Rahmat Wibowo published a LinkedIn article accusing Salman Ma'arif Achsien and Rayhan Maheswara Pramanda — younger ITB STI 2021 cohort colleagues — of Dunning-Kruger arrogance and disrespect toward seniors, framing their pushback against him as incompetent overconfidence.

When confidence --- outpaces competence: the Dunning-Kruger problem among Gen Z , Study case of Salman Mal‘arif Achsien and Rayhan Maheswara Pramanda Rahmat Wibowo (+ Follow Engineer] IT Digital There is a quiet but growing tension in Indonesian professional and academic circles. And when seniors speak up, they are called the toxic ones. Junior professionals and students, armed with smartphones, Al tools, and the confidence of youth, are increasingly dismissing the experience and insight of their seniors. And when called out, they label the senior as the toxic one. This is not a generational attack. This is a professional accountability conversation we need to have. The case that made me write this | recently made a formal decision to publicly distance myself from a group of younger colleagues from the STI 2021 cohort at ITB, a group whose leader exhibited a textbook pattern of Dunning- Kruger behavior across multiple serious domains: mental health, legal discourse, and technology. What happened They were consistently rude to me, a senior by two years, dismissing my perspective without engagement. When | raised substantive points, they leaned on Al tools to counter me. The problem was not the tools. It was their lack of foundational knowledge to prompt them correctly or recognize hallucinations. The result was a confident presentation of inaccurate arguments. After | openly disclosed that | live with mental health challenges, they continued attacking me publicly ina WhatsApp group of over 500 members. When | named what they were doing, they called me toxic. Their leader, given the opportunity to de-escalate, chose pride over reconciliation for a community of over 150 people. They were radicalized by a lecturer who used me as a bad example across three chapters of a professional course, without any due process or right of reply. That is not youth. That is a failure of character. "His ego is so high that he is willing to sacrifice the entire batch of more than 150 people just to avoid saying sorry." What the Dunning-Kruger effect actually means First documented by psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999, this cognitive bias describes how people with limited knowledge in a domain significantly overestimate their own competence. The less someone knows, the more confident they feel, because they lack the very awareness needed to recognize the gaps in their understanding. We used to say "GK TAU SOK TAU GK MAU TAU." Does not know, acts like it knows, refuses to find out. This generation did not invent that pattern. But some of them are running it at scale. This is also a structural problem When educators normalize disrespect for seniors by turning them into cautionary tales without due process, they plant seeds of contempt. When institutions allow toxic group dynamics to flourish in closed messaging groups without accountability, they create environments where mob behavior is rewarded. Gen Z did not invent arrogance. But they are growing up in an environment that makes it very easy to perform expertise, dismiss dissent, and retreat into digital safety when confronted with someone who knows more. What professionalism actually requires Real competence is quiet. It listens before it speaks. It asks questions before it makes declarations. It holds space for the possibility that someone with more experience might have something valuable to offer, even if that person is difficult, imperfect, or going through something hard. “Professionalism also requires the courage to say: | was wrong. | escalated when | should have listened. | owe you an apology." That courage is not weakness. It is the foundation of everything else. A final word | do not write this to shame a generation. | write this because | have spent years building, fighting, contributing, and showing up, and | refuse to be gaslit into believing that speaking up about disrespect is itself the problem. If you are a junior professional reading this: your tools are powerful. Your confidence is an asset. But please, learn the difference between speed and depth. Between fluency and understanding. Between sounding right and being right. Your seniors are not your enemies. Some of them are exactly who you will need when the real challenges arrive. And if you are a senior who has experienced this: you are not alone. Document it. Name it clearly. And hold the standard, not out of ego, but because the standard matters. Respect is not optional in a professional community. It is the infrastructure everything else runs on. ange beens #Blacklist hashtag #STI2021 hashtag #ProfessionalBoundaries hashtag #RespectSeniors hashtag #MentalHealthAwareness hashtag #Accountability hashtag #DunningKruger hashtag #ProfessionalEthics hashtag #Leadership hashtag #NoTolerance