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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to a new episode of Front End happy hour. This is episode 32. And we are joined by Jessica grist, a front end engineer at ad roll to talk to us about imposter syndrome. The term imposter syndrome comes up a lot in our industry, and we thought it'd be a good and interesting topic for us to share our experiences and discuss how we've dealt with it in the past. Jessica, can you give us a brief introduction of who you are, what you do, and what your favorite happier beverages?

Jessica Grist
Wow, sure. Well, thank you guys so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here. So as you've already mentioned, I'm a software engineer at ad roll. I've been there for about two and a half years now. And in terms of what my favorite Happy Hour beverage is, that's just a really unfair question. Since I'm here with Mars, I think I'm gonna go ahead and say wine.

Brian Holt
Let the record reflect that Mars is drinking wine out of a pint glass.

Ryan Burgess
Alright, let's go around the table and give brief introductions. Today's episodes. Panelists, Brian, kick it off.

Brian Holt
Hi, I'm Brian Holt, and I'm an actual imposter at Netflix as in, I'm not actually sure I work there.

Stacy London
I'm Stacy London. I'm a front end of Atlassian.

Mars Jullian
I'm Mark Julian. I am a senior software engineer at Netflix.

Derrick Showers
I'm Derek showers, Senior Software Engineer at

Ryan Burgess
LinkedIn. And I'm Ryan Burgess. I'm a software engineering manager at Netflix. In each episode of the front end, Happy Hour podcast, we like to choose a keyword that if it's mentioned at all, in the episode, we will all take a drink. What did we decide today's keyword is? The word is scared. So if anyone says the word scared from now on, we will all take a drink. So I'd be interested to know what does imposter syndrome mean to each of you.

Stacy London
I guess for me, it means this idea that maybe you've been doing something for a while. And at some point, you think you're pretty okay, or pretty decent at something. But then the next day, you're just like, I shouldn't even be doing this anymore. Like it's too hard. There's too much to know. And I will never know everything and you kind of get overwhelmed by any amount of things that you don't

Brian Holt
know. Yeah, it's like when you go to like a meetup, and someone's giving like a cool talk, or you'd like talk to someone, like I'm doing this cool stuff and Web GL and you're like, I can't do that. I don't know how to do that I don't belong here. I'm just gonna go back and like, work at McDonald's, or something like that.

Ryan Burgess
For me, it's like, you feel like a fraud. I wish I was better at something. And that's kind of what it means to me. And in that regard.

Derrick Showers
For me, it seems like it comes from your interpretation of somebody else, maybe explaining something or talking about something like Brian said, meet up, or it could even be like, at work in a meeting. But I think, you know, you have to realize a lot of times that that that person that's talking about it has invested a lot of time in like learning what that whatever they're talking about is but I think sometimes for me anyway, I just associate that with, or I wrongly associate that with them just like being, you know, incredibly smarter than I am. Because but but in reality is, you know, it's it's stupid to think that way, because, in reality, they've probably spent weeks like focus on this one thing that they're talking about. But sometimes I think that's hard to differentiate it from what they actually know.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, and to kind of riff off of that sort of being in an environment where you feel like that, that where everyone around you kind of makes you feel like that it makes you feel like a fish out of water in a way that's not challenging. If that makes any sense. There's, there's a way to be in an environment where you're a fish out of water and your talents to learn new things. But to me, imposter syndrome means being a fish out of water, not challenge to learn new things too scared to even try Asher's. Didn't even say scared. Scared,

Brian Holt
you didn't know Stacy's just an asshole.

Mars Jullian
I'm a fish out of water who's drinking like a fish. So it's just being too afraid to try and it kind of holds what the difference between challenging and imposter syndrome to me is that it starts to hold you back.

Stacy London
You almost get like afraid to ask something. And because you think that you should know this, based on maybe somebody around you or people around you in the way that they're talking about things or the way that they treat you when they talk about certain things. It's like oh, well, I should know that. So therefore, I guess I'm not going to ask

Mars Jullian
yes. The fear of being found out of not knowing what you think you should know. But also feeling like others will judge you for it. Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
I like that to the comedy that's always the worrisome too is that people are judging you for not knowing something

Derrick Showers
go along with that. For me, sometimes I think maybe there's this is there's one thing that people can point to, and whether it's what about what I'm about to say or something else, but for me, it's like I don't have a computer science background. So like I feel like you know, as soon as somebody finds that out, they're gonna be like, oh, you know, like, that's why he doesn't really, you know, be able to to keep up? And I'm sure they're not thinking that, but that's like what I'm thinking. And I think there's like different versions ahead,

Brian Holt
Derek, we're gonna have to ask you to leave I

Stacy London
guess I'll go with

Brian Holt
Yeah, me too.

Jessica Grist
I think what I, what I would add to all the really great definitions that people have already said, is the importance of thinking of it as a syndrome. I think, you know, I've been an engineer now for about two and a half years. And I think I hoped at some point that the imposter syndrome would just go away, and I would magically be cured of it. And I'm realizing now, that that just doesn't happen. It keeps going. It is like a syndrome. You know, you once you get to a point where, like you from two years ago, would have looked at you had had imposter syndrome about who you are right now. Now, you're looking forward to yours to like the person who's that far ahead of you. And you're having imposter syndrome about them. So it just, it doesn't really go away.

