Chair in good condition for sale (not a sale post)

Every now and then I scroll through the for sale listings on our apartment community page. Furniture especially can be bought for very low prices, I don’t really know why new furniture is so expensive but the prices in the second hand spaces fall off a cliff.

Anyway, I saw a listing for an office chair that read “Recling office chair for sale, good condition”

The picture however was telling something else, it was a little discolored, the faux leather had cracks and wear marks everywhere. If I was the one selling it, I would have even offered it away for free or maybe priced it quite low. I would NEVER advertise it as “good” and charge half the price of a new office chair.

But it got me thinking, can this really pass as a “good” chair? it was not really branded or anything, definitely no one is buying it for a name… maybe the one selling it is just testing their luck?

I checked their other listings, some ancient macs listed for a price I bet no one will buy. One or two fai priced items (or are they? Its all relative)

I got to thinking why am I not like this? or close to this? confident of something’s worth. My worth.

People call me modest, say that I have been helpful but I never agree with them. I personally know that what I did for them is yes maybe useful but its not the best. I have near constant Imposter Syndrome. I don’t like to take undue credit, I try to always show my work as it is and not sugar coat it.

But everyday, every LinkedIn profile, every person’s mannerisms tell me that the world is just a little fake. Obviously fake everyone can make out… so it has to be tastefully fake.

Person X was part of a team that built one page on a website, on LinkedIn that becomes revamped entire website, reduced load times by 500ms and reduced JS bundle size by 90%

I might just believe it if its someone I don’t know but reading this on someone’s page I know well brings me back to the good quality chair situation again.

Everyone wants a good quality chair but nobody has the time to actually see if its good quality, maybe they tried in the past and got overwhelmed so now they just buy the chair that makes the most effort or is the most confident at portraying itself as a good quality chair.

I am personally not a good quality chair, I have a lot of quirks. I am not an expert at anything and with the pace of things today, will never be an expert at anything. I have used LLMs extensively in the past 2 years and have made some surprisingly functional stuff that people seem to find useful. Ofcourse they are not great, I didn’t have the skill to build them to begin with but they work and they work pretty well. I have had good luck maintaining amd upgrading them but still are a far cry aeay from real developers. I never overplay or sugar coat anything I have built and constantly remind people of its problems. I always mention that I used LLMs to build it.

So here I am trying hard to be a ok quality functional chair who is either seen by the people who know me as modest and talented and the people who don’t know me as not one to pay attention to because I don’t advertise myself as a good chair.

I do not want to be a good chair and I am not sure why this became a rant…