 All right, it's 345 so that means I can get started so welcome everybody good afternoon Today we're discussing conquering a posture syndrome in the open-source community So if you're not here to see that then I'll see you later. Bye if you are sweet We're here watch it anyway. Yeah, you can also watch it on YouTube's later So anyway today, we're going to discuss imposter syndrome what it is how it may be affecting you and how you can overcome self-doubt to improve your career So a little bit about us. My name is Heather Rodriguez. I am an engineer aka a front-end web developer at civic actions. I Started my career in Drupal around 2009-ish I was actually a student at the University of Maryland majoring in English and decided hey, I don't want to starve so I took an internship started doing some HTML CSS got a job at the College of Arts and Humanities University, Maryland then worked my way into government contracting and here I am Civic actions I'm cat cool. I'm a director of technology at chief in DC like Heather. I majored in liberal arts I actually majored in US foreign policy in the Middle East and as you can see I am currently solving that crisis I guess as we speak as we speak so instead I ended up going into development, which is something that I've learned I was a little bit younger and clearly Ended up terminating it's my calling. So I've been doing Drupal since about 2009 and I've been in the Drupal community more actively since about 2012 I'm Sarah Dean-Frasher. I'm a team of front-end developer at AQUIA. I have a similar story I too majored in liberal arts and then I wanted to actually be able to pay off my student loans I had a short segue through doing a print design and then I actually wound up doing web dev So we all three are friends from the Washington DC meetup scene We all have worked at one point or another at Rock Creek, which is now chief and we've given this presentation several times now the first was in nice camp and Bad camp at 2015 and here we are at Drupal Con 2017 So in posture syndrome If you find yourself much like this adorable golden retriever thinking God I have no idea what I'm doing and any moment that the fraud police are gonna find me out You may be suffering from imposter syndrome imposter syndrome is defined as the inability to internalize one's successes and achievements despite evidence to the contrary So if you are constantly plagued with fears of self-doubt and inadequacies you may be suffering from imposter syndrome So imposter syndrome is not to be conflated with being an actual beginner Everybody when they're at the beginning of their career feels Inadequate and like they may not belong in a room full of experts. That's just called learning Being an imposter feeling like you are an imposter is when you have evidence to the contrary. There's maybe you Move it up the ranks. You've got multiple presentations promotions You know successes under your belt, but yet you still feel like you are junior And you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop Imposter syndrome is also not being a failure. So Just because you feel like you may be imposter news flash, you are not alone. It's not unusual for people who Have made their way up in their career to feel like they're imposters this Phenomenon it's not it's not a This phenomenon is first studied in the 1970s by a pair of researchers Pauline Clance and Suzanne Ives and they studied a group of successful women in various specialties that had PhDs that were respected professionals in their fields and yet they all felt like they had somehow lucked their way into their jobs and That they didn't quite belong So the read this is particularly pernicious when you belong to an already underrepresented group You know if you're for example a woman you are also being held back by the fact that Societally you don't quite belong in a group and so if you're help holding yourself back, it could be doubly damaging to your life so How can imposter syndrome affect you? for People who suffer from imposter syndrome? Frequently they can burn themselves out because they're constantly working long hours and overcompensating for their fears and so which leads to higher stress and burnout from either their job or the community and Yeah, burning out gotcha Also, you may choose to self-select out of pursuing advanced job opportunities and higher salaries and so you really Maybe limiting your overall wages in your life and access to leadership roles when in reality you can do the job Just fine which this is bad for both a personal and professional level because You are basically excluding yourself from leadership positions in your job in the community So like I mentioned the community could lose your voice you belong in this community Every one of you right here is a member of the community whether you feel like it or not and at this con in particular I think we're talking a lot about diversity and inclusivity and so If you share your knowledge and experience you're really contributing a valuable talent and resource to open source community So good news imposter syndrome is just a trap Once you realize it just like this little cat you're going to be able to get out of the box Yeah, no no cats. Hopefully we're harmed in making this photo So one of the first things that really helps you to learn to cope with this feeling is Realizing that it's not just you feel like this This isn't some sort of psychological thing that you picked up a lot of people feel this way from a lot of different walks of life One of the reasons is because you're holding yourself up against Ridiculous standards that basically nobody actually needs and if you continue to Hold yourself against this this sort of standard that isn't really a meetable You're never gonna you're never gonna meet it and you're always gonna feel like you're falling short you need to forgive yourself for having these type of feelings and Start giving yourself tools to cope with them when they do pop up in work or community situations One of the things that you might do to avoid being in a situation that triggers these type of feelings is the overly Professionistic you might spend extra time looking over your code segment like before you put it up as a poor quest or a patch You might just be putting in tons and tons of extra hours at work like seven or eight Weeks regularly just to sort of prove yourself to maybe even just yourself Nobody is like asking you to do this kind of thing and yet you continuously do this to try to fight this killing bag and the reason the main reason to Forgive yourself for this and stuff that if you are actually out here building real websites trying to solve problems for people You're gonna make tons of mistakes. It just means that you're out there doing your job living your life I'm learning things and This quote here For me a gay man is actually really interesting. There's a link here where he was actually giving a commencement address If you haven't heard of him Yeah, he's a World best-selling author. He's had a lot of his novels and short stories made into novels TV shows movies and Him and a lot of other people in in like that sort of tier like you think you know people love your work You're always talking He's talking about here It's like personal feeling was that despite this long list of acclaim and industry awards and just