Ryan Burgess
It's like constant growing, yes.

Jessica Grist
Not to be depressing or

Stacy London
anything. And I think that's just like with front end dev specifically, because every couple of years, or even a shorter time span, and that something new comes out that is, you know, changing the way that we do our work. And so you never even if you've mastered fundamentals, or you feel like you've mastered fundamentals or some other way of doing something that comes along and just blows that out of the water and like you have to constantly learn and relearn how you're building web apps, in better ways. It just It never ends. So I think that that's a big differentiator. I think some other fields, I don't think you have to relearn your entire craft, like every couple years,

Ryan Burgess
when have each of you felt imposter syndrome?

Brian Holt
I think the worst time I felt imposter syndrome was when I started at Netflix. Amen.

Ryan Burgess
I'm gonna have to agree to that. Yeah. Like you walk

Brian Holt
in, and you're talking to people that you've been following on Twitter forever. And they're like, oh, yeah, I just like invented this, like, super important thing. That's a part of your field. And yeah, that was, that was tough. For sure.

Ryan Burgess
I think it's also just starting a new job in general, I will agree it probably felt at the most at Netflix, I think just because I was amazed with the talent that's there. But I think anytime you start a new job, you have to almost prove yourself. It's like, No, I do know what I'm doing. And that's where that imposter syndrome really kicks in.

Derrick Showers
The other thing I found was starting a new job is that at least the ones that I've had, it's hard to differentiate sometimes what you should know and what like you shouldn't know. So there's a lot of proprietary stuff that like you're like, oh, okay, someone's talking about this. And they're using this acronym, or they're using this like tool and like, they're talking about it. Like it's some very common thing. But it's, you know, it's something that's proprietary to that company that that, you know, I'm working for

Ryan Burgess
those goddamn acronyms.

Jessica Grist
I'd go back to what you guys are saying about feeling imposter syndrome, specifically at the beginning of a new job. And I'd go back further than that and say that, nowhere have I felt imposter syndrome more keenly than in technical interviews. That's especially where it comes out. Because not only is that I mean, it's inherently kind of like a training ground for you like you're there to kind of prove that you can perform in a way that they want you to perform. And the interviewers are positioning themselves as experts. So that's for me, when the imposter syndrome just goes full on crazy. They're literally sitting there judging Yeah, like sitting there judging Yeah. We talked about

Ryan Burgess
starting a new job, like maybe that's at a company, but also a position that can really shift as well. I know when I moved into being a manager, I went from being a senior front end engineer or a lead engineer. And then now it's like you're starting a manager, you basically go down to being a junior manager. And that felt really, really weird. It's like a completely different mind shift and different job in different role. I felt like that was the hardest thing for me for imposter syndrome.

Stacy London
But I want to go out more off of that interview. Thanks. I think there's a lot to unpack there. The interviews and the way that you're sort of tested on some like minutiae is, is like, well, I should know all this minutia. But like in the real world, and the real day of doing your work, cloud, it's not useful, it doesn't matter doesn't matter. And you you're constantly like, looking up your resources and finding references and going back to your notes. I'm a huge note taker, I take like tons of those things. And I am always referencing my own notes like, but when you're in an interview situation like you don't that is not there for you. And if you can't answer some, you know, very obscure question about the language that, you know, you start to feel like maybe I don't maybe I don't know anything. Absolutely.

Brian Holt
I've gone through so many interviews, and I've done so many interviews, that when people ask me those kind of questions, like this is a crappy question. This is a bad interview and you should feel bad.

Derrick Showers
You give them imposter syndrome, like the interview or is like actually, like I'm really bad at interviewing.

Brian Holt
It helps like seriously like, sometimes you can kind of help your imposter syndrome by like reframing things and just say like, I shouldn't know this. Like this is not something that's useful to me like I remember in an Interview I got asked basically like the semantics of try catch finally in JavaScript, which I just never use. Like, I can probably count on one hand, the amount of times I've had to actually use finally, in JavaScript. One of them was last week strangely enough. Shit, like, it's just like not not an important thing. And so if you can reframe it a little bit to say, like, okay, this person should feel bad about themselves, then it helps

Ryan Burgess
the interviewer should feel bad. Yeah. Shaming shaming others is how I solve. That's how you solve imposter syndrome.

Mars Jullian
That sounds about right.

Brian Holt
So hard on Mars, never

Derrick Showers
want to interview Brian, I would just be like sitting there thinking like, Oh, God, he's just he thinks

Brian Holt
this is law. I'm not interviewing at Microsoft. So he

Ryan Burgess
has imposter syndrome ever stopped anyone from doing something that you would want him to do?

Brian Holt
Yeah, definitely. When I was just starting out speaking, definitely, like prevented me from like going out for like chess comp and stuff like that. Because no one goes out for chess calm for the first time or this. That's why I felt

Ryan Burgess
I think speaking in general is a tough one. Not only even if you got the courage to go speak, what always bugs me is, am I the expert to talk on this, in my mind, at the end of the day, you're sharing an experience with people. And I think that's amazing. So you just need to remind yourself of that. But it's still that's completely a hard one to get over.

