Can we talk about how 'just be confident' advice ignores the actual skill gap

Ryan Ellis · 2026-09-09T07:55:05.322439+00:00

I read a post last week from a guy in Seattle who spent 8 years in sales, then got laid off and tried coding bootcamp. He said every motivational video told him confidence would fix his interviews, but nobody told him that debugging takes 200 hours of practice minimum. It got me thinking about how we push mindset over competence in so many areas now. Like, is confidence actually helpful when you genuinely lack the tools, or does it just make you fail louder? My take is that we've swung too far into self-belief talk and too far away from saying 'you need to grind the boring fundamentals first.' But I also know people who had the skills and froze up, so confidence clearly matters in some way. Which side do you land on, and has anyone else felt like the advice was aimed at the wrong problem entirely?

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Can we talk about how 'just be confident' advice ignores the actual skill gap | Controversial Takes - Talk Freely