people coming up Tell me how much they love him. He still feels like Any day now people are gonna come knock on his door and tell him that he's got to give it up Because he's not a real author It's amazing like how many different types of people in backgrounds and different walks of life have these same types of feelings the One of the interesting things about imposter syndrome in the software community is there's kind of a Interesting high standard There's a thing called the myth of the genius programmer where if you if you picture sort of like who you think of as like a real hacker It may be, you know, kind of this like Mark Zuckerberg type of 20-something young white male, you know sailed through Cal three like hacks through the weekend Started like two or three companies And you know runs around like black hoodies and sneakers all the time like Silicon Valley and so if you're if you're you know comparing yourself against this sort of like Legendary type of person like you may actually meet some of those type of criteria personally like it's not like nobody does any of these things but so many of us do not fit these boxes and You know every every industry kind of has something similar to this it's not always programming but You shouldn't be holding yourself up against that standard and you shouldn't think that all these people around you are actually that when in reality You know, we're all human So my first ever community that I mentioned I've been doing Drupal since 2009 the first time I actually went to an event is in 2012 I was Marilyn camp in Baltimore. So down the road that way probably And I at the time was just a really technical project manager I wasn't technically a developer, but I had built sites in Drupal And so I showed up and I was expecting that because I was a project manager and not a developer I was going to spend the entire time meeting these people who were crazy good at it And that I was going to be immediately shamed and I don't throw it out probably So I was really helpful for me was this event that they did to kick off the camp we got us all in an auditorium and Had us raise our hands and then leave them up for the things that we had done with Drupal so far So I think the first one was log into Drupal and edit content. Okay. I've done that Building a content type building a view building views with arguments Which was like the retro contextual filters for Drupal 6 is a while ago And then doing theming and then finally doing module development So I didn't put my hand down until pretty much the end of the sorting sorting hat activity So I ended up kind of getting sorted into the advanced track and learning that even though I'd come there prepared to really have no idea What I was talking about and just be learning from the people around me Not only was I doing fine There were people who could actually learn from me and it went a long way toward breaking down this idea that You know, I was not deserving to be in that community of developers and ultimately led to me going a developer route in my career So I would definitely advise getting out and talking to people especially if you do have that ascurity So presumably you are talking to people in the community But it's really valuable to share notes of them and talk about what you know what they know and where you can help each other So another moment for me that was really Illuminating was at a boff in Austin Drupal con 2014 I believe so there was a boff with all of the major me theme maintainers at the time So I had currently just been in the gospel of John Alvin route You know, I thought like everything, you know that he had said was gold and then all of a sudden There's all these other theme maintainers and they can't agree on what are the best practices are and you know And I'm like, oh man if these experts can't figure out what we should be doing it can't agree on it Like what what makes me think I can't and so just by demystifying the experts I think it helps to realize like that you're not doing as poorly as you thought So the main takeaway here is it's not really fair to compare yourself against people who you know May or may not be way ahead of you or people who are coming along behind and just learning the best person to compare yourself Against any given time is past you you a year ago And how you've come along and how you're doing now So the quote on the screen is from south the previous quote is from South by panel where people were talking about the experience of Especially being a minority in Their universities and like feeling this intense pressure to be the best person in the room I am realizing that comparing themselves to where they were a year ago was gonna have way way more fruit I highly recommend taking a look at this article, but then as we start tearing down your unrealistic standards It's not enough to say I'm not gonna compare myself to anything You have to find some way to measure what you're doing and how you're progressing in your career So if you do feel like a frog regularly if you feel like you're making mistakes all the time which All are unfortunately Then it's really important to start logging the accomplishments that you have rather than focusing on the mistakes that you're making The more that you shy away from opportunity because you're afraid that you're going to end up failing at it The less opportunity you have to genuinely rack up those accomplishments This is important in particular for people who are imposters because it's one of the major books I strongly recommend coming late it out the inability to recognize and internalize The accomplishments that you're having is the very heart of imposter syndrome This is the point the fact that no matter what you rack up you still look back on it and say well That didn't really matter or you know, they would have said that to anyone or that award was fake. So Buzzfeed has like the my favorite series of charts There are like 13 of these and you should all go look at them Oh Especially if you have imposter syndrome you start telling yourself when you get this positive feedback where these compliments Whether saying anything nice to you is either like they can see you're struggling and they're just trying to be like Oh, you're doing super well to encourage you but not really mean it or that they are your mom and dad And they have no idea what you do for a living my Yes, it's real It's really hard when you are taking away the credibility of the people who are giving you this positive feedback Because it keeps you in that box with that sad adorable cat You can start getting over that by keeping more conscious track of the recognition that you receive Many many moons ago when I was a web producer kind of starting out in the field I had a mentor Rich Panzer and he told me that I needed to start keeping track of the emails I got from clients who were saying you're doing a great job of contract or Bosses saying that I was doing well or co-workers being like, thank you. You just made my week So my basic reaction to that was My reaction is really skeptical because I felt like for one thing it was really touchy-feely For another thing I felt like it kind of be a jerk thing to do to get positive feedback and then immediately file it in a folder And thirdly I felt like I get emails like that all the time We don't mean anything which is