Mars Jullian
I think imposter syndrome can very easily be very paralyzing. And I when I first started in Netflix, I actually felt it's so much to the point where I almost became paralyzed in my work, until one of my managers actually sort of very gently gave me a kick in the butt saying you kind of need to get over it. Otherwise, you're never going to learn and you're never going to get any, well, it wasn't so much about getting anything done. It was more about the learning and the growing and in the position that I was in. And I would say now that now that I've kind of gone through this a couple times, imposter syndrome is sort of the first phase that I hit. And it's the first phase that I hit in a way that humbles me to a point where I'm like, I don't know anything, okay? Like Ryan said, Let's frame it a different way. I don't know anything. Let's go ask people and you know, make connections and learn from this experience of feeling like you're not knowing, but I would say that it's definitely you know, it's a barrier you have to get over the first time and how you deal with it or reframe it afterwards is probably up to the individual, I would say

Jessica Grist
that it hasn't completely held me back from anything, what it has done is certainly delay my getting into things. So for a long time, I felt like Okay, I just need to heads down do my work, the idea of like giving a tech talk or like getting involved in committees at work, or even doing something like this, you know, it was just like, I can't absolutely cannot do that. So it's definitely delayed my getting into other things.

Brian Holt
That's why we keep Derek around is to keep the bar really low.

Jessica Grist
I'm scared

Ryan Burgess
way to make people feel scared, right?

Brian Holt
I tell you that that's how I get over my imposter syndrome is shaming other people. Thanks, Derek.

Derrick Showers
No problem. This beer sucks. By the way.

Ryan Burgess
Derek's referencing is Brian made beer. So now do you have imposter syndrome? The fact that you don't know how to make beer, just give me the beer, I'll finish it.

Stacy London
For me, and one of the most significant imposter syndrome phases for me, has been when I started to help do interviews for other people to come onto the team. And the system that we record everybody's feedback in. It was my first time signing into it, and assigned into it. And I saw myself Oh no. So I got to see all the interview feedback for me from my teammates. And oh, nothing was mean or like, inappropriate or whatever. But some of it was pretty, you know, pretty honest. Right? Like, they didn't expect me to ever read that. And so I know exactly, you know, it, you know, how your teammates feel about you. So the imposter syndrome hit pretty hard, where I was, like, starting to feel very timid about doing pull requests until they were like, perfect. And like the my code will be the most perfect it has ever met. And there will be nothing for them to tear apart. You know, that kind of fear about, you know, do I know enough to be here.

Ryan Burgess
And that might have slowed you down in your work they did. So that is kind of a negative at that part. Right? It slowed you down trying to make it perfect for people to review, when it's probably didn't need to be perfect.

Stacy London
No, and the feedback probably would have been fine. So that's what pull requests are about, you know, getting feedback from your peers, but you were just so you knew what they thought about you in that interview. So you're just like, I will prove them wrong. Like they will know that I'm better than what they thought and

Ryan Burgess
at that point, those tools you should like close that person out. So like usually they have that so that like you've been hired you don't read your own. Yeah, interview feedback.

Derrick Showers
I have a similar story in that when I started. This job team doesn't really interview the people for their team. It's kind of like a general interview process and then you like get assigned to a team. But it's just so happened that the one person that was interviewing that had interviewed me was my manager on my first team and, like, I remember the interview being okay, but not like, out of the park, you know? So the whole time like, the first few months that I was at this job, I was like, Okay, does my manager hate me? And is he like, the only person that gave me like a low review and everyone else like, set up? So it was locked out. But I was able to ask a recruiter to read the feedback. But luckily, it was fine. But yeah, it's but like, I mean, it's it's the same type of thing, right? Like I was just like, very curious about and for no reason. Like, it didn't end up being a big deal. The way I

Ryan Burgess
look at is if you're getting hired from like, at a company, or for the most of it is usually pretty much everyone's a yes.

Derrick Showers
Like, that's but I mean, I think the thing with imposter syndrome is a lot of it is illogical thinking, yeah, no, no, that's a good

Ryan Burgess
point, too, is you just get in that spiral of thinking, I'm not good.

Derrick Showers
Or whatever. It's like, you're like, Okay, well, that's stupid.

Ryan Burgess
Do you think imposter syndrome is a bad thing? Or has it challenged you to push yourself in a positive?

Jessica Grist
You know, overall, I'd say as weird as this may sound that the positives have greatly outweigh the negatives. For me, as I said, I think the main negative is that it slowed me down both in terms of like relating to meeting my work to be perfect. I also felt that as well. And also just slowing me down from taking on leadership roles and other stuff like that. But in terms of the positives, I really like how it's kept me as humble as possible. So coming into this industry, from a previous industry, I used to be a teacher. That was something I was really worried about, sort of like keeping that level of humility and desire for continued learning. And I think weirdly, imposter syndrome has definitely kept me in that state.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, I was, I was gonna say the same thing that imposter syndrome, at first can be a bad thing, and that there's two sides to it, there's how others will perceive you and how your network or your community is encouraging the imposter syndrome, if that makes sense. If they're not welcoming enough that you think you can't expose yourself or be sort of vulnerable and humble in front of them, then that definitely is a bad thing, if it continues to a point where you can't find a way around it. But in terms of the positives, the humility, I would say, 100%. That's, that's the only way I've found to get over it is to be extremely humble. And just realize that you don't know everything. But also, when you start to admit it, you realize that not everyone else knows everything, either. And there's only way one way to find out, which is to go talk to them and to begin to ask questions and realize that we're all just trying to figure this out. And we're all learning together and clearly, like all of us around the table feel imposter syndrome at one point or another.

