This binary interpretation of the Dunning-Kruger effect leads to wild exaggeration.

The most skilled people were only off by like 10%. The effect is just that people seem to think the curve goes from 0.5 to 0.85 instead of 0.0 to 1.0 but otherwise fit themselves in the same rank-ordered buckets within that.

>Does this mean I'm incompetent?

>It's possible; I can't ignore the possibility.

Yes you can ignore it, just focus on things that actually matter. While other question their competence, you can actually get stuff done.

While it is possible, this paper doesn't really make it more likely. Do read the paper if you're worried about it, because it doesn't prove what it claims to.

This paper is only valid for what it actually studied: some subjective tasks and some standardized test questions. Ability to get the humor in a joke was one of the 4 tasks. Subsequent papers have shown that this result doesn't apply to highly skilled or complex cognitive tasks like computer programming. In fact, the effect reverses, and highly skilled people are disproportionately better at knowing their competence. https://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-...

This paper also didn't control for a possibly over-confident sample: the subject of the study were all Cornell undergrads, who may be prone to being overconfident, or just acting overconfident.

That said, as a programmer, it's always a good idea to be confident about your willingness and attitude while being humble about your skills. Assume your programs have bugs, because they do. I believe the reason my competence is increasing is because I assume all code is wrong, and I take extra time to make sure it does what I expect.

Doesn't this self-doubt imply that you are now competent? I have always found the Dunning-Kruger effect to be more of a fun novelty than a practical tool.