Something my friend and coworker Sean have been playing with as an ideal confidence shape to be an effective engineering leader:

In the short term, I am very confident. Today I can accomplish anything that I focus on. This week or this sprint I can accomplish my goals. I may not know how to do everything right now, and I've built my learning skills to the point where I can learn what I need to know on the fly. I know all about the tension between measure-twice-cut-once and analysis paralysis, how to assess the reversibility of decisions, and can balance them and push through tough decisions. I know who my team is and that I can ask for help if I get in too deep. I can put on a mask and make it through the day.

In the medium term, I am pessimistic and somewhat cynical. That thing you think will take 3 sprints will actually take 6, so let's cut scope now. That new technology isn't the silver bullet you think it is, because there are no silver bullets. Change in general is more expensive and less effective than you think it is. Are you sure the user wants that feature? Let's prototype it before we build it. Yes we can hire our way out of trouble, and that will mean the engineers will be in interviews this quarter instead of making things, so let's cut scope even further. Our industry is broken in many ways. Cultural debt is like tech debt, once it gets too bad it's impossible to fully get out of. Social distancing has made us fear and dislike each other.

In the long term, I am very optimistic. The solution will eventually work. We will accomplish our mission. The good will outweigh the bad. Our lives will fill with meaning as we help our peers and those who come after us reach their dreams. The awful, bug ridden, fail whale, tech debt laden, exception throwing, hot garbage pile of resume-driven-development crap that we all complain about all day will also delight the customer, because we put a lot of hard work and goodness into it as well. Long-term, tech is the modern industry and will include representatives from the entire world at all levels of leadership. We will recover from this pandemic, as we have from all the pandemics in history.