Ryan Burgess
I think we can all agree we've all

Stacy London
Yeah, definitely. In fact, it's a red flag if you meet someone, and they're like, oh, I don't know what that is. Absolutely.

Ryan Burgess
To be fair. I didn't know about it until or five years ago.

Jessica Grist
You describe the feeling to them. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
But what felt like someone mentioned imposter syndrome. I was like, What the hell is that? So I think there's probably are people that don't really know that. But when you start to describe what

Derrick Showers
that is, you're right. I had this conversation just yesterday with somebody that I work with. And I said, I'm doing a, we're doing an episode on imposter syndrome tomorrow. He's like, I don't know what that is. And but I explained it to him. And he's like, oh, yeah, I feel it all the time.

Mars Jullian
Oddly enough, imposter syndrome is not a term I knew until I entered the tech industry. And then the feeling comes before you know what it's called. And then all of a sudden, everybody can relate to you. And you can relate to everyone. And I thought that was really interesting.

Brian Holt
I remember talking to Jeff for Hussein on the, on the shuttle to Netflix, and he told me that he feels impossible and was like, Well, if you're fuck that I'm definitely

Derrick Showers
I think that's a really good point, though, is if you have somebody that you look up to, or there's a mentor to you, or whatever that also feels it, I think that that is incredibly powerful.

Ryan Burgess
It makes you feel a little more at ease, I guess at that point is knowing that someone like golfer who is amazing. And I talked to him, and he blows my mind all the time. But the fact that he's feeling like that, that's pretty impressive. So somebody had mentioned, I think Mars he had mentioned, you hadn't really heard about it until it's in the tech industry. Why is it so prevalent in the tech industry?

Mars Jullian
I really don't know. And I actually like I liked Stacey's point earlier about how and I don't know if it's specific to front end development or development as a whole. Because, you know, I haven't done much other development besides what I'm working on now. But we do have to relearn things almost every year, or every couple years, there's a new framework that comes along, or there's a new tool that everyone starts talking about. And it's it's just this constant, changing conversation in the community that you always feel like you have to keep up with. And I think it's interesting because the tools keep changing. But also the reason the tools keep changing is probably because the the contributors to those tools felt like they were not good enough. I needed to learn something new and build something for the community. So it's kind of this self propagating cycle, I think, and I'm not sure how it works in other industries, but it's definitely feels like we're always reinventing the wheel. So we're always relearning. So we're always reinventing the wheel and we're relearning and you know, over and over

Derrick Showers
to another it's it seems like maybe I'm wrong but like in our industry is very self motivated. And like there's not like a clear path on how you how you like continue your ability over Like, I don't know, like in medicine or something, I would assume that there's some sort of like training if you're a nurse or a doctor that you need to, like go to and like they're telling you that this is the stuff you need to learn in order for people not to die, you know, like, so I don't know, maybe that's part of

Jessica Grist
it. I think one of the reasons why it's so prevalent as that are specifically the tech industry is very closely tied to the concepts of like genius and exceptionality. Like our most well known, leaders are considered to be just straight up geniuses, you know, people who come up with these incredibly innovative products, who, like change the world. And so when we feel like the people at the top of our industry are geniuses, that's kind of a thing, where how am I ever going to match that? Like, I don't think I'm a genius, how can I ever get to their level? You know? So yeah, that's, that's one reason why, maybe,

Stacy London
yeah, or like, if you're following people on Twitter, let's say, or, you know, trying to keep up with the industry. I mean, who I follow up you a lot of people, but I feel like when you take the aggregate of everybody that's building websites across the world, who am I actually following? Like, 1%, maybe of all these people, and they're, they're generally people that inspire me and are like, very prolific in what they talk about? Well, if that's what you're constantly comparing myself to, is that fair to myself? No,

Ryan Burgess
it's probably a lot harder. And I think we actually even talked about it in our previous episode on burnout is the fact that you're watching those people and seeing what they do. And they're publishing these tweets or GitHub Pages, and you're like, Oh, my God, I need to do more of that. And it gets really hard, because you're judging yourself against that, like 1%. And that can be really difficult. I also think it's tough to because our job is kind of a passion thing to where we don't necessarily work nine to five on it, and then be done with it is like we're going home and building things and doing that. So you see others doing that, too, is like they're building some like open source project, but they also work at Google or whatever. And they're doing all these things outside of work. And you're like, I need to do that. So I think that kind of builds that imposter syndrome as well, which also leads to some of the burnout, which we talked about, and you hear

Derrick Showers
them talk about how they work until like, three o'clock in the morning, every night and like go home, go to a coffee shop until like, you're like

Ryan Burgess
bullshit, nobody can do that.

