Did I write that code?!?

Preliminary warning: this post is not worth reading for you if you never make mistakes.


Illusory superiority is, according to Wikipedia's definition, "a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others"

It is that well-known, well documented phenomenon (also known as the above average effect) that makes so easy for us (T)IT professionals to judge and criticize other people's work. It's a fact of life.
In other words, we tend naturally to have a distorted perception of reality when it comes to evaluate the quality/effectiveness of our work compared to the quality/effectiveness of the work of our colleagues.
It is extremely therapeutic, in order to come back to reality, to periodically try to spot major flaws in your own work: poor design or shitty code, completely wrong approach to problems, wrong organizational choices. Try to be as cruel as possible (which means: as cruel as you would be if you were analyzing other people's work).
The epiphany will occur when you'll find yourself wondering, confused: "did I really write this code?" (or "did I really choose this process? did I really proposed this solution? did I really ignore this issue?", depending on what your actual work is).
Everybody makes mistakes, experience allows us to improve ourselves recognizing them, but this virtuous path requires humility, as written in almost all books of self improvement written by spiritual gurus, genuinely illuminated guides or simply people which love making money selling books about this kind of stuff (And they actually sell them: smart guys, definitely above the average).

Psychology (psychiatry?) of the True IT Professional

It's easy to spot the True IT Professional (TITP, capital T is on purpose) among a bunch of fake ones.

First of all, the TITP will never lose an occasion to talk about technology: you mention a language? The TITP already knows it, and in one of his previous professional experiences he has successfully used it to solve almost impossible problems. Or has just written a book about it, or an article in a authoritative website, or there's a post in his blog about it. At least, he has attended a conference about it, or he has read something about it. The same applies for any frameworks, technologies, methods/methodologies of software development you can possibly imagine, even if you try with the most abstruse buzzwords: the TITP already knows it, not in a superficial way but with a deep and thorough understanding, and can probably show to you an entry in his Curriculum Vitae which documents his rock-solid expertise in the field.
Furthermore, he will very often express an opinion about it, which is in 90% of cases extremely negative, in 10% of cases extremely positive and enthusiastic, but never neutral: "Technology X? It's a mess, and leads to messy code", "Framework Y? Mmh, no doubt: Z is much better, and I can tell you because I worked for many years with this kind of frameworks", "Method(ology) H? Brilliant, the best thing I've ever tried in my professional life. But unfortunately I know many IT guys that are not skilled enough to understand this and keep on using obsolete and ineffective ways to blablabla...".
Expressing an opinion about a technology is a subtle, indirect way to convey to your audience the following message: "I know that!".

The art of indirect messages is a technique that every TITP effortlessly masters, and it is the foundation of the second basic TITP behavioral pattern: the "All other IT guys are professionally inferior to me" one. The TITP will never say "I am the best around". That would be arrogant. But, still, he would really like to say it, because he actually thinks so or, in some cases, simply likes to think so. Instead, he will adopt an indirect strategy and start painting a world full of mistakes committed by other developers and other working teams; he will never run short of criticisms directed to other IT guys, primarily about their technical skills, but not neglecting their "political" skills, their ability to work in team, and even their lack of sense of humor. The subtle strategy behind this pattern is the following: if I can convey the idea that other people around are professionally less skilled and effective than me, de facto I am successfully conveying the idea that I am the best around (quod erat demonstrandum). Without looking arrogant. Clever.
Ten TITP's out of ten talking with you will imply with their words the message "I am the best around".
And you can bet they (we?) all are :-)!

Post Scriptum
A TITP has a blog, and he uses it to show technical proficiency, brilliant sense of humor and some knowledge of Latin