a really great example of being an imposter So I ended up doing it anyway because he wasn't giving me feedback on how to like become a more actualized person Which would have also been fine. He was giving me feedback on how to move up at my job. So I ultimately did keep this folder I did use it to make an argument to move up from project coordinator to project manager And it ended up being helpful for me professionally But I think more important for me was the psychological benefit of being able to look and say look I am doing well at what I'm doing This is not like, you know, imagine or fictional advancements. That's good for the day-to-day stuff But there are also some bigger occasions that are are also hard to kind of internalize so If you get an award and your immediate reaction is that award is really easy to win or that award is for participation It becomes really hard to internalize the fact that she wanted it all. I've had this reaction I got nominated and then won an award and my actual reaction at the time was Well, I bet they gave this to everybody. So this resonated with me a lot rather than focusing on the fact that I've been nominated by people who Worked with me. I was thinking that the contest was like great So if you do talk yourself down like that, there are other things you can do to internalize that achievement So that immediate reaction of if I'm keeping track of stuff that people are saying about me that's good Or I'm getting compliments or awards, but that makes me a jerk A lot of people have been socialized into this feeling like it's better to be humble You don't want to come across as that or nobody likes somebody who likes to talk about themselves But like honestly, there's nothing wrong with feeling like you did like a good job Especially if you did, you know, you're working hard at your job on your project or whatever you did And it's great that people want to come and tell you that you did a good job And people will feel good about telling you that too. So like why blow them off? the slide here these are Hogan's Donut blog and she's the director of engineering at Etsy and she's also written a few books one of them is a really good book and the thing she does here is whenever she has an accomplishment in her career such as speaking at a conference Getting a book deal getting a book published getting a raise. She actually That's a really great thing to try because it is actually Uncomfortable to be grateful to other people for acknowledging you or even just admitting to yourself that you did something cool And if you do feel like that there are the big awards There's the day-to-day accomplishments one of the hardest things for people to do Gracefully, I think they feel like frauds. You just accept the verbal feedback they get in person. Gracefully If you have ever had your manager come to you and say any and say hey great job Or I really appreciated your work here or thanks for turning it around so quickly And you probably recognize one of these responses at least these are really common ways to react to recognition I feel like you don't deserve it. It's no big deal or you know Sarah did most of the work Even if your work was really critical in that I see project managers do this a lot Well, that's where they'll say oh well the team really you know the teams of all the work You're like you managed the project Take the phrase My personal favorite is I just googled it because I swear if I had a dollar for every time I heard this I would no longer have a need to work We are all developers. We're all just googling it It's really important to be able to retrain yourself to say thank you gracefully for a couple reasons One is that if you constantly have that flow of negative downtown going It's gonna get harder for you to internalize it And then it's gonna get harder for you when you're in an interview to say Not to say well, that was no big deal That didn't really matter and try to shrug things off and not fall attention to your accomplishments in the interview Which can really hurt you professionally and the second reason is that as a manager if I go to give someone feedback Regularly and I tell them how you're doing great and loving your work, and they keep refined to me by saying Yeah, not really Either I have to conclude that they are totally disconnected from reality or that they actually did just Google it and their work wasn't valuable Do not put your manager in that position Invest in learning how to say thank you and it'll help you by retraining your brain And it'll also help your career in other important ways so We've touched on this before but another really important aspect for all three of us in getting over or rather managing Let's let's set the bar low in posture syndrome is getting active in the Drupal community so whether that's been speaking at conferences or camps or contributing documentation patches I Helped to organize bad camp now. I created a Drupal users group at the University of Maryland But either whatever whatever route you take to contribute it's really helped us feel a sense of That we were valued Among our peers and also the more concrete evidence that you start accruing Whether it's you know speaking at the cons or contributing code or whatnot You really can help reaffirm your sense of accomplishment so that you don't fall back on a subjective value, but rather concrete achievements so I Mentioned that I built my own support network at the University of Maryland and that was really critical because we would meet monthly And we would sort of have this place outside of our jobs in which we could talk about you know The challenges that we were facing and provide support for one another and just you know Give each other demos and maybe like catch on to cool things that other people were doing And I think it's really important to have an outlet that is Professional outside of your job because you need to be able if you're an apostle You have all these deep-seated fears and you need to have a place to express those without any judgment or you know retribution possibly from people who could influence your career so So that was important for that aspect and also just being perceived as a leader in my local community It was really It helped me actually own my shit and learn like I had to actually Start learning about the things that people were coming to me and asking me questions about But then I had to a certain at some point acknowledge that I knew what I was talking about because people kept coming to me and asking me questions another important aspect is Finding somebody that you can teach and you're probably sitting here and saying I don't have anything that I can teach And I would tell you that you're absolutely wrong My the first person that mentored me when I told her years later that I considered her a mentor She kind of laughs. She was like, I don't know what you're talking about but when I started out my career and I was like using this adobe dream weaver crap and I was like You know, I don't know how to make you know, CSS work and she You know a lot of people were kind of impatient with me and there you know She Megan Wang in the College of Arts and Humanities She dedicated so much time just to sit down and help explain things and help me like, you know tame these HTML websites and It was through her guidance and her