Brian Holt
Well, I think we're kind of hitting something like we're dancing around the issue with like, a bunch of you just mentioned is that it's a lot of its birth from that we're comparing ourselves to others, right. And the thing you have to keep in mind, when you're comparing yourself to someone else's, you have like an infinite knowledge of like your own disabilities and your own foibles, and all you like your holes in your the knowledge that you wish you had, right? Whereas like, you just see the facade of someone else, right? Like they put out it's like, this person knows everything about functional reactive programming, but you don't know anything. Like maybe they didn't know, they know nothing about user interface development, right? Like, I kind of had a revelation again, when I was talking to jofra. And he was asking me questions about React is like holy shit is like, I actually know more than something about the new in this very, like, narrow field, right? And that was pretty powerful. I heard the analogy once that if you're a house, right, you're comparing your broom closet to their front room, right? So like that, you walk in, and it's like this magnificent front room, but it's like you say, Well, my closet sucks compared to this, right? You're not really comparing apples to apples in that particular sense.

Mars Jullian
And I think kind of to build on the point that Brian, Ryan and Derek all just made, something I wanted to kind of say is, it's really interesting that, you know, Ryan, you brought up that it's a passion. And I think there's so many ways to be a good engineer in this community. And, you know, like Derek touched on, there's no clear path forward. And so you can see someone who's really accomplished and what they do, for example, Java, who does, you know, observables, and everything like that. But I'm passionate to perhaps about something completely different. But to me, I'm comparing myself to his accomplishments, when what would be an accomplishment in my passion, small part of UI development may be completely different than what he's doing. But again, it's you know, we're comparing ourselves to the most vocal and their passions and accomplishments don't necessarily line up with the work that we do, and that we like to do one. I

Ryan Burgess
like that there's room for so many people to be an expert at one little thing, like one piece of the pie of front end is there's so many things. And so you need to remember that too, is that like, even like job for maybe not knowing certain things for UI, but he's doing all these crazy patterns for observables, which is amazing. And you're like, oh my god, he knows so much. But there's like areas that you knew, or that like Mars will know, or anybody, any one of us will know that he may not know. And I think that's really cool. I

Stacy London
think one sort of corollary to that is our titles in our industry and like what our we're expected to know as part of those titles. So to me something that gives me a lot of imposter syndrome, as if I'm working with a lot of people that value they say full stack developers are what they value. And then it's sort of like, oh, front end isn't like if I if I'm specialized in that and I focus on that, that's not as valuable or like I'm not good enough, because I'm not at this full stack developer personally, what does that mean? What it why is that more valuable, so that kind of culture can also make you feel kind of like an imposter. Well,

Ryan Burgess
yeah, that full stack to me honestly means that you are jack of all trades, that's the way I've taken that term is that you can do a lot. But you can't specialize necessarily. I don't like that term that much. To be honest,

Brian Holt
when someone tells you their full stack, like you're full of shit.

Mars Jullian
Like that thing gets interesting, especially talking about when companies put up positions, but full stack engineers, and I've had a lot of conversations with really close friends about this is that you, you have to kind of, in order to deal with the imposter syndrome and get over how you feel about those positions, you have to be really introspective and self aware to know that that company values are not going to align with yours, and you need to play yours. Or at least for me, I needed to put myself in a healthy enough situation where you realize that imposter syndrome doesn't come out of a misalignment between your position and your skills, but rather like a challenge of you know, you're in an environment with people who have similar skills, but they challenge you to be a better engineer, as opposed to challenge you to, you know, be a jack of all trades when you don't want to or force you in a direction that you're not passionate about. Or it would be bad for the company if you didn't, because you might just not be very good at it. Because you know, you're not passionate about it and kind of cycles into this thing.

Stacy London
Yeah, that's really well stated.

Ryan Burgess
How have each of you dealt with pasta syndrome? Like how can we help others deal with it? What are some advice that we can give others? I

Brian Holt
think part of it is that you're always worried that people are judging you. And probably that some of that arise, and

Ryan Burgess
we're judging you right now will fuck off.

Brian Holt
So that you're worried that others are judging us. And you're probably worried about that, because you're judging other people. And so for me personally, like being less judgmental, I'm like, the best, I have all the best words. That's what I'm trying to say.

Ryan Burgess
I kind of like that, though. It's like, if you so you're saying like, don't judge them? Yeah. And they're probably not judging you. Yeah.

Brian Holt
And then you'll be less worried about it, because it's not gonna be in the forefront of your mind,

Mars Jullian
I think also, into that point, kind of being really vulnerable, and being able to have that conversation with people just saying, you know, you know, if they are judging you to ask them why or to be able to tell them, you know, I'm not exactly sure why you did this, just to be vulnerable, and to tell them that, you know, I'm scared, cheers. And open yourself up to judgment, and then have that conversation with them. If it's if it's not well received by you, or if they're not giving the right type of feedback. Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I think, for me, it's when I remember when I first transitioned into into this career, my manager at the time told me, I was like, does this feeling ever like I was talking to him, I was like, this feeling of like, just not knowing everything always got to ever go away. He's like, nope, but you just eventually just don't care. And like, and, I mean, that sounds but I think what I think what that means is like, is your ability to just recognize it as it's irrational thinking and use it to I think what we talked about earlier, I think it's a good thing if you can use it to grow and like know, okay, I don't I'm not as familiar as all these people with this certain thing. And and, you know, and use that to your advantage

Ryan Burgess
when you've actually started new technology in the fact that you're building iOS using Swift.

