I thought that the Clay Shirky piece had two flaws. First the examples were mostly about people getting a key break by pretending to have a higher level of skill than they actually possessed. His headline grabbing phrase went far beyond the actual insight in the piece. Second the insight lacked plausibility. If you claim skills that you lack, you get caught.<p>This second flaw required amplification. There is a huge issue with creeping credentialism. This includes asking for skills that are not infact required. Naturally people lie about possessing <i>these</i> skills and escape detection because the question was bogus to begin with. However Shirky's article focused on examples where the skill was actually required and assessed. So there is a problem.<p>I respect Shirky so a question got lodged in my mind. He has seen and written about something real, but what? Two days later: a post on Hacker News about imposter syndrome. Now it makes more sense. You can draw but feel like a fraud, so when asked if you can draw, you say <i>no</i>. Then you are asked "how's your drafting?" It is good enough, but again you feel like an imposter and answer <i>no</i>. That is how opportunities are missed.<p>My badly written toplevel comment was intended to focus very narrowly on this area of intersection between the imposter piece and the Shirky piece.