Welcome to the def team show, my name is James.

In this episode we're going to be talking about imposter syndrome.

Joining me is Kenneth Love.

Kenneth is of teacher here a treehouse

a jangle Software Foundation board member and active member of the Python community.

Welcome to the show, Kenneth.

>> Thanks for having me, James.

[SOUND] >> So

to start off, let's start by just defining what is imposter syndrome.

>> Sure, so imposter syndrome is this idea that you shouldn't be in the community or

the position that you're in because you feel like you're not good enough or

you're not accomplished enough for that position.

But really, you have the talents and the skills and the abilities to be there, and

so it's feeling like an impostor when you really shouldn't.

>> Okay, so if I was learning a new technology and so

I'm brand new to that thing >> And

I might like have a lack of self-confidence because I'm not or

as familiar with that as maybe I should be is that different than impostor syndrome.

>> Yeah, I mean what makes impostor syndrome where you're actually

feeling like an imposter is that you know the things.

You're perfectly capable of doing it, right.

So when you're a beginner and

you're just learning something you're just breaking into an area.

Even if you're an experienced developer but you're learning a new language or

a new framework or a new tool.

That's totally different because you're brand new to that.

>> Right. You're expected to have some sort of

discomfort.

>> Yeah.

>> And maybe unfamiliarity.

>> Right.

>> But in processing dramas where you know all the bits and

pieces you know all the tools but >> But

you still feel like you're not supposed to be there.

>> Right, so you're not acknowledging your own success.

>> Right. >> Or your own skills,

the things you can actually do.

There's a difference or

a delta between reality and what you think you're you're capable of.

>> Yeah, lots of times people discount their own achievements, right?

Somebody will have built something at a hackathon or

they'll have built something by personally falling in a tutorial and

the feel like well I didn't really do it right.

I had home I was a hackathon so my team helped me, or I read it's a tutorial so

you know the person who wrote that guide helped me.

>> So you're downplaying you know what it is that you accomplished.

>> Exactly you're cutting yourself down right.

And really that's obviously not good to do, right.

You should acknowledge your own

accomplishments, >> [LAUGH]

>> But that also is what leaves that

feeling of being an imposter.

>> Okay, so what are, I mean so that sounds like a kind of a tough problem.

So what are the effects of that,

like on one's person, if you're suffering from an imposter syndrome?

>> Sure, you know obviously if you're disposed to having other emotional

problems right.

Maybe you suffer from depression or things like that imposter syndrome could make

that worse, but also it often leads to feelings of increased pressure to perform.

So yeah I use that library but really I should write my own library that does

that or I should write my own middleware or whatever.

And that can lead to things like burnout if it goes on long enough to where you've

never written enough stuff or

produced enough stuff to feel like you're good enough to be where you are.

And you just exhaust yourself.

>> Interesting, so you actually do more than maybe what is necessary and

you just keep pushing it and

pushing it because you feel like you kind of have to in order to do it right.

>> Yeah, yeah, I mean, it almost leads into like a workaholic syndrome kind of

thing, right, or it can't.

Depends on the person.

Different people are going to experience this in different ways.

>> So if I if I work on a team and

I have imposter syndrome, what are the effects on my team?

Lots of times that can be, they can be different things, right?

It's gonna depend on you,

it's gonna depend on the team, but it can definitely damage the morale of the team.

If you have somebody who's maybe always downplaying their own abilities or

talking down about themselves then that can lead to where the entire team.

Either they start to feel bad because maybe, they compare themselves to that

person and they feel like they're on the same level, but if that person is not as

good, then maybe they're not as good as they really think they are.

Or it can lead to things where the team is constantly having to boost that person and

team should totally help each other out and lift each other up.

But if the entire team is focused.

On getting one person boosted up to the right level of confidence.

Then that team often can't accomplish the things they need to accomplish.

>> Interesting, or it sounds like they may not even be able to

get the things from that person that they would need.

>> Definitely.

>> They might be in a meeting and they might be afraid to speak up about

something that they actually know about or might have the perfect solution, but

they're not going to offer that up, it sounds like.

>> Yeah, they definitely feel like they're not able to give the input,

to give the feedback, because well, they're not good enough for that, right?

They're not at that level even though they really are.

They've accomplished these things, they've used whatever they've used.

They have the knowledge and information that they have but because they feel like

they're not good enough, they won't necessarily share and also that

often leads to things where lay people may not make decisions on their own.

So sending somebody who suffers from imposter syndrome to perform a certain

task may lead to where that task is behind or not delivered at all.

