, or give a perspective not already explored.
  It all depends on where you work, and whether there are any user groups frequented by veterans.

We all are. Even the tech lead at the top of your program is only good at what they're good at (bad attempt at humor removed) Nobody knows everything and most of us are just googling stackoverflow like you are.

As a female tech lead, its comforting to know I don't exist!
Rhetoric like this discourages women from becoming engineers, saying that a female tech lead isn't even a possibility is ~~pretty~~ sexist. For the record, if you had just said "he" without the sassy parenthetical I wouldn't have batted an eye.
*Now that I think about it, pretty sexist is an understatement, it's just plain sexist. Female tech leads exist, look it up, and stop perpetuating sexist ideas in tech
- I apologize. That was meant to be a humorous commiseration on the state of a profession that tends to be gender biased, but clearly I missed.

Not to worry, this feeling never goes away

We are human and we don't know everything.

You most likely have gotten to the level for a position, for which you then build into and become more skilled.

You don't arrive to a position (or anything for that matter) knowing everything. But you know enough to begin.

Just became a director not too long ago. I'm still waiting for them to realize that I don't know WTF I'm doing.

When you're a beginner, it's both. The further you get into your career, it's usually imposter syndrome. Then again the more you know, the more you realize you don't know.

I started this way but I've been in my field for a few years and now I can't tell if I'm pretty good or if everyone else is just terrible.

Don't worry, it's both

Talk to colleagues about it. I didn't and the stress ate my soul until I had to take a mental health break. Most of the time you are not more of an idiot than they are and they have things to say about you that make them feel insufficient.

Some are just idiots though, but they often feel too confident to realize.

This applies to any career, I think.

Dw you’ll get there :)

If this feeling ever goes away, you’ve become over confident and will get back to it eventually.

Nobody knows everything, but everybody knows something.

No I don't
- Then you know what you don't know, which is an aspect of knowledge.
- Do you know that?

For me, it's, "Is this good enough to get me a job. Some dude already got a whole ass facebook or twitter in his resume no forks."

It’s both

Even when you finally think you understand how something works, it's only temporary. Give it enough time and you'll look back at mysterious code you wrote years ago and think "Wow, they sure knew what they were doing!"