 So, Wikipedia defines imposter syndrome as a concept describing high achieving individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishment and a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud, which is a pretty dry description. I prefer something much more blunt. Imposter syndrome is that internal voice telling you that despite objective success, there's shit at your job. There's going to be a few quotes. So this is a quote by Ron Chenow, who's a historian and an autobiographer, and he's describing someone that I think has imposter syndrome. And I really like the quote because it's quite direct, but I think the key fry is the one at the end, the unspoken melancholy of the prodigy. Put another way, the more you know, the more you know you don't know. The person who Chenow was describing was most active during the 1780s, yes, 1780s, but his actions still influence how we live to this very day. What's his name? Alexander Hamilton, he's Alexander Hamilton. He's a bastard orphan, an immigrant, a decorated war vet who somehow became Treasury Secretary to Washington, the President. For better or worse, the system that he and the other founding fathers implemented very much affects our day-to-day lives to this very day. And talking about historical characters is really quite interesting, especially if I use a publicity still from the musical based on Alexander Hamilton's life, which may or may not be my current obsession. However, the nature of these talks require that I open up. The nature of these talks require allowing you into the speaker's dark places. The nature of these talk require confessing to thoughts that the speaker would rather keep to themselves. The nature of these talks require dropping the self-confidence, sorry, yes, dropping the veneer of confidence and allowing the self-doubt to shine. And the nature of these talks asks something of you, all of you as members of the audience too. They ask you to acknowledge that. And as an aside, and I'm going to get a little bit meta here, I'm afraid, I was a little bit late writing this talk. And as Tarek will be able to tell you, I got quite nervous that I was even going to be able to deliver this talk. Now, I've delivered talks many times with varying levels of success. So I basically got imposter syndrome when it came to writing my talk about imposter syndrome. So there's a reason though that I ask you to acknowledge the nature of these talks and it's the same reason that I got nervous. Basically, Peter Wilson, the self-confident character based on my own life, presents these talks. But today, the real me needs to present with all my human flaws. Today, I'll be talking about imposter syndrome from the perspective of a developer. For developer, there are always new tools being developed and required to learn. There's new frameworks being released. There's new tools introduced for writing existing code. And it's the same for other web professionals, be they writers, illustrators, mark tiers. And I'm sure it's the same for other industries. But I can't talk to any of that. I can only talk as my experience as a developer. For developers, it's not helped by this meme, that you're not a real developer if you use Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla. Now, I chose this tweet for a few reasons. As you can see, it's from 2005, so it's really old. But it's also a quote. So what I'm saying is, don't look up the person who tweeted this, hunt them down, and the two of them are the same. So what I'm saying is, don't look up the person who tweeted this, hunt them down, and the two of them are the same. So what I'm saying is, don't look up the person who tweeted this, hunt them down, and attack them for publishing a quote on the internet. Now, my immediate reaction to quotes like this is to think that they're hogwash. It's about as logical as me tweeting that you're not a real developer unless you can optimize this CSS without converting it from its binary form. It's ridiculous. If you can open your editor of choice and write code that works as you intend, you are a real developer. If you've set up your editor with tools to make coding easier, you are a real developer. But it's more than that. You don't need the validation of some randoms on Twitter telling you what is or isn't real development. So they're my thoughts when someone tries to tell me what is or is real development and that I'm not a real developer. But that's not the bit that sticks. What the devil inside me says is far more hurtful. You're not a good developer. I mentioned during the introduction that these talks require removing the veneer of confidence. These are my thoughts without it. I can see that objectively I'm relatively successful. It's just that one day my career is bound to come crashing down around me. I've made this comment behind me on stage a number of times on WordCamp stages. I see myself as a front-end developer who knows enough back-end to be dangerous. It was never entirely true, but it was a self-effacing way of saying that I started as a front-end developer before becoming a back-end developer. What is entirely true is that I came to the web from the front-end with my first book on web development, being a first-edition HTML for dummies in 1995. What is also true is that I spend my working day with developers who have worked on good, honest, proper programming languages their entire career. They most certainly didn't start with a programming for dummies book sometime in the mid-90s. My job is working on enterprise-grade WordPress sites that human-made. When I went for the job, I very much emphasized my experience as a front-end developer. By way of comparison, two of my colleagues were on the core team of four that led the development of the WordPress REST API. I can recreate the blink tag in six lines of CSS. These days, I find myself writing much more PHP than I do anything else. But I spend a lot of time on Google looking up the documentation. My