A room full of degrees
During one of our engine tests at NASA, I was in the control room with a dozen other engineers. Every one of us had a degree. And not one of us saw it coming when hot jet exhaust leaked into a “protected” camera box and melted a very expensive infrared camera.
My camera. My system. My very bad day. (I wrote about how that day nearly broke me in The Day I Shut Down NASA.)
Our diplomas didn’t save that camera. But, what we learned from losing it saved every camera after.
From the sales floor to Distinguished Engineer
I just read about Kevin McMenamy, who is celebrating 25 years at Cisco. He’s a Distinguished Engineer, one of the top technical titles in the company.
He has no college degree.
He started at 18, selling mice and keyboards at Fry’s Electronics. He taught himself engineering by carrying customer questions to the experts and translating the answers back. He read, he built, and he asked a lot of questions. Eventually he led the technical integration of a $3.3 billion acquisition.
And after all that? He still sometimes feels like he’s not a real engineer. No degree. Never learned to code. That doubt still haunts him.
His colleagues see it clearly. And differently. Cisco’s Collaboration CTO says “Kevin’s skill didn’t come from a university. It came from the lab, building things until he understood them.”
What my degree actually bought me
I have the engineering degree. I passed the tests. I paid a lot of money for the privilege.
So what was it worth on my first day at NASA?
A foundation. The scientific method, heat transfer, enough electromagnetic theory to keep up. I’m grateful for it.
But when I was handed those infrared cameras, I had no idea how they worked. And nobody had taught me how to keep one alive next to a fighter jet engine at full roar.
So I did what Kevin did. Training. Stacks of tech briefs. Questions I was sure I should already know the answers to.
The degree got me to the starting line. Everything after that, I learned on the job. My degree didn’t fly the plane. It just got me into the hangar.
Where expertise actually comes from
After the camera melted, we designed stronger boxes. The cameras survived the rest of the project. No textbook held that fix. We earned it.
That’s what expertise is. Not a credential. A stack of lessons learned the hard way, piled one on top of the other.
A degree proves you could learn something once. Expertise proves you kept learning. Kevin has 25 years of proof. Most diplomas have four.
Curiosity and obsession don’t show up on a transcript. They show up in the lab.
The feeling isn’t the problem
Here’s what jumps out at me. After 25 years and a top title, Kevin still has the doubt.
If impostor syndrome were a confidence problem, he’d have had to fix that first. He never did. He just kept performing.
Impostor syndrome isn’t a feeling problem. It’s an execution problem. The feeling is a warning light. The damage comes when you obey it: you stay quiet, skip the stretch assignment, avoid the room. Hesitating, questioning, holding back… those are real villains.
Truth is, I was terrified to walk back into that control room. The fix wasn’t feeling better. It was walking back in.
The protocol: feel it, then act. Immediately.
- Detect. Notice the doubt. “I’m not a real engineer.”
- Verify. Check it against the facts. Kevin does this. When doubt creeps in, he reminds himself that Cisco’s engineering councils approved his promotions for a reason.
- Act. Do the next thing before the feeling talks you out of it.
Confidence doesn’t come first. It shows up later, as a receipt for the action.
If you don’t have the paper
Maybe you learned it all on the job. You’re the one people call when something breaks. And you still wonder when someone will notice you don’t have the paper.
Take it from someone who does have it: we’re all learning on the job. We’re reading the manuals, asking the questions, melting the cameras. We just have a piece of paper that makes us feel better about it.
You’re not a fraud. You’re self-taught. That’s proof you can learn anything.
The doubt may never fully leave. Kevin’s hasn’t. You don’t have to win the argument with the feeling. You just have to move first.
A degree never flew a plane. People do. People who learned how, one hard lesson at a time. People like you.
Forward is a decision. Make it.