Derrick Showers
Yeah. And that was definitely a challenge. I mean, it's, you know, I even so I've been doing swift for like six months. And still, like, I have constant battles with myself. And like, I should know more like I, you know, I've been doing this for six months, I should know more. But then like, you know, I have somebody telling me, oh, you're going super fast. I'm really impressive. Like, really, I don't feel like

Ryan Burgess
I'm going that fast. One advice I'd give people is like, when you hear those types of things, write that shit down, like write down the positive feedback. And just like keep that in a note or like Google Doc or wherever, is like to remind yourself that you do know what you're doing, there are things that you are kind of keep track of that shit. So when you are feeling the imposter syndrome, take a look at that. And I'm like, Derek, you're ramped up quickly, and you're like, shit, that's good.

Brian Holt
You're special, Derek.

Jessica Grist
I think what's really helped me with that is constantly pushing myself to look towards the past. And this is something that engineers in general, I think aren't very good at, we'd rather sort of rewrite code entirely or write new code instead of work with existing code and make it better. But basically, just look at what you did even say six months ago. And compare it even if you just take two pull requests, like one from six months ago, and one from last week. I like, every time I've done that. I've been amazed at how far I've come. And if you go even further back, like a year, two, like right now, you'll be like, Wow, I sometimes you'll be like, Wow, I can't believe I wrote that code. Sometimes you'll be like, Wow, I can't believe I wrote such great code last week, you know, so that's what I do. I hope

Ryan Burgess
my code from two years ago doesn't exist.

Mars Jullian
That's scary. Does that count scare? Yeah.

Derrick Showers
It's probably a bad thing. If you look at your code from two years ago, I was like, This is really good.

Mars Jullian
I think what's really humbling actually, is when you read code that you don't even understand anymore, like it was too clever to begin with, and you tricked your future self and it's not even read by other developers. That's always fun. That's fun. Interesting, like, what on earth is this

Brian Holt
doing? Give yourself imposter syndrome.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, exactly. Or you're like, well, past me was really stupid. So

Stacy London
I think one thing too, we can do. It's not necessarily To help alleviate your imposter syndrome, but we can all be better citizens of the tech community by being more kind to each other. So when you're out working like someone does something really good to actually say like to your peers, it's not just your manager's job to be like, good job. It's like, say something to your coworker. Like, that was some really great code, or thanks for helping me out. I really appreciate it. And by doing that, I think that that would then start to feel it being reciprocal. And I think all that together would help, I think, to alleviate some of the imposter syndrome

Brian Holt
be excellent to each other. Yes,

Ryan Burgess
I think the interesting thing is, is when was the last time on a pull request, you said, Wow, I really like that. Or it's usually a key tweak this, this doesn't make sense. This isn't good. Instead of tabs. That's always important feedback. Well, it's

Mars Jullian
interesting that you say that because tools like GitHub in any sort of version manager and pull request are really set up to encourage constructive criticism. When someone thinks the code is great, and has nothing bad to say about it, they usually nitpick. And that's because the tool requires some sort of input from the person who's been tagged to review it. And maybe that's a longer conversation about the way our tools are designed to shape our sort of interactions. But I think it's really interesting that people brought up the poll requesting Yeah,

Stacy London
we need more like high five emojis are out. I love

Jessica Grist
how you can now leave emojis on GitHub comments, this isn't new, it's probably like three or four. Oh, I've

Ryan Burgess
used that for a long time, like the ShipIt code. But it's nice

Jessica Grist
to just be able to attach like data to someone's like PR description, let them know that you appreciate them

Derrick Showers
must be nice to use GitHub for pull requests. What do you use? They're some proprietary or not proprietary. It's open source, but it's called Review Board. You can't use emojis, you should use it. Because it's an excellent product.

Ryan Burgess
I think another thing too, is we talked about it as we grow like I think, Jessica, you mentioned it as you start off and you think, Okay, I'm going to get over this imposter syndrome. And then you look, you're two years ahead, and now you're looking two years. And you're always kind of constantly doing that. But I think it's good to remember that you have had success in your career, you have grown. And whether it's finishing school, or gaining experience from the previous company that you were at, everyone is still growing and learning. So everyone's going through that. So I don't know how you force yourself to think through that. But I think it's always important to just take a step back and say, Oh, yes, everyone's going through this at some point in time.

Brian Holt
I think when you're thinking through something and you start using the word should a lot that should set enough like red flags in your head, like, the should word is dangerous. Like I should know this, I should be able to do this. And like sometimes it's good to like step back and question I was like, which should I really know how to do this? Like, I've been doing all this other stuff? Should I know three, JS up and down right now? Well, probably. Whenever we start using should that's a dangerous path to go down.

Ryan Burgess
Stop comparing yourself to others. I think you mentioned that earlier about, like looking at Twitter. And I think we've all mentioned that. But that's another one. Stop comparing yourself to everyone else. You're all in different spaces. Definitely doesn't imposter syndrome get better or worse as you advance in your career.

