[yodsanklai]

I have the opposite experience. I always thought I was a good programmer (self taught when I was a kid, then studied in a reputable place where I ranked among the best students). Then I confronted myself with the real world where I feel I'm not special, and that coding is only a small part of what we do. Apart from school or programming contests, we rarely get evaluated purely on our coding abilities, and there's always so much we don't know.

That being said, there are things that boosted my confidence, such as getting offers from FAANG. But it was temporary. Software engineering still seems like a tedious and hard activity. And it's getting worse now that everything is distributed.