mentorship that eventually I started the Drupal users group I was able to gain enough confidence that it helped propel me throughout my career And I would not be here today if it wasn't for my mentor Similar story about like showing up Having somebody welcome them and at least being a friendly face and showing them the ropes and that can truly be you and It's also very likely that you have genuine expertise that you can contribute to people as well as being that friendly face and that helpful person for them It's really common to hear people say that they can't help others that you know, but wait I mean I get what you're saying, but you you're trying to talk to like skilled people. You're not trying to talk to me and There's a really interesting anecdote about the finance world actually that has been very applicable to this We found the story of a finance group in private equity adventure capital really Where they're putting together a mentor mentee Program for women and the women going around organizing it kept talking to different women and saying hey Can you participate? You know, we need some mentors. We need some mentees come and be part of this She kept getting the answer every single time wait like I would love to participate as a mentee But I don't have anything to offer anyone and finally she started telling women like look everyone is telling me this including the high-level managing director of Venture capital firms like I You guys have things to offer each other and you're just not seeing it So it's really interesting that even when you do get to the top Even when you reach a point where you genuinely can share that expertise with others You still feel like you don't you don't deserve to be where you are I In 2012 at the Drupal 13-14 God 2014 in Drupal con. I had just been promoted to director of technology at chiefs And I was about to give a presentation And I was so terrified that I would get up there and talk about technology and have someone realize that I Straight up did not deserve to be where I was that I fought my presenters to take my actual title off the slide And fortunately lost that argument and in the years since then I have tripled the size of our technology team I've won like multi-million dollar contracts, and I clearly deserve to be where I was but I was completely Incapable of internalizing that at the time So there are tons of stories from women and from them like this around the community Where people don't realize how much they can offer people around them You can do that by just sharing your time and your experience with people who are struggling By just making the space for them to come to you and talk to you about what they need you can do that by reviewing code and presentations whether that's front-end code or back-end code or contributing and Sprints, and you can also log about what you know sometimes just writing down a problem You're having putting it on the internet So the next person having that problem winds up with your blog post to be a phenomenally helpful thing to contribute to other people who are struggling and then getting all the comments saying like You just made my life. It's definitely gonna help you with that feeling on your own as well You can also speak and this is probably one of the hardest ways to share your information and expertise with the room It's it's really hard to get in front of people and talk About things that you can contribute because you were always picturing someone in the back of the room saying look what makes you What makes you worthy to talk to this topic about to me you guys can get up and say that later So I got this advice from web chick The triple core maintainers at a triple con To speak and I like looked over my shoulder to figure out who she was talking to and wound up speaking and finding out that I really enjoyed it and discovering in the process that it's not really about being the foremost expert on every possible topic It's more about picking something and giving your own spin on it Spoiler alert you find your it's been on a topic So actually I think it's important to note that so I've talked to multiple people and been like oh We should really speak and they always say yeah But I'm not the expert and as somebody who has listened to multiple experts speak I can tell you that sometimes they are the most boring presenters ever And really it's not always about being though, you know the person that wrote the Like wrote the software or whatnot It's about being able to take a complex topic and break it down into smaller pieces that other people can understand So for example, I gave a presentation in 2014 at bad camp kick-ass with ass I think we also gave it a gov con as well And I had gotten the feedback from several people that it was the best presentation that they had seen on sass that they finally understood Certain aspects of sass that they just weren't getting and I know like I've had that experience also with talking to Sarah One day I was having a really hard time Understanding interactive rebasing and other complicated get workflows and I talked to Sarah for 15 minutes And she was able to break something down that you know I'd read from multiple blogs and talk to multiple people, but it's just about how you can reach an individual person Sometimes that like exact not knowing the thing in and out is exactly what people need from you when you're giving a talk You're coming in there with like a fresh slate. You don't know all the ins and outs You don't realize that that thing you've been staring at constantly for months is a little bit confusing So that can be a really good angle to come in and speak on something from I Have actually personally done this the first time that I gave a talk for anything was back in like 2012 ish and I wanted to use like the Omega theme on a few projects But I've never used it on anything before and in order to get familiar enough with it to suggest it whether it would have been a Good fit. I actually started researching it on my own like a little site and like taking screenshots and notes of different things I had to do to get things to happen And it's not like I came in here and was like, you know, hey Listen to me talk. It was really just you know, here's my experiences with this thing And you know, this was kind of tricky, but this is me look at this, you know And I took all these slides that I had worked on and I went to Maryland camp and I was horrified that somebody was gonna ask me some crazy-ass theming question and I was gonna be like you don't know what you're talking about and I gave the talk and I actually got a lot of like interesting questions I had conversations with people who came up afterwards and it was a big relief and It's it's really not a bad reason to be giving a talk You can really engage people in this stuff and speaking as someone who was in the audience when Sarah gave that talk I had no idea it was her first time speaking. She was really prepared She knew her topic inside and out and she put a lot of thought into her slide So I just showed up excited to learn from her a lot of times the judgments that she project on people in the audience are just not anchored in the way that people actually perceive your presentation So as long as you're prepared people can end up really connecting with it And so finally we're going to talk a