Someone starts talking. Before they finish their first sentence, you've already decided they're wrong. You're not listening. You're waiting for them to stop making noise so you can explain why you're right.
You're not that smart. And everyone knows it except you.
That smug little smile when someone suggests an approach different from yours. That eye roll you think nobody notices. That condescending "Well, actually..." you can't stop yourself from saying.
You're not the smartest person in the room. You're the most annoying.
"I'm just confident in my expertise."
No. Confidence is being secure enough to consider you might be wrong. What you have is insecurity dressed up as arrogance. You dismiss others because deep down you're terrified of being proven wrong.
"But I've been doing this for years!"
So has the person you just interrupted. And maybe they learned something in those years that you didn't. Maybe the junior developer asking "stupid questions" just spotted the flaw in your architecture that will cost the company millions.
Experience isn't an excuse to stop listening. It's supposed to be a reason to listen better.
Here's what your smugness actually costs:
Your "high standards" aren't elevating the team. They're suffocating it.
A junior developer suggests using a new library. Before they finish explaining, you say:
"Yeah, I looked at that two years ago. It's not mature enough. We'll stick with what we have."
What you missed: The library has had 50 releases since then. It's now used by Netflix and Google. It solves exactly the problem your team has been struggling with for months. But you'll never know because you didn't let them finish a sentence.
A week later, a competitor ships a feature you can't match because they adopted that library. But sure, you were right two years ago. Congratulations.
Smug people don't grow. They can't. Growth requires admitting you don't know everything, and that's the one thing your ego won't allow.
In five years, you'll still be defending the same opinions while the world moves on. You'll blame everyone else for not understanding your genius. You'll never notice that the people who passed you by were the ones who knew how to listen.
The smartest people in any room? They're asking questions. They're genuinely curious. They assume others might know something they don't.
You're doing the opposite.
Next time someone speaks:
Being right all the time is impossible. Acting like you're right all the time is just being an asshole.
The world has enough know-it-alls. It needs people who know how to learn. That requires shutting up and opening your ears.
Just fucking listen.