internal monologue loves to make a witty remark about being endorsed for guesswork on LinkedIn. Every now and then, one of the real developers will give me some good, honest CSS to get my teeth into because it's nice to have a good, proper front-end developer around when they're needed. And my internal monologue rejoins that it's not worth wasting the time of a real developer just to do the CSS. My inner monologue is a real bastard. So that's the disconcertingly honest kind of thinking that goes into imposter syndrome. I'm not going to make anyone put up their hand, but I'm willing to heavily bet that at least some of you in this room saw a little bit of yourselves in this talk, which begs the question, how to manage imposter syndrome? Clear Left is one of the leading digital agencies globally, and they're particularly leaders when it comes to front-end development. And they have a really simple approach when it comes to sharing knowledge in their office. They have this, a skills board. I can look at this board and I can see that if I want to know about responsive images, I go to Mark. If I want to know about using media queries inside responsive SVGs, I go to Charlotte. I love this idea for a number of reasons. It's smart as it is simplistic. The skill board says that there is an expectation of learning on the job. It says there are skills you will require for your job that you don't know yet. Go off, learn them, jot a note on the skills board when you're done so that you can share that learning. The expectation of learning is not the important bit, though. The most important bit is the expectation of ignorance, the reverse side of the coin. It's saying you have the ability to do this, but you just don't know the messy details yet. The logic behind development, be it front-end development or back-end development, is far more important than any particular detail. Looking at this board, I really like that it's held together with post-it notes and sticky tape. It's a lot like knowledge itself. One of the reasons I feel like an imposter is because I don't know stuff off the top of my head. I need to look it up. A few weeks ago on Twitter, there was what my internal monologue dubbed the you're a real developer, if mean. Senior developers with loads of experience were posting their not-so-guilty secrets about how they'd work. A Google lead confessing to having to look up how to get a string's length in Python every single time they need to write it. A real developer confessing to copying things from Stack Overflow. Sound familiar? I said earlier you don't need the validation of randoms on Twitter to tell you what is or isn't real. However, when hundreds of people are sharing their experience has been less than perfect, it's a valuable reminder that you can be less than perfect too. So what does all this mean? How does this help manage the imposter? Having the knowledge on its own doesn't necessarily help. You need to use the knowledge to stamp down the inner monologue trying to undermine you. I've found that having the knowledge isn't enough, so what helps? If writing 3D transforms on a blue post-it note to remind you that you can do something helps, then do it. If you work alone, you might feel a little strange putting a blue post-it note with your skills up on your desk. In that case, use your notebook, just write it in the back of your notebook. And when you're having a bad day, look at it. I use Twitter, like I use it a lot. So I went through and favorited a bunch of these tweets to remind me that a lot of people are working in exactly the same way I am. By choosing to manage imposter syndrome, it's possible you'll never feel like an imposter again. That's a white lie. That is an 18-carat white gold lie. But these things are supposed to finish on a good note. I've decided that, for me at least, there is probably no getting over imposter syndrome. And I expect it's the same for many other people. So the best we can do is hope to persevere with the veneer of confidence and build up techniques to help work around it. I hope you'll bear with me as I go back to my obsession, Hamilton the Musical. A good deal of the opening act is centered around the American Revolution, the War of Independence. The battle at which the Revolutionaries effectively won independence, both in fact and in fiction, is the Battle of Yorktown. One of Hamilton's mates, Hercules Mulligan, infiltrates the army as a spy and passes on details to the Revolutionaries. And he returns victorious with this rap. So that's what happens when you up against the Ruffians. We're in the shit now, somebody's got to shovel it. Hercules Mulligan, a nino introduction. When you knock me down, I get the fuck back up again. For whatever reasons, some days imposter syndrome will knock you down. The best advice I can offer doesn't come on that day. It comes the day after. The Ruffian, get the fuck back up again. Some days you're in a monologue will make that hard to do. Other days you'll be able to swap the self-doubt for self-confidence. But there's a problem with this advice. Just get back up again. It's terrible advice. It's terrible, terrible advice. So I'm going to go with another Hamilton quote. A different Hamilton though. This time Samuel Hamilton, Hamilton from John Steinbach's East of Eden. Suppose a disbelief in myself forced me to do a magic to bring to the surface a thing I know anyway. Does that make sense? Deciding to be a Ruffian and push yourself back up is the magic. It's the trick. It's the character you play to get over the self-doubt. It's the character that I play on stage. And sometimes it's the character I play in the office to bring back the self-confidence. Does that make sense to you? No. It makes no sense to me either. But it works and it helps me get over the feeling like an imposter. I hope you can feel it. I hope you can find a trick that works for you. Thank you very much. My name's Peter Wilson. I'm from DCC on Twitter. And I'm a Ruffian.