These are great posts.
Hi, my name is Foster and I'm an Imposter.
Back in the 1980's I worked for Burroughs the Computer Company. Behind me in my office was every Large Systems Manual from Algol through NEWP to Workflow Language. People would call and ask questions, I'd pull the book, flip through the pages, pull out the answer and pretty much read it back to them. An early version of "let me Google that for you".
But I often got sent to places because I was "the regional expert" because I had the manual and had read the manual (and yes, I remembered to take the manual with me!) So I was "An expert is a person from out of town with a brief case."
I've recruited lots of mentors with if you know "righty tighty - lefty loosey" and can button a shirt (*) we can teach you how to do robotics. Likewise for programing people "can you make Popcorn in the microwave without pressing the Popcorn button" we can teach them programming. (I try to avoid the eyeroll
phrase "I can teach a middle school roboteer how to build a robot, you'll be much easier" )
Lots of times in FRC design meetings I'd go "Well I'm just the web guy but I think ..." and lots of times it was a good idea.
One of the smartest and best software debugger I know is a philosophy major. She's used to sitting and thinking about problems from different sides. I have a friend who is one of the top Operations Managers, he's a history major. He's used to looking at trends over time and can stay ahead of what's going on since he's keenly aware of the past.
I love people that when you ask "Can you do X?" they go "No, but I can learn!" The three biggest things I took away from College was the ability to research new (to me) things, the ability to present ideas to other people and the skill to debate (**) those ideas.
So it's good to be on the edge, it keeps people learning and thinking.
(*) I used to say "tie a tie", but with men's ties falling out of favor they couldn't. But their wives could and so we taught them.
(**) Debate both sides, but each person gets to speak, nothing like the "yell over the other person" like we have today