Before I started working for myself, I would end up being the manager, every goddamn time.
I'm a diagnosed autistic and am best if I just get a target to hit, no matter how elusive and unattainable and I WILL hit that target, even if I have to learn some obscure 1970's COBOL dialect to do so.
But nooo, they keep promoting me to management, because I natural take control of a groups workflow (only because I'm the person that sees the way to the target, when no one else can).
Why not just let me be Senior and team lead instead of always making me a manager!
Programming or knowledge about that has such a high ceiling that the own knowlege always looks like nothing. I always tell myself i do alright to turn down my insecrurities.
I mean that's exactly me only that my boss and some coworkers who are super nerds keep praising my working-for-only-1-year-now ass so it's a battle between insecurities and people telling me I'm doing good.
I have an even bigger problem. I have no reference within my company, I am the one who knows the most about programming, which is why praise is inherently hollow because it comes from people who couldn't make a proper judgement on that.
It's like me praising someone playing the piano. Like, I can tell if I like it, but this goes basically only to the point of recognize if someone just plays very badly or not.
Your self-awareness is a good sign. My predecessor was a self-taught cowboy coder with no one to draw comparisons with. He was the lead (read: only) software engineer at my company, barring fresh graduates that didn't know any better.
Then I came along to point out all of his anti-patterns & cruft. By that point, he was too entrenched & self-assured in his abilities to listen to reason. Some people have imposter syndrome, others are imposters that failed upwards in spite of their incompetence.
Sean, if you're reading this - fuck you. I'm still coming across code you refuctored
You clearly have it worse. I find myself really lucky because I started out in a rather small company but with some very passionate programmers whom I can look up to.