What is a type of "overconfidence" you have observed in developers?

There are certainly a lot of ways developers can be "underconfident" in the form of impostor syndrome, etc.

But overconfidence is also an issue. Care to share some observations of this?

Comments

[Tammy Lee]

When a dev fully commits to the first solution that pops into mind and is 100% certain that's the best solution.

[Prahlad Yeri]

The over-confidence is always subtle. Instead of indulging in explicit arrogant behavior and name calling, they use subtle passive aggressiveness to express their feelings!

On the other end of the spectrum, we have those suffering from perpetual imposter syndrome! They think that they are a nobody and good for nothing while hiding and suppressing all the creativity and knowledge within their subconscious. The imposter syndrome won't let them have even the slightest of confidence, and that leads to inaction. This loss is both theirs and humanity's.

[Templar++]

Overconfidence - nobody can beat medics. Software developers are way behind them.

[popo]

I work with a lot of people (all different kinds of egos). I have to admit I'm an unsure developer, the one who will never be 100% sure she can do it. But that being said, I believe it's better not to assume you will make it (to the finish line), instead of the opposite.

• Overconfident people don't like feedbacks (in fact they are secretly unsure about their work) :)
• Overconfident people never recognize their work isn't good (enough), they always stay proud.
• Overconfident people often judge other peoples work, by saying 'I can do that, it's easy'. (Never underestimate other peoples work..)

Good balance is

• when you listen to people feedback (let them talk and listen to every word carefully)
• when you know that every person has something to teach you
• when you challenge yourself and agree you've made some mistakes. Then, ask yourself. How can you improve your work ?
• when you know how many great artists there are in the world (always find true sources of inspirations)

Always stay humble. Be gratefull. Be kind.

[beesnotincluded]

I'm overconfident in my time estimates for tickets.

[Rachel Soderberg]

Developers who constantly brag about hacking into one system or another if they can't remember (or don't have) a password. Pretty sure my eyes rolled so far back in my head that I saw my brain when the web developer on my team said that to me when he couldn't remember his Salesforce password.
Sure, go ahead and hack Salesforce....

[Alex Lohr]

The worst example of this was an applicant for a senior developer position that I had to interview. His overconfidence in his ideas, opinions and methods being the sole correct ones was really toxic. While he wasn't really bad at coding, his arrogance was so annoying that we unanimously dismissed his application.

[Glenn Stovall]

The belief that my code > all other code

Dilbert was exactly this five years ago:

[Glenn Stovall]

The one that irks me the most is the belief that the value of coding trumps everything else at the company.

Designer bringing us a Sketch file that will require a few more hours or some wonky CSS workarounds to implement? Better compromise the design. Have to maintain the quality of the code base!

Client emails requirements that outside of what we predicted? Well, they'll have to make changes and concessions in their process then. Have to maintain the quality of the code base!

Boss wants us to make changes similar to what the client wanted. Business goals be damned! Have to maintain the quality of the code base!

The company is out of business because of low product quality and an inelastic response to changes in the market?

Oh well, the codebase was probably low-quality and legacy at this point. Best to rebuild from scratch anyways.

[beesnotincluded]

When devs read an opinion piece on how to do something and mistake it for gospel never to be questioned.