little bit about how The you need to take responsibility for the trajectory of your career because in reality nobody else will So There are kind of two traditional ways to respond to feeling like a fraud Even you're either burning yourself out to predict prove that you belong in the community and at your job Or you can be passive about pursuing advanced opportunities And they're kind of two sides of the same coin But this holds you back whether you want to find a new job or to move up at your current place of employment So the first thing that you should do When you realize hey like i'm suffering from a posture syndrome And I want to make a move whether it's moving off at my company or Finding another company is you really need to start doing your research And so the first thing that I suggest is to seek out supportive work cultures that would promote A healthy work-life balance for example if you know that you're somebody who's just prone to overworking yourself find a place that values Giving you a vacation that's not going to push you And you know to work extraordinary hours You know a place that promotes equal pay because you know that you're not particularly good at advocating for yourself Or negotiating and you know and also really important. Is there a diversity or is there a mono culture? and so In addition to that type of research often it can be very difficult to establish Reasonable salary expectations when you're fighting that internal urge to hold yourself back and think i'm not worth this So taking the emotional aspects out and just talking to people about you know What are reasonable salaries from where i'm at and looking on glass door looking at any other research that's available Will help you get a number that you um That you feel that you can confidently ask for rather than you know just something that you feel like you're worth And another thing is you would want to look at your network and find some referrals like see what other companies are doing And where you might be a good fit The last point I would make about doing research is that when you're doing your research Don't just do research for the job that you want next but think about the job that you want after that So that you're constantly looking to move forward in your career trajectory If you do want to move up at the company that you're currently at you have a couple you have a lot to think about One thing is where you want to be Immediately and what kind of expertise you have and the other is whether or not your company has room for that You should be able when you Realize that there's somewhere you want to go to talk to your boss and say look I know i'm currently doing a front-end development job. I'm interested in going in a senior developer job Or you know ux. I want to move up senior ux and have them respond to you not necessarily with cool Here here is that job enjoy, but certainly with we want you to have this much experience We want you to have taken on these kinds of projects. This is going to give you the opportunity to go in that direction Or to tell you we're not going to be hiring them for that for a while and you know genuinely engage with you on that Uh, most of the time you may be sitting there thinking that if your boss doesn't approach you And hold out that opportunity and just be like Heather. Would you like to do this? You may think that you don't have the room to do that And the simple reality is that usually the people who are vocal about this the people who express their Interest in taking on that responsibility are the people that managers turn to when they need more responsibility taken on It's of course also very possible that when you start having that conversation Your boss will look at you and go And if that happens then you may need to think about very seriously about whether that's a job As you can continue to have upward momentum at Now if you wind up in this situation It doesn't necessarily mean that you were at a bad company or even a bad job Sometimes this is just like an interpersonal thing or a stage of life kind of thing Where the the situation is just not right for who you are what you want You know, maybe you would really like to work somewhere that like enables you to contribute code back to your projects Or you need to be on the other coast for you know mental health reasons and everybody has to work in this office in dc Or you know, there's there's a plethora of reasons why a situation may not be a good fit And if you feel like The role that you're in or the place that you're in isn't working out for you The way to get through this isn't to throw yourself into the job and work extra hours and just sort of hope that You're going to get a raise or a job that's going to fall on your lap And the longer that Get into that sort of situation it kind of cycles your your resume can get stale your portfolio may start to get stale And it gets harder and harder to make like it moves that can benefit you you kind of get stuck And um, you need to forgive yourself for that and actually reach out to the people that you've been networking with In some situations, um, when you're really like them and talking yourself, this is the only way that Things can move forward positively You if you have a posture syndrome, it's very difficult for you to You know self-evaluate and say like that would be a good fit for me And people that you know Are going to tell you no no look we have all these positions that you would be great for come on apply to them and like Literally, I would not be at aquia if it was on my own initiative because There were like a few job situations. I was in don't assume i'm talking about you But there was only a few job situations I was in where I was like, you know, this isn't really working for me for xyz reasons But I was always like, you know, I'm not really aquia material You know, uh, so I wouldn't have ever like sent out my resume on my own But people who I had worked with at previous jobs or on previous projects were like, you know, hey, we're looking Why don't you try this out? um, and you know go for it Yeah, uh once you do decide that you want to move on it's important to uh be Realistic about the kind of jobs you can do but not be realistic in a negative way There's a really interesting fuel it Packard internal report on hiring and how men and women approach this process differently I found that women wouldn't apply for a job unless they met 100 percent of the qualifications whereas men were likely to apply I think that is you a 60 percent so, uh the author one of the authors who wrote for the Harvard business review found this and said like wait Like I'm a woman and it's not that I don't think I can do the job It's just that I think that if I apply I'm going to waste my time because no one's going to take a second look at me And they theorize the reason this quote made the round like wildfire on the internet Is that it was a wake-up call that not everyone is playing the game that way and the more that you know that other people are not Other people are not self-selecting out of opportunities. The more freedom it gives you to do that So in my role as director, I make the hiring decisions for a technology team and can tell you that Well, we do think really seriously about the job descriptions. We put together If someone comes and says like look, I