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Comment by random42 | Hacker News Reader

Seems to be my pattern. I've got to increase my rates 100% in last 6 months, and I have still had to say No to some customers/additional work, because of enough work.

I've got encouraging comments from my customers, but dont think I am that good. (Probably/Hopefully Dunning-Kruger effect in play).

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For those as curious as me: "The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority."[1]

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

It is not Dunning-Kruger effect. It is impostor syndrome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

I have no psychology experience but after reading the wikipedia page of Impostor Syndrome, Dunning-Kruger effect, and skimming through Dunning and Kruger's Nobel Prize paper[1] there is a third effect/syndrome that seems to be involved: False consensus effect [2]. They state: "Simply, put, these participants assumed that because they performed so well, their peers must have performed well likewise."[1]. If you are interested as how they reached that conclusion refer to section "Burden of Expertise" on page 1131 (pdf page 11) in [1].

As an extra note: The Impostor syndrome is not an officially recognized psychological disorder[3]. I've seen the Impostor syndrome mentioned many times but had never taken time to read the complete wikipedia page.

[1]http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~dunning/publications/pdf/un... [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

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