I've written about this before, but my experience as a programmer attached to researchers at a university has a lot of this sort of thing. At first I was intimi

I've written about this before, but my experience as a programmer attached to researchers at a university has a lot of this sort of thing. At first I was intimidated being the "dumb guy" in a room of "smart folks". But I've come to realize there is a huge benefit to this role. I get to ask the questions like "I'm not following how X->Y->Z works, explain?". Since everyone else is making assumptions or following the intuition leaps from lots of Ph.D. work - and I don't have that - I frequently find bad assumptions just by trying to follow what people are saying. Similarly, I get to point out where too much yak shaving is going on, by saying "look we don't have to worry about that, I'm just going to use $existing_tool that already does it for us". But the best part of working in an environment where I'm regularly over my head is that in ignorance I'm free (and safe) to say "hey from down here this looks a lot like this other problem in a different space, can we adapt that solution?" Whether or not it's doable, it helps because I either learn something or directly shape the what the "smart folks" are doing. I also find that working at a level that's over my head for the last few years has made me fearless. At the startup I'm associated with, when one of the other programmers says "we don't know how to do that!" I can say "So I haven't known what I'm doing for years, doesn't mean we can't go ahead and just do it and fix it later". And we fix a lot, but with a solid straw-man it's much easier because we can say "this is the actual problem". I think it's not just knowing your data - it's also learning to be comfortable in your own ignorance (not embracing it, just accepting it as a "for now" situation) and OK with uncertainty.