don't know how to do that one thing But I know how to do these other things you haven't listed. That is something we still consider It's also worth keeping in mind that plenty of places do not You know, especially large firms they might have job descriptions written by people in hr Not written by people who are actually doing the work So don't let job descriptions scare you off from it think really seriously about what you want And then go in really prepare to talk in your interviews about what you know Not what you don't know and to consciously redirect the conversation in that way It's really hard if you feel like an imposter. It is really hard to When you get that question you're dreading, uh, you know, if you know this technology Not to just kind of crumble and be like no, I don't know it, but I'd really love to learn And then sort of let it sizzle out and it's much much more compelling if you can say No, I don't know that but let me tell you about a time when I learned a new technology and the benefit That it brought to my team. This is why I feel confident that I could pick it up here and contribute to the team The more that you go in thinking about why you are a great hire The more you're able to tell that story. So you have this list of your day-to-day recognition If you have this list of your bigger whims if you've been consciously focusing on not down talking yourself in that way You're more capable of walking in and having the conversation about the person you are and where you contribute Rather than this person in your head who is like Just looking into every single opportunity they have and you only have these success Success because they charm their way Into them. It's easy to feel that way and it's hard to get your way out But if you focus consciously on retraining yourself in that way You can eventually be able to kind of shut down a lot of your imposter syndrome feelings Okay, everybody together What do we say to the imposter syndrome? Not today So thank you guys very much for the attention We are really happy to take questions And if you do feel like an imposter who's like still kind of finding a feat in the community Highly recommend the friday sprints. These are the times which will leave up here and please also feel free to give us feedback And connect with us on the twitters on the twitters. Thank you guys So there's a microphone there, but it's also a really small room. So I feel like you just raise your hand and just yell I will we will repeat it in here. I think over here was first So, thank you for the talk When you have people on your team that clearly suffer from, you know, this Issue in a way or not, they just don't suffer from it, but display like examples of it How do you usually approach that person and do you ever have On second pass that question. Do you ever have that issue for like upwards to a manager? So two part question The first part is if you have people on your team who are just playing imposter syndrome tendencies How do you deal with it? And second, do you ever feel that way with your managers? Yeah, I would say I would well first thing I would ask you is like What is your relationship to that person on the team because I think that that would You know influence the dynamic and I would say if you're talking about a co-worker, that's kind of you know In a lateral to you Um, I would you know, tell them that you're receptive to talking about it And instead when you catch them doing the negative like I just did this I just did that, you know, stop them and say Uh Say thank you, you know, it's okay to point out. I think Um, you know and let but let that person know that you're a safe person to talk to I'd also add I so personally because I know that I felt like this way this way a lot in my career I'm very likely to talk to people when they say I couldn't do that I can't do it on that project and say hold on actually, you know, you can you've done it on these projects And this is a great growth opportunity for you and kind of try to help them see that they can grow Rather than like I try not to yell at them for negative self-talk and instead focus them on what they have contributed That has been really positive I also think it's so internal that like there may be some people who have sort of like obvious like Low confidence in their interactions But a lot of times you might not realize that you're dealing with people that have these feelings because they really do just keep it inside And it makes you just Feel bad, but your interactions with other people are still strong and nobody would ever call you on this And in terms of uh upward, I would say mostly, uh, just consciously stopping the negative self-talk as much as you can If you're dealing with your own manager, don't say I have no idea what I'm talking about It's a poor move generally And one that I have made a few times in my career So, uh, I think it's really just focusing on your narrative and how What where you're growing and then also not being afraid to say look Where would it be helpful for you to have me grow my skills more in the future? It's a confident question and bosses react well to it It really is making it about what the business needs not about your own insecurities So it tends to work out pretty well Thanks for the talk. This is really cool to have this. I've been doing a lot of technical stuff. So having something more You know social is really helpful. Uh, I definitely suffer from imposter syndrome and uh, one thing I've been learning. This is my first Drupal con Obviously community Welcome, uh, obviously, uh After the the keynote today, I was learning that you know, one of the biggest parts of Drupal is just this community It's like not just a software framework. It's like all the people that are using it and making it Um, and one of the parts of that is obviously obviously contributing to it like with code Um, as you can probably guess someone with imposter syndrome has a hard time Even knowing where to start with that and uh, you know, obviously there's a lot of people coding and I want to I want to possibly help but It's really hard getting over that hump of like You know, how can I just like oh, you know, you should take this code because obviously I know what I'm doing And you should make it part of your big software package that's been around for 17 years that I just started using a year ago Um, you know, is it more about asking for The forgiveness of oops. I didn't do good code. I'll fix it or Asking for permission and waiting and getting good before you start or just you know fail early fail often So can I repeat the question before? Yeah, go ahead and repeat the question. That's a really long question So for the recording the short version of that It was a really great question in long form. Sorry you guys couldn't hear it Is that basically when you are wanting to contribute to Drupal and be part of the community? If you're showing up to those events and then feeling like you're you don't have the expertise to contribute How do you get over that and how do you not feel like you are? Giving bad code to a 17 year project Um, I guarantee you people have contributed bad code before But We do have like it was on the board. There's there's uh, two two events up here One is the first time The second one is the mentored core sprint and I think the really important