I also remember, early in my career, an engineering manager telling me this. I was a junior web developer and when asked how capable I feel at doing a particular task, or how quickly I think I could get it done, I’d just be honest. The manager told me it makes me look bad and, even if I don’t believe it, for political reasons, I should appear confident.
Have you assessed how accurate your unconfidence is? That is, when you feel unconfident about a project but go ahead anyway, how does it generally turn out?
I’ve never done so explicitly. Well, one time I did for a few weeks. I was doing great with most of my predictions being pretty accurate, and then a handful of them turned out to wildly undershoot (ie. the task took way longer than I expected), I lost motivation, and stopped.
Overall though, if I think back to my assessments over the years and how accurate they turned out to be, I think I lean slightly towards being too overconfident.
Have you assessed how accurate your unconfidence is? That is, when you feel unconfident about a project but go ahead anyway, how does it generally turn out?
I’ve never done so explicitly. Well, one time I did for a few weeks. I was doing great with most of my predictions being pretty accurate, and then a handful of them turned out to wildly undershoot (ie. the task took way longer than I expected), I lost motivation, and stopped.
Overall though, if I think back to my assessments over the years and how accurate they turned out to be, I think I lean slightly towards being too overconfident.