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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.
Latest comments (49)
I appreciate the way you describe a moment that I love to see in people too. I’m definitely a “lightbulb person”. Seeing the moment when a concept clicks into place for someone I have helped means so much to me.
Your tenacity, openness, and acknowledgement of your support network is helpful for the growth of this community. Thank you for sharing your journey.
Wow, this woman is amazing ! Thank you for this talk Ms Holmes, it gave me so much energy and hope
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. This was absolutely amazing and without doubt what I needed to hear
Awesome presentation, You should write a book...
Hmmm... 🤔 I'm not so sure everyone else will agree with you on that one! I appreciate you saying so though 😊
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.
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 ❤️
Hi Tracey. Thank you for your talk! It sounds like you've gained a lot of hard earned wisdom of owning your expertise. Could you share some tips on pacing your thirst for knowledge and focusing your interests once the time comes to quickly learning a skill for a known upcoming opportunity? Tapping on your network of encouraging colleagues sounds like one of your superpowers.
Thank you for the detailed answer in the speaker discussion Tracey! I loved the ideas on multiple accountability trustees/mentors for different focuses meeting on semi-frequent basis as well as the punching out the pillow with the language name on the cover! A coping mechanism I was given by a therapist was to write a Dear John letter to my dilemma I was dealing with (I had many) called "Dear Dilemma"! In this case, it could be "Dear Python." Just don't send it to Guido Van Rossum, or do, lol! I loved your talk. Thanks again.
You're welcome! And oooooh "Dear Dilemma" is a good idea!!!
Thanks for this great talk and sharing your rough patch. It sounds very similar to my current situation and it was refreshing and enlightening to hear this. Thank you.
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!
I appreciated so many of your points, particularly the one about creating the opportunity/job you are not seeing.
Thanks for valuable speech in the codeland.
Thanks so much for such an inspiring speech!❤️
Thank you for such an inspiring talk
Loved this talk. I really connected with the idea of being a tinkerer - I feel the very same and it's why I finally decided to take the plunge into engineering!