thing about sprinting Is the whole point is do not be afraid to ask for help Do not feel that asking for help makes you less of a coder like that is exactly what open source is about Nobody knows it all nobody knows every little subsystem of Drupal and I guarantee you that the sprints are not going to be judgy About what you're putting up and it's all about talking to other people collaborating sharing And getting stuff fixed and no single patch is the product of any one person There are tons of people who help put code up there who helped test who helped write documentation Which is also a very important contribution And yeah, I'd also add that you're gonna make you're gonna make mistakes You're gonna get some patches rejected. It's gonna suck when you do But then you'll like in the process of doing that you're going to learn more about the product and feel more More able to contribute to it. There's always a point when you are A beginner with something that is brand new that doesn't mean that you don't have the aptitude to learn quickly and move forward So giving yourself permission to make mistakes is going to lead to you Ultimately being a stronger Drupal developer and a stronger contributor So I'd advise you to go with anyway It's also not like you're not usually coming up and like writing a module from scratch You're usually helping with a defined issue And people are really good about kind of monitoring the issues that go into those fronts. So I hope that that Answered your question I'd also like to comment as a module maintainer. We're really restricted in the time that we have to do stuff So we're generally really thankful for people to offer their solutions Even if they're imperfect because They might be a problem that we might not be able to get to anyways Um, so a lot of module maintainers are just very thankful of any help and would rather help you solve the solution yourself Even if it takes a little bit longer to kind of fill in those gaps So That is a given and I do have a couple of questions. Uh, one Dunning-Kruger effect is this related Yes And number two, um, I was one of the the first people here and it was interesting because I'd say like 80 of the people here are males but like First people that showed up 90 females and you guys kind of touched on the female perspective of that and Maybe you want to address that just In my designated role as questionary capper The two parts of that are one, uh, the Dunning-Kruger effect How much influence does that have and number two, uh, for men who are in the community It's of course possible for men to have imposter syndrome as well But it is like it often feels like a female problem. How do we kind of respond to that? So, okay, we'll start with Dunning-Kruger. Dunning-Kruger is the inverse of imposter syndrome Dunning-Kruger is when you think that you know everything but in reality you know nothing So, uh, people with Dunning-Kruger often overinflate their accomplishments and achievements and you know them. They're called assholes Also, it's it's hard to tell if people are doing that because they really don't know that they don't know Or they feel like they have to in order to look like a businessman, you know, or Yeah, no, seriously. I've definitely had yeah um, and The I think the the gist of it is the same problem in reverse You just don't have a realistic assessment of yourself and what you can do So I think that could be equally damaging. Um, but I don't have any specific solutions for coping with it I think my advice to that would be kind of similar to the advice for imposter syndrome. I think that Uh, you know getting out in community and meeting people is important But I do think that more people the Dunning-Kruger effect I think more people are afraid when they do feel like imposters They're afraid of inflating their accomplishments because they're afraid that it'll be perceived as Dunning-Kruger And that is really damaging. So talking to people getting like an outside kind of yardstick to measure yourself against Becomes really critical, uh, regardless of which of these things you Think you may have All right, so the second question about women, uh suffering from imposter syndrome and whether it is a quote-unquote woman problem is Well, the short answer is no, it is not a woman's problem. It is an everybody problem But if you are holding yourself back and then society in general is also looking at you as a woman and going You know, I've had an experience plenty of experiences where it's like, uh, oh, so you're a content strategist You're a you know, business dev person or you're a this or that rather than a web developer If you already feel like a fraud and somebody looks at you and points to you and like you're a fraud Then it's going to be like doubly damaging basically. I knew everybody knew I wasn't a developer Yeah, it's kind of a double whammy I think socially there and and that's like the main Right, so it's important. I think to Understand like that it does affect everybody but that women may be hit harder I think in general anytime it's someone who feels underrepresented in the community. It can feel harder I think that also is usually not helpful advice for like It can it can be helpful to feel like you need to internalize that as a man because you're like am I an imposter? Am I imposter syndrome? Like god damn So I think what you know, whatever position you're in It's important to be like to be kind to yourself and to focus on your accomplishments and to find other people who feel that way And frankly, I think that for women it can be really helpful to hear that men feel that way too to to feel like it's a little bit Makes everyone feel more sane, but people do discuss it more as a woman problem I was going to say that there's also added That women receive like messages from the time that we're young That I think makes it even harder because we're always kind of taught to be nice and be humble share credit Whereas sort of a stereotypical like American male thing is to go out there and don't show any weaknesses So there's that's that's sort of like to you know, sort of flip sides of our socialization that get in the way of Being a whole person so a lot of the advice that you've given is about Either turning to a mentor or turning to connections in the community or an external yard stick or something like that um And I don't know or or a list of accomplishments good feedback you're getting and maybe I'm betraying my own imposter syndrome here But what if you feel completely lost with that advice? Like you feel like you don't have connections to turn to you feel like you're not getting good feedback Maybe you are maybe you're just so deep in your own imposter syndrome that all this advice sounds really great But you're like, but where do I find these things that you're talking about? Where do I find the connections that I feel like I can't make? Where do I find the mentorship that doesn't feel like it's just happening for me? Do you want to recap the question? If you do feel like an imposter and you feel like a lot of these are looking for validation from external sources it's really hard to um If you like you don't have those external sources to validate you What do you do next? How do you either get them or how do you find a way to kind of To disconnect to not need them. Am I summarizing your