You do not know how an engine works. 🚗
You drive beautifully. You know what it sounds like when something is wrong. You know a mechanic is talking nonsense about ninety seconds into the conversation, and you know which of your cousins to call to check. Nobody has ever suggested you are bad at cars.
So why did we all decide that not knowing how software works means you are bad at technology?
Nobody has ever said you were bad at cars because you could not rebuild a gearbox. Somehow the rule is different for software.
What it is actually made of 🧰
Four things, and none of them are code.
Knowing what you are looking at. Not how it works — what it is for. This holds my client list. This sends things. This is where the money lands. Half of digital overwhelm is genuinely just not knowing which of your fourteen tools does what.
Knowing the right question. Not the answer. Where does this live, who else can get into it, what happens if I stop paying. Three questions, and they will carry you through nearly every conversation you will ever have with a developer.
Knowing when you are being sold something. When somebody uses six syllables for a two-syllable idea, that is usually a pricing strategy rather than a technical necessity.
And knowing what you would do if it broke. Not fixing it. Just knowing who to call and what you would need to hand them.
Why the other definition is so expensive
Because if confidence means understanding, you will never arrive. There is always more. The people who build this stuff for a living google things constantly — that is the actual job, and anybody telling you different is selling a course. 💅🏾
So a woman waits to feel ready, and ready never comes, and in the meantime she does not ask the question in the meeting. Not because she could not. Because she thinks she has to earn the right to ask it first.
That is the cost. Not skills. A whole decade of good questions that stayed in somebody's mouth.
She did not fail to ask because she could not. She thought she had to earn the right to ask first.
What it looks like in a room
Unglamorous, mostly. It looks like saying I do not know that word, what does it mean here — and noticing that half the table exhales when you do.
It looks like asking what happens to this if you leave, before you sign. It looks like saying that sounds expensive for what it does, and letting somebody explain themselves.
None of that is technical. All of it is confident. That is the whole point.
The takeaway
Pick the tool you use most and answer one question about it out loud: what happens to my stuff if I stop paying for this tomorrow?
If you do not know, that is not a gap in your intelligence. That is a question nobody has ever invited you to ask, and you just asked it. 🤍
Want a plain-language read on your whole setup? Start here: Discover