Impostor syndrome is usually framed as a personal failing: a lack of confidence, a mindset problem, something you need to “work through.” But what if the problem isn’t you? You’re not inexperienced. You’re not lazy. You’re not bad at your job. I realized something else was going on: no one’s real experience matches the cloud-native story we tell in public. In the cloud-native world, operators and admins are surrounded by a constant narrative of effortless success: platforms that scale cleanly, teams that “just adopt Kubernetes,” architectures that assume infinite time, talent, and budget. Conference talks are polished. Case studies are sanitized. Failure is implied to be a ‘you’ problem. Yet privately, most practitioners are struggling. Technology is complex. Platforms and systems are brittle. Toolchains are overwhelming. Upgrades are painful projects. On-call is exhausting. And almost no one’s lived experience matches what the industry claims is normal. This talk argues that what we’re experiencing isn’t just impostor syndrome — it’s pluralistic ignorance amplified by burnout. Everyone is struggling to keep up, but no one admits it, because admitting it feels like failure. So we stay quiet. We internalize the gap. We blame ourselves. We work harder and harder, up to, and beyond our breaking point. At Cloud Native Rejekts, I want to say the quiet part out loud and break that silence together. This talk is for operators who keep real systems running, who are tired of pretending and who want honesty instead of hype. We’ll examine how hype amplifies self-doubt, why feeling “behind” is often a sign of realism, and how collective honesty—not more expertise—is the missing ingredient in the cloud-native ecosystem. If you’ve ever thought “everyone else seems to have this figured out” — this talk is for you.