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About this talk
I'm ancient in tech years - many would've given up. There are those who are just starting and discovering what they want is not where they need to be. I pride myself on being candid - not only with myself, but also with others. So, speaking about how/why I believed I failed instead of initially embracing something I genuinely liked doing? I felt it was something I needed to do.
Adjacency really isn't an easy pill to swallow...until you realize that pill makes you feel complete. Not landing in software engineering weighed heavily on me and contributed to an unhealthy mindset. My goal for this talk is to help solve the issue of engineers or coders who feel as though they've failed because they aren't doing EXACTLY what they set out to do.
Talk Recording
Slides
🌈 Comment below and ask me questions — I might just answer them during my live speaker discussion!
About me
Hi! I'm Tracy P Holmes. I consider myself a "Jackie of All Trades" and a mistress of being myself. I work as a Technical Community Advocate at Isovalent where I focus on sharing my love of Cilium, eBPF, and Anxiety Driven Development. When I'm not leveling up my programming skills or helping others have "lightbulb" moments, I like baking, hanging with my pup, and learning something new to help me along my career. I'm active in the open source community and believe that open source is like gardening — pay attention to your conditions, and water only when needed.
This on-demand talk is part of CodeLand 2022 — a virtual conference brought to you by CodeNewbie & DEV on June 16 & 17, 2022.
Top comments (49)
You mentioned that you’re “a horrible introvert”—a sentiment I definitely relate to. While I do think being an introvert is a great thing, it doesn’t always feel like that when it comes to networking and presenting yourself in an interview. What suggestions / recommendations do you have for those of us who are naturally quiet and reserved? How have you overcome your anxiety to be able to share your personality with other people in a professional setting (or otherwise)?
I hope this helps, if not let me know!
I haven't overcome it! I just cope and make sure I set certain boundaries (which was a learning process let me tell ya.) If it's at work, I make sure I block off time (repeating weekly) on my calendar to exhale. It also took me a while, but I identified the time of day when I'm most exhausted, tend to get sleepy, etc. and made that a block also. When I took a bit of charge over my calendar, it helped.
The other thing is this - I realized a good portion of people I'm networking or interviewing with are ALSO anxious. If I'm networking, jumping in with a group of people at work, or anything similar - I try to ask more questions than I'm answering lol. It helps to give me a good read on ppl, and it also helps to break the ice at times!
Outside of that? I just...am myself. Recordings, presentations, livestreams - they can be edited or redone. For meetings, I usually have a person I'm messaging on Slack that can let me quickly vent or get out a bit of anxiety around certain things. For conferences, I let it be known that I WILL disappear (especially after a full day and/or a talk) so exhale and breathe.
TL;DR
Thank you for taking the time to write out such a detailed response! I’ll try to apply your suggestions. I especially like the point about protecting your time and setting boundaries. Definitely applicable to all areas of life, including work.
I love the slide design! So excited to hear this! :]
"Use the crap you go through as fertilizer...to grow something beautiful." - Tracy P Holmes
I've only heard of the role "developer advocate" a couple of times and haven't done too much research into it, but what would you say are some of the best parts of your role?
I think I answered this live. Did I answer your question pretty well?
Hi there Tracy,
Yes, you did answer it live and very well!
I appreciate the feedback :)
Thank you for sharing! What do you think are the most important ways to leave a good impression? Especially from the perspective of a Newbie trying to break in and maybe their coding skill set is at entry level, whatever that is...?
Thank you for this informative and inspiring talk! I'm wondering if you can tell me how you managed to surround yourself with those people who could sense what you needed to learn and what kind of support you needed? Was some of it luck? Basically, I'm wondering how you went about finding such a great community of mentors?
Whew LUCK was a BIG part of it. The rubyistas I hung out with were pretty good about figuring out HOW I needed to learn. It was def easier with the Ruby Tuesday meeting. Outside of our Ruby Tuesday meetup, we'd sometimes meet at coffee shops and work and chat, etc.
The person that helped me figure out I was trying to do too much was someone that was less..."clique-ish" and spent some time getting to know me. She's AMAZING. But she was able to figure out my motivations for some of the stuff I was doing (or wanted to do), so would follow-up with me to see how things were going during our Sunday coffee sessions.
The person the fussed at me, knew I needed some big sister butt kicking and made me apply to something I didn't think I was qualified for. Which was the start of a long history of us fussing at each other, but always supporting each other.
In all of these scenarios, I think they all saw I genuinely wanted to learn, was out of my element, and didn't know how to vocalize what I wanted or needed.
But also, something I had in Austin was Meetups. Which didn't really exist in my home state/town. I honestly just started throwing myself at a few things to force me to leave my house and get to know what was going on (though I did stand in the corner quite a bit at those meetups!)
So awesome!!
It sounds like you definitely found some really helpful folks and did so by putting yourself out there and building up a personal network of encouraging peeps.
I really enjoyed hearing how ya categorized the different types of help ya had and folks ya learned from. I think I could def use someone to occasionally fuss at me and urge me to step outside my comfort zone as a community manager, haha!
Meetups are such a great tip too for folks looking to build up their personal network, but you're totally right that they are more available in cities. I'm sure online meetups are possible too, but I generally slant toward in-person myself. Nothing quite like hanging out in the real world (i.e offline) with folks who have similar interests.
Thanks again for the awesome talk and now, awesome answer!! 😀
You talked about a really rough patch where you lost your relationship and your grandmother as well as a few other personal obstacles. I'm so sorry you had to go through all of this. I really relate to the feeling of numbness you described when faced with hardships. How did you power through this time and continue learning despite these hard things?
I'm bad about taking care of myself by taking care of others lol. So, outside of that, I just carved a bit of time out for myself to grieve the way I needed to (LOTS of physical labor, taking care of funeral stuff, etc.), and then once that lessened, I mostly worked on small projects to keep me from being stagnant. The short role I found after all of that, was tech support based. So, I was able to keep learning, refining, picking up things on that job.
And also, tbh? I have a friend that is really in tune with my moods and my brain. She helped me to process some stuff, but also held me accountable (which helped as I'm better at keeping promises to the few friends I have or other people than I am with myself).
Does this help any? Let me know if I need to answer something else or clarify!
The part where you talk about how your experiences make who you are now really resonated with me since I am in the middle of a career switch. I feel really encouraged by that. Thank you for this honest presentation about your experience!
If you can't find your feat in the space, create it...
This really match my style of life.
I'm Jackie too for a while now. I create written and graphic contents, I am a WordPress developer, I am enjoying the learning in data science, I am horning skills in GIS development. I am a serial volunteer at various humanity and good governance movements. I studied water resources management and Sanitation, Geophysics at B.Tech. Now what I picked up most in this presentation is "learning slowly till the goal is attained"
Thank you so much for taking the time to inspire us! I love the Andre De Shields quote! My mom has always reminded me to take things slow, it really didn't start clicking until my mid 20's! When I was younger, I would get so impatient when attempting to learn new skills. I honestly wouldn't even enjoy the process and eventually I would get burned out and quit. Nowadays I try to focus on taking things day by day and staying consistent rather than hyperfocusing on getting there fast. Whenever I find myself getting impatient about my coding journey, I remind myself that 20 minutes of daily code is 121 hours a year... I can learn a lot in 121 hours!
Loving Codeland 2022! Can't wait for more!
Holy crap, you're right! A lot really can be learned in 121 hours. That's a very positive way to look at things ❤️