Because they haven't convinced themselves to get their work done and

it's not that they're a bad developer or a bad performer,

they just need to deal with the feeling of not being good enough.

>> Okay, gotcha.

In the long term it seems like this would have ramifications as well

on your career, right.

>> Yeah, if you're feeling like you're not.

Out for where you are, then you're not likely to seek promotions.

You may just go along.

If maybe somebody at the company has a grudge against you like you don't fight

for yourself in any sorts of things like that can come up

it could definitely damage your career.

And often it can lead to people being in ruts

which again can lead to the burnout thing.

Yeah, I've spent 15 years of my life writing PHP.

I'm getting tired of doing that.

But you're not feeling like okay, I'm gonna have go in the library author.

I'm gonna have go write a book or gonna have to go be a manager or whatever.

>> Got you, so I hold you back in the long run.

>> Definitely can.

>> And you just won't chase down those new opportunities and stretch yourself.

How would I know I like what's a good way for me to know whether or not, you know,

it's just a self-confidence issue or whether it really imposter syndrome.

>> I mean I think one of the biggest things is

looking at what you've done looking at what you've achieved and deciding.

You know that, acknowledging that you've done those things and

deciding that it is good enough, right?

>> Right. >> Like okay,

sure you went to a hackathon, and you had a team, and you used this library but

you made that app, right?

You made that iPhone app or that Android app.

>> Yup.

>> So acknowledge that you made that.

All those other caveats of you use this certain library or

you follow the tutorial or you're at Had this team or

whatever those don't matter you still did the thing you did.

>> So since this is a perception issue and some part right?

>> Sure. >> So it sounds like maybe one way to

help is to have others offer their own perspective right as to

your accomplishments and what you've been able to achieve.

It definitely goes a long way and having friends or teammates.

Or maybe a mentor that you can

talk to that can give you that outside acknowledgment of what you've done.

>> Someone you trust, I would assume.

>> Yeah and it's not like you're wanting ribbons or or

accolades just for doing you know your everyday things.

>> Right. >> But it's someone who's just helping you

to get past the lens of seeing your own achievements.

Right, so,you see it as like well it was just the thing I did.

Right, off and it starts off or maybe even sounds like a modesty kind of thing.

You don't wanna brag but the point is to have somebody telling you that,

actually it's really good what you did and it actually does mean something.

Then you have to accept that.

So yeah having somebody that you trust having somebody that

ideally is in the same realm as you.

>> So it seems that there might even be an opportunity to do some

self assignment too.

Like a way to make sure your tracking your progress and

maybe that's writing things down.

Sure.

>> Some way to be able to look back and say I have done these things, I have

accomplished these things and not like downgrade them or be little them, right?

>> Yeah. Even little tools like

having a journal that you keep that track what you've done,

looking at your GitHub contributions graph is a great way of doing it.

I recently came across an app.

I can't remember the name of it right now.

I showed it in our company slack.

We can find it and put it in the teacher's notes.

>> Yeah, definitely.

>> Or in the show notes.

It was a list of like 10,000 things about web design or

web development, like finance.

>> Like know it all.

>> Yeah it was like know it all.

And the idea was to go through the list and

you just check off all the things that you know.

And then by the end, the purpose of it by the end you're to left with a list of

things you need to learn, but it also works the other way around because

it gives you this list you can look at of things you know and

likely it's things you've done.

So maybe that list doesn't work perfectly for everyone.

A C Sharp developer may not need everything on that list, but

you can make similar lists or you can make similar things.

There's tools like things called ENKI, E-N-K-I which is a-

>> Is like mobile testing app.

>> It's a mobile app yeah where they give you short little lessons every day in

whatever subject you want, and you mark it as already knew this or

I learn something new and then they give you little quizzes and games to play.

>> So this could be another way for you to assess yourself.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah I do know that.

>> Yeah go through the basic java script thing on that and

if you can mark already knew for three or four days in a row then

you should feel pretty good about your abilities with JavaScript, right.

>> Right absolutely.

So I recently watched a talk from Julie a pike on talk and

she had a great bit of advice that she called kill your heroes.

>> Yeah. >> So have you seen the talk.

>> I have it's of a really, really good talk it was from a couple of years ago.

Julie gave an amazing talk and her whole part about the kill your heroes is,

I think is a pretty important part where lots of times the imposter syndrome is

enhanced, by comparing yourself to someone else, right?

>> Right. >> Like to relate this to a personal

thing, the first year I went to Django con, it was in 2011 I wanna say.

And I've been writing Django and Python for

years, well 2, 3 [LAUGH] technically years.

And so I went to the conference.