question well? That's close. Okay More how do you get those people like mentorship or community feedback or a network that can help you if you don't feel like you happen already? I talk a lot. So I will happily talk. I can give you an introvert answer The thing that's helped me the most honestly is reading books There there are a lot of good books out there about this and you know blog posts like this is a really common feeling and Um talking about it as the best step, but I think reading about it is pretty good And I do think if you don't have this network now you can have this network And it may take some time to build it up. You may be going to events Over and over again and just seeing people and maybe not making such deep connections But it's worth going out there and trying to build this up And you know if you don't have like a local meetup group already or it's like a A drive you may actually be able to be that meetup group. But Heather was talking about at umd She actually just started You know putting up, you know, hey, we're going to be here this location talking about this stuff and people will show up Um, you know, if you don't live on an island with a volleyball The volleyball to validate you There are there are some limitations to some of these fixes I'd also add that um Really good source of that kind of feedback can actually be especially you don't feel comfortable talking about it Where you're currently working people who have previously worked with you can be a excellent source for that kind of thing Going to someone and saying look, what did you value about working with me? Where did you feel like I did a good job? Uh, you know, what if if you were in my position, what would you do next? I think it's easy to underrate how much positive impact that has On you, especially if you're struggling like it can it's It's important to hear from someone who knows you that you have done good work And I think that there are many people who um Are happy to give that feedback once they're asked But that said it is it can feel really isolating and it's hard to not have Not feel like you have that mentor to go to at the moment, but through more involvement through attending local meet-ups I think you can find them if you Make yourself open to it and also I would say that you don't need necessarily a physical meet-up Uh, there's a Drupal slack and like there's IRC and such But like there's actually a supportive group of people and I'm going to shout out to the Drupal diversity and inclusivity initiative Like if you get in that slack channel like these people will make you feel like a rock star Like seriously there are there are people will have your back in the community You just you know, I know it's it's it's kind of tough when you feel like you're the newcomer Yeah I know this Overcomes it. Yeah So, uh, the question is about uh, if you do feel like a leech if you feel like you're taking people's expertise And you're not giving them back anything in return. How do you deal with it? I think we're all lunging for the mic right now But I got here first Tricked my way here So one thing I would say is there is legitimately nothing more awarding in my entire career than helping people who need it Like legitimately as a as a manager as a member of the community There is nothing better than talking to someone about where they want to advance and helping that happen So I think that while you might not be giving something back literally is and you're teaching them something which can also happen By the way, I think that There's a there's real benefit in that relationship to Getting to help someone else kind of explore their skills through mentorship I wouldn't think of that as a one-way relationship because it is two way and two fundamentally different ways Yeah, and piggybacking off of what cat is saying basically if you're allowing somebody to mentor you like keep in mind That your mentor may also be feeling some imposter syndrome So when you give them positive feedback about like, oh, hey, you just like helped me do this And I just got a new job or I did this like that's you're going to help like reaffirm their own Sense of like value and then they're gonna feel better about themselves too. So like me Me showing up at sarah's omega talk and being like hello, I learned so much from you Was not just beneficial for me to then get to pick her brain about omega more It was also beneficial for her to realize she'd gone out on a limb and it had been a good thing I'm gonna be corny and say you don't really know something until you can explain it to someone else Yeah, and oh, yeah women women who code is is one good resource and there's there's groups like that Virtually and physically all over the country For various technologies or just generally for different groups of people And with that, I think we might be getting kicked out of this room in a minute I don't know if there's another session in here after us. Uh one more question and then we'll call it but Think he beat you What he said his question So um, you had spoken about done That's D-u-n-n-i-n-g-k-r-u-g-e-r For those who are trying to figure out what that is done in Kruger You've been good for me. I mean Kruger effect versus, you know in poster syndrome And I guess at the end of the day donning Kruger effect is just You know a result in the poster syndrome except it's that other extreme Now for like, you know Tons of developers are more introverted make sense And I've had friends who are like that and I tell them listen Are you afraid of being an asshole? If they're waiting to resolve this thing and I know you're extremely smart be an asshole Do fall on donning Kruger Because I know who you are Because the thing is at the end of the day If you don't have an established relationship with yourself and you can't say I love you to myself You can't have a proper relationship established to your teammates or the outside because you're on this shaky basis And you that's not what you deserve So that's the thing you can be an asshole in the short term and kind of recapping that for the folks at home Basically the idea that with dunning Kruger Dunning Kruger is essentially Wow, I'm really trying to recap this one. Oh, so you don't you don't know what you don't know So you might be talking completely out of your ass about something Right javascript frameworks or whatever. What have you Yeah, and the point that was being made was that uh, it's okay to you know, it's okay to be an asshole It's okay to not entirely know what you're talking about and get up and talk about it. Anyway, again I hope I'm recapping you okay, and I would say I think that there is a level of that You have to be okay making mistakes. You have to get up there and talk about something You're not confident about the only way it goes into dunning Kruger territory is if it's like consistent and it's really an issue with like People who have no gauge on what they know and I think that if it's just getting involved and taking risks in the community You absolutely have to do that if you're not comfortable with yourself Then uh, it'll keep being a challenge for you But dunning Kruger could be pretty toxic. So I don't know I I feel kind of yeah, I feel kind of Conflicted about my response to that. Okay And I think we're we're in time. We got to get out of this right. Thank you guys