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About This Talk
My name is Pj Metz, and I'm a former English Teacher. After working with all ages of students K-12, I left education to work in Developer Relations, specifically becoming an Education Evangelist for GitLab in May of 2021. Adjusting to a new career led me to experience some self-doubt in my own abilities. I worried that I didn't have what it takes to work in tech; that my experience was useless in a world beyond lesson plans and poetry.
That's when I learned about imposter syndrome, the belief that you are incapable of performing your job well and that people around you have unearned confidence in your abilities. People are most familiar with imposter syndrome in the workplace. One place you don't often hear about it is in education, and this talk aims to show why your expectations about what you will be doing can help you overcome imposter syndrome. There are days I STILL feel this way, that I'm just waiting for work to realize I shouldn't have this job; the advice in this talk are the very ways I help myself remember my own worth and value.
This talk is a chance to join others who are all worried that they're not good enough, and a chance to leave realizing not only that you're good enough, but that you are more capable than you think.
Takeaways
- Imposter syndrome can affect anyone, and often affects those who you'd think would be immune to it.
- Students leave the classroom and take learning with them: No matter where you are in your career, you should still be learning new things
- Failure's not flattering, but flattery gets you nowhere: Just because you mess up doesn't mean you're an imposter - It's a chance to learn!
Resources
- Imposter Syndrome: What It Is & How to Overcome It
- Men suffer more from imposter syndrome than women
- Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome
- Confusion is the Sweat of Learning
Slides
>> Click here to download slides
🌈 Comment below and ask me questions — I might just answer them during my live speaker discussion!
About PJ Metz
Pj is a former educator who now works as an Education Evangelist at GitLab. After teaching for 11 years, Pj made the transition into tech in May of 2021 after teaching himself to code during the summer and fall of the pandemic. He is a passionate public speaker and has spoken at a Microsoft conference as well as hosted several meetups and other events representing GitLab. You can catch him on Twitch building a website about poetry or building his next pop-star-based Twitter bot.
This on-demand talk is part of CodeLand 2021 — a virtual conference brought to you by CodeNewbie & DEV on September 23 & 24, 2021.
Top comments (83)
The real question: Am I good enough to have impostor syndrome 🤔🤣🤣
Oh man. I felt like high school PJ when I started coding bootcamp. I felt like I was just...in the wrong place. Being a career changer adds another layer to the Dunning-Kruger effect, especially the more you learn (the more you know, the more you know what you don't know). But then over time, you learn that everyone is always learning, and you figure out how to give yourself the grace to learn and take up space.
Great discussion, thank you. I have been stuck with imposter syndrome for a few years now. As a general IT professional, I have been looking to move into more of a development kind of career. I've taken countless courses and bootcamps over the years to prepare myself. Trying to determine if I have enough knowledge to be a developer is hard. It seems like I may never feel ready, as there are always going to be things I still need to learn. How did you know when you were ready to move from teaching to a tech role?
"Imposters don't fail"...now I'm sure I'm not imposter :D Love this talk, thanks Pj Metz!
That hits so close to home. I always feel the most like an imposter when I'm struggling to implement something or solve a problem.
100%! Then you see someone doing the same thing easily, so you start questioning your career and life choices :D
I spent way too long working on building nested dictionaries from an API response in Python the other day. While building out the data structure I completely forgot about lists... I only realized the flaw in it after reaching out to the other developer in my department for advice
Means a lot when you have someone to rely on
It has been a blessing. We inherited the codebase which was all in C# (I'm not super familiar with it) and there was absolutely zero documentation. From what I had been told, it was all written by one person who is no longer with the company.
Such an important reminder! One of my new years resolutions was learning how to fail (and being fine with it) and I'm still working on it 🤣 But to be honest, feeling ok to just try something and see it as a learning if it goes wrong seems so liberating.
Love the analogy of comparing your own blooper reel to everyone else's highlight reel - definitely made me think back to the very early point of starting to learn coding - acutely aware I knew absolutely nothing, and didn't even know the depths of things I didn't know! - took a while to realise this isn't a race with others, but a one-person trip, and any any progress is better than none. Really positive, grounding session. Thank you.
Also, set backs don't mean progress is finished. It's a long term game.
Amazing talk.
I guess I forget that the learning journey never ends, plus reducing harsh self criticism helped this year. Errors !== bad developer.
I've felt like an imposter so much because of coding interviews. I've been ghosted too many times to count. So many times that I gave up and just decided try and make my own SaaS personalized job aggregator website.
Comparing their 'highlight reel' to my 'blooper reel'...perfect analogy. Thank you so much for this perspective! I'm also transitioning from teaching (high school science) to coding, and can't count how many of those conversations I've had with kids..."You wouldn't be here if you already knew everything. You're exactly where you're supposed to be." Have to remember to say it to myself more often. Thanks!
(Question for PJ) Online resources recently lead me to believe that interviews in the tech industry are rapidly increasing in difficulty, despite the industry crying out for new Dev's. Do you think this contributes to imposter syndrome, and if so how would you combat this?
Basically, the interview scene is becoming increasingly intimidating, and I think this creates anxiety and doubt.
From my experience, even experienced developers hate interviewing. The interview process can often feel very different from the actual work you'll do. I'd agree that it can lead to a belief you don't belong.
The best way to combat that is with the knowledge that interviews are often not directly related to what you'll do at the job. In fact, they're two different skill sets.
Question to anyone....
How do you decided what to do in software if you cannot decide what to do in tech?
Example i am doing full stack course but i don't know if am enjoying it enough. i have interests in Data science, game development and all sorts. I just cannot seem to narrow it down to one field. Any ideas?
Try it all!! It's a lot out there, but try little pieces of them where you can. Maybe you take a free course on Data Science. If you like it, take another. If not, try something new.
Full stack will give you a great set of skills to build upon in other areas.
Thank you all for your comments! @metzinaround is gonna love reading your feedback. As an educator, do y'all know what Pj also loves?
Questions! Please feel free to drop any and all questions you have for Pj right here in the discussion.
Calculus doesn't have to be scary ;)
I loved the point that highly qualified people work with highly qualified people, so by working with them you're a highly qualified person.
We know enough to know we don't know things, but everyone doesn't know things so it's okay.
[Question] PJ, any differences in how we deal with imposter syndrome and expressing a learner-posture, between one-ups, peers, or directs?
This was such a great talk! As someone changing careers into tech, I think it's a super worthwhile conversation having in many industries! Thank you so much!