I'm never going to be modest from here on out and will act like a pompous douche when deemed necessary. I see people act this way ALL the time, and I figured pe

I'm never going to be modest from here on out and will act like a pompous douche when deemed necessary. I see people act this way ALL the time, and I figured people could see right through their bullshit. Apparently not, as it clearly does not matter if they are right - only if their bullshit is passable. Apparently being modest does not work to my advantage. I have no choice but to play the game. The question you have to ask yourself is "am I an exceptional software developer?"[1]. If you are at all unsure about that then the answer is probably no (the fact you are even on here at all worrying about these things indicates the answer is no). Given that you are not exceptional, the first thing to do is stop listening to the career advice of exceptional people: they base their advice on their own personal experience[2]. They were able to start their own successful companies, or got well rewarded and promoted/hired for top jobs at the large companies, because they are exceptional. 'Restrained confidence' won't get you very far if you don't have extraordinary skills to make you stand out; you will be competing with many others of similar skill level who are quite happy to play the 'pompous douche' character, to lie about their experience and skills and so on. That problem you solved last week that saved the company X$? Your 'pompous douche' colleague has already taken credit for it. You will be annihilated by these competitors every time unless you play the game because bosses and recruiters won't even realise you exist. Or you could go your own way, if you are happy struggling to pay the rent every month (please don't go this route if you have family/children). The final 'nuclear' option is to quite the entire industry for one that is less psychopathic, but I've yet to identify such an industry; if you find it please let me know. [1] as the article points out, if you are referring to yourself as 'programmer' or 'software developer' then you have already gone wrong [2] this is also why you shouldn't listen to people like Steve Jobs when they give a graduation speech telling you to 'take big risks because it will all work out in the end'. No shit it all works out if you are Steve Jobs, but you aren't Steve Jobs. They don't get people who took huge risks and crashed and burned to give graduation talks.