Brian Holt
It's it's about the same.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, I would agree. It's really relative to where you are, I think you start, like Jessica mentioned earlier, you start to look forward, I mean, every we're always in a position of looking forward. So we're always gonna have imposter syndrome about something, no matter how much we've learned, I think, at least for me, and I don't know how everyone else feels, but you get better at managing it. But it's still it's still the first phase you experience when you're launching into something new, whether it be a new project, a new, you know, team, new job, new opportunities, like speaking and everything. It's the first phase, please, for me,

Jessica Grist
I think what gets better over time is that it becomes less of a syndrome in the sense of like a syndrome is a bad thing that you don't want to have. So when the more experience you have, it stops, you stop feeling the effects of the the negative parts of imposter syndrome, like feeling held back feeling shame, like feeling all the shoulds. And you start thinking of it as just a way to keep yourself humble and learning. Yeah,

Derrick Showers
I think that this is a, we had talked about this in a previous episode. But about mentors, I think this is a really good reason to get a mentor. Because like Brian said earlier, and like we've all talked about, like having somebody that that you look up to that also deals with the same stuff, I think, I mean, and, and you can, it's not like you need to hear it once you need it all the time. So like, you know, like anytime you go through it, because it just happens because of being like a syndrome like it just happens over and over again. So just talking to somebody that you respect and that you look up to, and for them to tell you that like they had this exact same feeling the other day is something that's really going to help.

Ryan Burgess
And that's so powerful, like hearing when someone else deals with that, I think is the one in particular that I'd remember a story where someone I looked up to as a speaker had shared a story with me that they were so nervous on a keynote that they had to speak at that they threw up right before they went on stage and I was there and saw the talk that was given and it was amazing and I We'd have never known that it was delivered so well that I was like, oh my god, this is so good. But the fact that behind stage you didn't necessarily see that is that this person was super nervous. And to me, that was like a really powerful message. I thought that was really cool

Derrick Showers
to throw out before you give a talk.

Brian Holt
I've done that I've thrown up before talk.

Ryan Burgess
There you go. So Brian holds speaks really well at talks. There you go.

Brian Holt
I wouldn't go that far.

Mars Jullian
I think this is an imposter syndrome playing out right here. There are many people in this room who look up to Brian as a speaker. And he's like, Yeah, I'm a terrible speak.

Ryan Burgess
Have you puked on stage?

Brian Holt
I mean, I don't want to talk.

Jessica Grist
That way, you puke before you go on stage. So it's guarantee that you won't.

Ryan Burgess
So I know we've kind of touched on a bit briefly about what advice we'd give to others put a twist on it is if you notice people, like a colleague or someone that's you kind of can tell that they're dealing with imposter syndrome. How would you approach helping them in that manner?

Brian Holt
Across the office? Hey. That's why I just like you hear me sometimes the Netflix office?

Ryan Burgess
Do you yell at Mars all the time? Yeah,

Brian Holt
Kevin, you heard it.

Jessica Grist
It's all caps. And that's true. For me, it's pretty simple touching on what a few other people have said, like, just be excellent to them. If you feel like they're going through that compliment on their pull requests, try to find something like anything that they've done that you admire, and just let them know about it. For me, that's like, I feel that's better than like directly going to them and saying, Hey, I think you might be suffering from imposter syndrome. And help you with that, you know, just try to like build them up. That's not helpful. Yeah, try to build them up without making it too obvious that like you've noticed,

Stacy London
I think one thing teams can do for each other is because you can't know all the things and your teammates know, things that you don't know how to like, try and create a culture where you like, share that knowledge with each other. So if you have like, maybe once a week to get together and somebody from your team share what they know about something or, you know, talk, talk through your code with the team or, you know, that kind of knowledge sharing, I think helps everybody adjust that imposter syndrome of

Ryan Burgess
it. I think it also helps that having someone be an expert in one area, and then another person's an expert in another area, you can share that knowledge to try and help you both be better at whatever it is that you're trying to achieve. Realizing that not everyone is going to be an expert in everything. So I like that as we wrap up today's episode, we like to share pics of things that we have found interesting that we'd like to share, let's go around the table and share our picks for today's episode, Brian started off,

Brian Holt
I'm gonna pull one on since he can't be here to defend himself. And I'm going to pick Jem Young's course on front end masters launched this past week. And it's phenomenal, full stack. It is very good though. It's really awesome. It covers like command line fundamentals, like what DNS is like a bunch of that stuff that front end developers don't learn, typically by themselves that you can feel imposter syndrome about generous goes over in really simple details so that you no longer have to feel any sort of imposter syndrome about how to deploy or things like that.

Ryan Burgess
I think it's good too, because that does help those conversations. So at least if someone you're in a meeting and some back end engineers talking about something that you don't maybe understand at least you're like, oh, at a high level, I can get that. And I think Jem does a very good job of speaking to that.

Brian Holt
Yeah. And then he can come out there. She's like, No, Jem Young said this. I'm gonna call Jem Young, using Jem Young.

