0:13

Today I'm going to share with you all of my flaws

0:15

, all of my insecurities that I had

0:17

when I was a professional developer , some

0:19

of which I still have to this day . I

0:23

want to get deep with this . There

0:25

are a lot of people with anxiety , there are a lot of people

0:28

with just

0:30

racing thoughts , and a

0:32

lot of them revolve around your confidence

0:34

of becoming a developer , being hired , professionally

0:37

, working with other people I

0:39

have . Working

0:41

as a developer has propped up so many insecurities

0:44

, some of which I didn't even know I had , and

0:46

I think that's a really interesting thing that

0:48

becoming a software engineer allows you

0:50

to do . It , allows you to discover this stuff

0:53

. But I think , and I hope this is

0:55

going to make you feel better when you hear the

0:57

long list that I've

0:59

had and I've had to work through . So , oh

1:03

boy , let's start with my first

1:05

job . I remember first week I

1:07

was hired . My boss was remote . I

1:10

never got to meet him until maybe

1:13

six months into my employment , and

1:16

so I never really

1:18

knew what he thought of me , because

1:20

I feel like I can sense that when I'm across

1:23

the table with someone a lot better than even

1:26

just a video chat . So

1:28

first week I was given a long

1:30

list of tasks to do to set up my environment . It

1:33

was very long , very long , very

1:35

command line intensive , something I wasn't comfortable

1:37

with when I first started and

1:40

I felt like I

1:42

hit every single bug that you

1:44

could possibly hit in setting that

1:46

up and every time

1:48

I was dreading

1:50

reaching out to my boss . Or do I reach

1:52

out to my boss for the fourth time ? Do I just ping a senior developer so my

1:54

boss doesn't know that I'm having this much trouble and he's probably just going to fire me because

1:56

, like this is the first time , do I just ping a senior developer so my boss doesn't know that I'm having

1:58

this much trouble and he's probably just going to fire

2:01

me because this is the first

2:03

task that I have and I can't even do this . This is

2:05

poof , okay . So

2:07

trying to figure that out

2:09

I'm just going to disable my alerts right now because

2:11

I'm recording , okay . So

2:14

trying to figure that out

2:16

was a

2:18

nightmare for my first week and I thought

2:20

I was going to be fired the whole week and I was constantly

2:23

reminded and reassured that this is

2:25

okay . And then I found out I was being , or

2:27

I was , used as a guinea pig for a new process

2:29

and even when I was told that I'm

2:32

still like I still should know this . This is crazy

2:34

. I'm a professional developer . Now they are paying me

2:36

a lot more money than I've ever earned . I

2:38

should know this stuff . It took me a while

2:41

for that feeling to go away a

2:43

very long while

2:46

, and that essentially

2:48

, was a repeating

2:50

pattern of me diving into discovering

2:53

a bug of me

2:55

uh , or not discovering a bug me

2:57

tackling my first bug and trying

2:59

to trace through the logic of the bug

3:01

. And if it , you know , I'd

3:04

go through multiple pages just

3:06

to even understand this tiny little

3:08

feature . I would constantly question

3:10

am I taking

3:13

too long in this ? Who is watching me ? Is the

3:15

project manager watching me ? Are other

3:17

developers on the team watching me ? Because I got

3:19

to be judging me Brand new developer on

3:22

the team , right , and

3:24

you know , developers have

3:27

a high . There's a high expectation for developers

3:29

, especially in a tech-focused company . You

3:32

are essentially what I

3:35

would say like part of what drives that business , but you are

3:37

a very crucial part and , man , I

3:40

just kept thinking I don't think

3:43

I deserve to get paid this much . This is crazy

3:45

. They are going to fire me at some point . And

3:48

then I was given a feature and

3:51

then I was given

3:53

more features and more complex features and

3:56

I felt like and I really want

3:59

this to , I

4:01

really want you to understand this . Actually , before

4:03

I move on from this , a lesson that

4:05

I learned that took me too long

4:08

to learn was that when

4:11

a company hires you and you did

4:13

not lie on your resume

4:15

you were honest . Holy

4:18

shit , do they not want to lose

4:20

you ? I felt like I was so

4:22

incredibly replaceable from the

4:24

beginning that anyone

4:26

could do this and that like they

4:29

could probably replace me within like a week

4:31

if they wanted to . They had a long

4:33

list , a pipeline of people that

4:35

just wanted my position . Holy

4:38

shit , does it take so much time and resources

4:40

to hire developers ? I

4:43

don't envy hiring managers

4:45

in the tech scene . I really don't . They

4:47

got to sift through a lot

4:49

of resumes , a lot of applications

4:52

, a lot of just

4:54

interest in DMs just

5:04

interest and DMs and it just becomes spam at a certain point . I

5:06

was way , way more valuable than I thought . I was right from the beginning , no

5:08

matter how long it took me

5:10

to figure out parts

5:12

of the code base , no matter how long it took me

5:14

to figure out the right questions

5:17

to ask my

5:19

team in different departments

5:22

and working , then working with design

5:24

as I started taking a little

5:26

bit more ownership of features . But every

5:28

new person I met I

5:31

felt like my manager

5:34

or people higher up were

5:36

going to ping that person and ask

5:38

what was their experience like

5:40

. For some reason

5:42

, I felt like every new

5:44

encounter meeting someone in the company

5:46

was an opportunity for

5:48

me to make a bad impression

5:50

. And , holy shit , are

5:53

people more generous and

5:55

forgiving than at

5:58

least I envisioned

6:02

them to be ? And

6:05

the people I worked with were incredibly kind

6:07

and patient . And in

6:09

most tech teams that

6:12

want to hire good developers

6:14

, that culture that

6:16

friendly , positive , constructive

6:19

culture where everyone wants you to

6:21

grow like that needs

6:23

to be there or you lose good developers

6:26

. I didn't realize

6:28

that and I looked at every

6:30

new task , every new

6:32

challenge as an opportunity

6:34

for me to show why

6:36

I wasn't good enough . This

6:41

took a long time . I don't know

6:44

when the shift happened

6:46

in my confidence I think it

6:48

was sometime in my second company but this took a long

6:50

time for me to finally

6:53

realize how valuable I was

6:55

as a software engineer . Realize

7:04

how valuable I was as a software engineer . I feel like , if I don't know , if you guys are worried about

