I never have worked a job like that but I definitely think I came out of MIT with that attitude. Maybe mostly by luck and falling at so many things I tried, but I was convinced that basically the world is made up of people about as stupid as me, each of us in our own unique and special way. Liberating. Sophomore level philosophy but still, the world is made up of stupid people collectively doing our best to not blow it all up.

I definitely also use the "if I have this question at least ten other people do but are afraid to ask" logic lots of times, true or not. It's a lot easier to be unafraid of failure if you don't consider yourself good at it ^_^. Way easier to learn if you're willing to look like an idiot, the hard part is getting people you already know to change the context in which they interact with you. That is the main reason I switched labs between undergrad and grad school - not being the "undergrad helper" for the first three years of grad school. I bet moving over to Google did similarly for you.

Dude, so much wisdom in this comment. I’m saving it

Yeah, regarding perception, yeah, I have definitely noticed a jump in responsibilities every time I’ve switched teams, and a bigger jump each time I switched companies. But I hadn’t quite realized why that was happening until my previous manager mentioned out the perception bit when I was preparing to leave Google