I'm not good enough

Oh sure, you'd like to be self employed, but that's for the really talented people. There's so much you don't know, and obviously so many people who are so much better than you are - there's no way you can compete.

I hear variations on that constantly. The most recent was from someone doing computer in-house tech support for a medium sized company. He does the typical things; setting up new systems, swapping defective hardware, battling spam, spy-ware and viruses, solving the daily problems. He gets treated pretty miserably, is quite competent, and would love to go out on his own, but.. he feels that he doesn't know enough.

He especially gets that feeling from reading the on-line newsgroups and chat forums. The people who answer questions there seem so incredibly knowledgeable. Sure, he answers a question or two himself now and then, but some of those other posters just seem like they know everything. There is just so much he doesn't know, and he feels that he never will.

I know what he means. The gaps in my own knowledge feel like canyons to me, but out in the off-line world I do very well and don't often see people who are even near my knowledge level.

There's a reason for that. The super bright, super knowledgeable people may show up in the newsgroups and forums but they are only a small handful at best. There's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of businesses needing computer help: there's no way that the super-geeks could even begin to handle them. Besides, those people are usually busy doing much more important things: if they are involved in support at all they are apt to be at the highest level, the ones that you only get to after several lower levels have failed to solve the problem.

We can't know everything. There's always someone who knows more about X, Y or Z. That doesn't mean that you can't earn a living doing any of these things. In fact, sometimes a generalist, someone who knows a little bit from A to Z, will do better in the real world than the narrowly focused experts. Don't let your own perceptions of your value hold you back: if you are good enough to hold a job, you are good enough to work for yourself.

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