Years ago, in a previous job, a good coworkerfriend and I had a couple of beers and jokingly wrote a list of what it's like to onboard into a new team in the tech industry. While it was originally intended to be funny, I now suspect it's the truest thing I'll ever write. Rather than preserving it in a Dropbox file, I'm going to fling it out to the wilds of the internet:

Dealing with your self-doubt: the life cycle

1. "Who am I and what did I just sign?"
2. "I suck at this."
3. "I thought I had this, then I got that huge customer ticket."
4. "I'm only here for the beer."
5. "I realize you all made a terrible mistake in hiring me, but lemme at least get an initial response out so this customer won't shank us."
6. "I don't actually know what I'm doing, but I've got these six commands that I run all the time. Maybe one of them will tell me what to do next."
7. "I don't know how to solve this problem but I know it happened three months ago, because I heard the person next to me working on it … maybe there are answers there I can steal"
8. "Hey, that person next to me is working on something that sounds like a customer outage I worked three months ago. Maybe I can help."
9. "I'm pretty sure that thing that's coming next week is going to be a problem. I'm going to file a proactive issue with our managerial team, so maybe things don't explode."
10. "I don't like websites. I'm taking up llama farming dental hygiene. GOODBYE INTERNET"