Stacy London
That's all Yeah, so I have two picks. My first pick is glitch comm. And it's a new, I don't know how new it is. I don't know how long it's been around. But it's from the creators of Trello Fog Creek software. And I thought it was a cool pic for the imposter syndrome show because like, how complicated things are some like to get a web app going these days, it can be kind of overwhelming. And if you're kind of new, maybe that's like almost a blocker for you. Like I can't even get this running. Now what am I going to do? So this is a it's an app that gets a lot of that stuff scaffolded for you and has the whole app there, it can deploy it, run it in, it's, it gets you going, I think a lot faster. And I think it's it's kind of an awesome tool. So that's my first pick. And then my second pick is a new song from butane called empty promise. He hasn't put anything out in a while. I don't think so. I appreciate it. I always appreciate new music

Ryan Burgess
just already have.

Jessica Grist
Well, I was told and the instructions for the podcast that our picks did not have to relate to tech. They could be things like oh, they can be anything music, TV books, etc. So I'm going to reveal my other geek colors here and say that I'm totally obsessed with history. And that one of my favorite podcasts is called the stuff you missed in history class. And I would recommend everyone take a look at it. You can advertise

Brian Holt
to the public

Jessica Grist
Well, now I'm feeling shame and I might even be a little scared. Anyway, it's a fantastic podcast. So go and take a gander at it.

Ryan Burgess
Maurice, what do you have?

Mars Jullian
I'm gonna have two picks for today. The first one is a conference called Nordic JS much pick that one, I don't know, I think I might be speaking I have to check. So low self promotion. But also I've heard it's a really great conference. And if anyone wants to come explore Scandinavia with me, you're more than welcome to. And the second is another podcast, which will give you major imposter syndrome called how I built this. Just to help you, you know, in how you feel in your life, it's an NPR podcast, which really gives a lot of insight into how a lot of the perceived geniuses who start companies either stumble on or, you know, build their companies. And actually, I think it really helps with imposter syndrome when we think about it, because you hear the really detailed origin stories of all these companies, for example, Crate and Barrel lifts. They're either tech companies or they're not. And it's just you hear the mistakes, you hear the, you know, happenstance that goes into building these giant corporations. And it's just really, really interesting to hear these people talk about how they've built

Ryan Burgess
their labs. I'll second that I listened to that one often.

Mars Jullian
Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Derek, what are you

Derrick Showers
alright, I have three, two real ones. Not

Stacy London
one. Imposter. Yeah.

Derrick Showers
So my first one is Ember comp. It just happened last week. If you write Ember and you want to know what like the state of the framework is, I definitely recommend on YouTube, they publish on both days of the Ember videos. So if nothing else, just listen to the keynote with you who to and Tom. I have imposter syndrome right now, because Brian is looking at me. The other thing that I thought was pretty cool. That just came out came out a little while ago, but code pen projects. So it's a enhancement to code pen. And you can essentially do what you could originally do with code pen but have multiple files and do an actual project. And you can even deploy that to GitHub or whatever and heavily in deploy to an actual like server so it's pretty cool. And then my third one, I had to mention this because I want to see a movie yesterday and I normally go to this place called Alamo Drafthouse. Alamo Drafthouse is across the country, so hopefully there's one near you, but I went to a different theater and I was like, I don't want to go to this theater. But Alamo Drafthouse wasn't playing the movie that I wanted to go see. So I went to Kabuki and I was not impressed. I was like, it was $30 for two drinks. And it was I mean, the Drafthouse is pretty damn expensive it is but it's like not not it wasn't these prices,

Mars Jullian
the milkshakes but you know, I love the

Brian Holt
Paltan computer Kabuki

Derrick Showers
just one of the coolest things I think about Alamo Drafthouse is is they do Ellard pre shows to the movie that you're about to see. So they like to see the Star Wars and they did like all this like history of Star Wars and it's like custom for the movie. I think that's really cool. I went into this theater and I just sat there and looked at a white screen. I was thinking about how much I hate this theater.

Ryan Burgess
So your pick is an anti pick. No. So I think

Derrick Showers
is Alamo Drafthouse can never go anywhere else.

Ryan Burgess
Alright, so I have two picks. One is react calm videos are now off. I'm going through them. They're amazing. Like each talk, I watch. I wish I was there when they were presenting, because it's really good. So I highly recommend checking those videos out. And then my second pick, I'm going to pick because I feel sorry for this show has been picked on in the media and saying that Iron Fist is not that great. I disagree. I've really enjoyed it. So far. This Netflix Original. It's awesome. I really enjoyed it. But I know the critics are picking on it saying it's not that great. I highly disagree. That's good. All right. So before we end the episode, I want to thank Jessica for joining us on being a guest. Thank you.

Jessica Grist
Thank you for having me. It's

Ryan Burgess
been a pleasure. It was a pleasure having you join us where can people get in touch with you? Yeah, um,

Jessica Grist
so I do have a Twitter I forced myself to get a Twitter when I switched into engineering having resisted until then. Yeah, so my Twitter is I'm gonna have to spell it for y'all. It's the hack stress, which is spelled that obviously you probably know how to spell that. And after it is h ack, s t r e s s.

Ryan Burgess
Well thank you all for listening to today's episode. Make sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram at front N H H. And I'm scared to ask any last words cheers. Cheers.