Ask HN: How do you deal with overconfident and mediocre individuals?
Imho the entire problem is -and should be- yours. If you feel that such people take jobs&#x2F;fame&#x2F;complements away from you, you should work on your expression of confidence. Because logically, these what you call &quot;over confident&quot; people get stuff done and get praise (or you wouldn&#x27;t be jealous of them!) Yes, you are jealous of the success which you think is undeserved. But that is an opinion. Nobody needs a smart person that never opens their mouth at the right time or that doesn&#x27;t offer their services or is unclear about what they can do.<p>You are obviously an introvert, so this will be hard for you, at first. But you are going to have to grow a pair and either offer your skills to people looking for them and prove you are better than the other person or learn to not feel annoyed by it. As you say, you ignore the situation and you focus on your work, ask yourself: Why? What will this behavior bring you? How could you alter that behavior to feel less frustration in such situations?<p>You want change. You are going to have to deeply realize that the only factor you can change in this world, is yourself. Change your behaviour and you change the status quo. Keep being frustrated and you end up with the status quo: frustration... until it breaks you.<p>Start by seeing (and naming, writing down even!) the merits of the behaviors that you seem to hate so much. It is also (mainly?) your metal connection between this behavior and the value you give it (you call it negative, it <i>is</i> not negative, it <i>is</i> nothing but a behaviour). You are going to have to unlearn this connection before you can start to apply it yourself (and receive the merits that come with the behaviour). This takes time and requires energy and constant awareness and honest reflection.<p>What works for me is mantras. Short things I tell myself before entering a situation. For me it&#x27;s things like: &quot;Everybody here makes money, I&#x27;m not here for fun, be clear on the fact that you are going to want your hours paid if this negotiation turns into a set of tasks that you can pick up.&quot; Because I feel like the things I do are not worth a lot of money because I convince myself they are easy. But they usually are not, I&#x27;m just good at them (and I have to tell myself that as it doesn&#x27;t come naturally to me.) And man, it took me 35 years to realize this ;). Don&#x27;t underestimate these processes.<p>Yes you are going to have to learn the subtle art of not giving a F (which -if you read the book- translates to giving a F* about only the right&#x2F;useful things). I think that book is very valuable to people like you and me.