I'd never been to a conference before.

It was the first ever technical conference.

And all of the big names in the Django world were there, and

I had to go talk to Russell Keith McGee who at that time was president of

the Django Soccer Foundation and I was like amazingly intimidated to talk to him.

And when I talked to him, he was fine.

He was perfectly nice, and wonderful person.

But so, the imposter syndrome was there the whole time because I'm at

the conference and there's talks about things I don't understand and

there's all this stuff where it wasn't full blown like, I shouldn't be here but

it was like well I've got a long way to go.

But they do lightning talks which are you know five minute talks on where a subject

you want and I got up and gave one about a piece of software recently released.

And this being 2011,

slack wasn't around somebody was on IRC chatting about the conference and

Jacob Kathlyn Moss who also had an amazing Python talk from a couple years ago.

He commented in the IRC,

he was like I need this in the library, the thing that I released.

And that immediately was like okay,

cool I do deserve to be at least somewhat involved in this but

because I was able to like get over the hero worship of these people, right?

I had lunch with them, I talked to them they weren't these

gods they were just average everyday people and then having them validate

what I had done which ties back to what we were talking about before makes it,

it really eliminates that feeling of not belonging.

>> Yeah, that's great.

It's really easy,

I think when you see these people who are in the public you know all the time.

And giving these great talks or super knowledgeable in whatever topic or field.

They get followings right.

>> Sure.

>> We put them on the pedestal.

Yeah.

>> And they become these iconic figures that everyone looks up to.

>> Yeah, tech very much has a cult of personality problem to it where we start

to idolize these people and I think if we can eliminate that pedestal they

put them on it helps to reduce the imposter syndrome as well because we're

not comparing yourself to Sarah Gate or [CROSSTALK] Whoever, right.

And they're normal people they have problems just like you do and I do.

>> So if I'm a manager, a management team or I'm on a team and

I recognize some of these signs and I think maybe someone might have imposter

syndrome is there some things that I could do without just directly confronting

the person is there ways I can support them and things I can do to maybe.

Yeah, I mean I think some of the things that's really good for managers to do for

people is trying to help facilitate showing

weaknesses and strengths, in like knowledge.

I think one of the things that I've seen a lot of people talk about I think is really

good for managed to do is to admit like when they don't know something or

I guess that's closer to maybe senior devs than managers but

it's still that leadership thing of going.

Yeah I don't know that either or I don't know that already.

Let's look at up.

>> Right some modeling that behavior and saying.

So you don't look perfect all the time right.

Say hey I can't do that but let's work on this, let's do the research and

let's figure it out.

>> And a big part of that too is.

How you describe something or talk to something when you do know it, right?

So I don't have to do a thing I come to you for help and

if you go well actually it's just blah blah blah, right?

Or that's really easy it's this this this or you scoff at what my problem is which

you would never do of course but some people are a bit more grow.

[LAUGH] They have to talk about problems.

That can lead people to feel like, wow,

I must really be stupid cuz I didn't know that thing.

And if you can modulator that, right and

you're like yeah no that was really hard when I tried to learn it.

Let me show you what I figured out.

>> Yeah.

Well it's interesting.

I have certainly experienced when you're doing code reviews you get in their

mindset, that critical mindset, >> Sure,

>> It's really easy to criticize and

look for opportunities for improvement.

It's much harder to give a complement and look for the things that are done well.

>> Yeah, it is.

And I think with code review especially we walk that thin line,

right between where this is the thing that's measurable, right?

I can, we can compare two different versions of the same algorithm and

this one is cleaner and this one's more efficient, and we can weigh pros and

cons and all these things.

But, if I don't like the way you wrote your doc string or something, right.

Like, that's completely arbitrary.

And that's one of the places where it's like You can belittle people without

meaning to and it's also most things where it's a great place to go in and

add those little bonuses and compliments, right?

Because maybe on your line comments you know, line by line it's gruff and

clinical.

But then at the end when you're reviewing the whole poor request it's you know,

hey I really like how you did this thing and thanks for

including this test and This is gonna speed up blah blah blah you know whatever.

>> The praise sandwich as it- >> Right, exactly.

>> Lead was something positive [CROSSTALK] in was something positive.

>> Exactly, yeah.

>> Excellent, Kenneth, thanks for joining me to talk about imposter syndrome.

>> You're welcome. >> It's great having you on the show.

>> Yeah, thanks, >> For more information about imposter

syndrome, be sure to check the notes that accompany this video for

links to additional resources.

Also be sure to rate this video.

Let us know how we're doing or

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Let us know about that too.

Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.