A few months ago, I came across this perplexing insight from the Stack Overflow Developer Survey. The question asked developers to evaluate their competence in their chosen skill set, and almost 70% of the respondents judged themselves as “above average”. Only a minuscule 10% admitted that they are below average. Even the Stack Overflow folks could not stop themselves from quipping that this was “… statistically unlikely with a sample of over 70,000 developers who answered this question, to put it mildly”.
This may not come across as a total surprise to many. Afterall, we are coached to lie our entire life. The best part of always stating truth, I had read somewhere, was that you don’t need to remember what you said to someone on a particular day. Lying warrants a sharp mind and fearlessness. We start with innocent innocuous lies, to just evade that rap on the knuckle, most of them still getting exposed to our bewilderment. Then we mature over the years to lie in a more sophisticated manner, and we devise novel ways to get past the scrutiny. And some of us, who eventually master the art, either join politics or the advertisement industry.