7:07

this . I don't know if you guys are worried about even are you hireable

7:09

if you can build full fledged applications

7:11

? I like I don't know where

7:14

this anxiety starts in some people

7:16

, but I think a lot of people face

7:18

this at different points in their learning journey

7:20

and even very long

7:23

into their development career . Wherever

7:26

it starts . For you , the only

7:29

solution literally is just

7:31

time . So

7:34

if you feel like you are still encountering

7:37

feelings of imposter syndrome , it's

7:39

just time . And producing

7:42

results and getting that feedback

7:44

and repeating that over and over

7:47

and over and over , and then you feel slightly

7:49

better and better and better and better and

7:51

better . I

7:56

was

7:58

blown away after

8:01

my first company by

8:04

how little I knew going into my second

8:06

company . My

8:09

first company felt like a cakewalk compared

8:11

to my second company . I

8:13

went from having about a year of experience

8:15

thinking , oh , I'm getting out of this junior

8:17

level developer position , I'm

8:19

getting more comfortable , and I got tossed

8:22

a different stack even in my first position

8:24

and figured out most of it before I left

8:26

and , man

8:28

, I felt pretty good , like I was making progress . And

8:30

then I got humbled so

8:33

much the JavaScript

8:36

developers or just the developers in general , because

8:38

we didn't necessarily have all JavaScript on the backend

8:41

. If I remember correctly , just

8:44

the developers in general were just brilliant

8:46

and the

8:49

JavaScript developers in general knew

8:51

way more about JavaScript

8:53

than I thought you could

8:55

know . And that's

8:57

when I got introduced to the book you Don't Know JS

9:00

or that whole series , and

9:02

they highly encouraged me to read it , which was one of the

9:04

best reads at that time in my career

9:06

that I've

9:08

ever read and

9:11

it deepened my knowledge of JavaScript . It deepened

9:13

my knowledge of the flaws of JavaScript

9:15

and , more importantly

9:17

, I was incredibly

9:20

overwhelmed

9:23

. Not overwhelmed , I was very insecure

9:26

about my knowledge with CSS . I

9:29

don't know how these developers remembered

9:32

every damn

9:34

property and could pinpoint every

9:36

solution right away that I had

9:38

been working on for two hours

9:41

. Every

9:43

time they would show me the solution , I'd be

9:45

like how the fuck did

9:47

you do that so quickly ? Like

9:49

that's what I would think of my head . I'd be

9:51

like , oh , yeah , yeah , that's I

9:54

get that , like I would . I'd

9:56

be so insecure because the knowledge

9:58

gap was so different and

10:02

they didn't think about this

10:04

. This is all in my head

10:06

. I thought about the knowledge gap . I

10:09

thought about trying to be that awesome

10:11

engineer , just like they were . All

10:14

they wanted me to be was humble and

10:16

cool to work with . Like that's it right

10:18

If I'm humble enough to learn and

10:21

drop my ego and pick up what they're doing

10:23

? Like the only thing holding

10:25

me back with my growth up

10:28

until this point was my ego . That

10:30

is it . I put that aside and I grow

10:32

and the team loves me Love

10:34

is a strong word . They tolerate me but

10:37

they want me on the team and they enjoy working

10:39

with me . It was just ego and I had

10:41

a battle with ego . There were plenty of times where

10:43

I , just like

10:47

you know , sometimes I'd get code reviews that were

10:49

a bit more candid , which the code reviews

10:52

I got at the first company were very

10:55

kind , not as candid , and

10:57

I felt like I grew a lot more from the code

10:59

reviews at my second company . But I had to overcome

11:02

just being told like

11:05

no , this is just wrong

11:07

. Here's why this is a better way of doing

11:10

it rather than being given a

11:12

softball , like when I look back at my code

11:14

reviews with my second company . That kind of is a softball

11:16

. They were very helpful , very constructive , but

11:24

the comparison between the first company and second company , I'm like holy shit , like they are

11:26

blunt . This is good , but man , I gotta . I gotta just like take this in

11:28

stride and put my emotions aside and just

11:30

like grow from this . Um

11:32

, you're like . I got different

11:34

forms of feedback that did check

11:36

my ego and to

11:39

this day I still

11:41

have a bit of an ego with coding

11:43

. I still can take it personally

11:46

. And one thing I've

11:48

had to learn is I have to look at intention

11:50

when you're communicating with other developers

11:53

. They're just going to be dicks and they're

11:55

going to just be people that want to get

11:57

straight to the point and help you grow as fast

11:59

as possible , and you have to know how to differentiate

12:02

between the two and I think I've gotten pretty good at

12:04

that . But for a long time

12:06

it was just a reminder of man

12:08

, incredible skill gap , incredible

12:11

skill gap , month after month after month

12:13

. And this is crazy . And I realized

12:15

and I started questioning like , do I even have the memory

12:17

to do this ? Maybe it's my memory ? And I

12:20

realized and I started questioning like , do I even have the memory to

12:22

do this ? Maybe it's my memory . And one thing that I learned is they

12:25

just remember all this stuff because of years

12:27

of experience in doing it . It just got

12:29

reinforced and even if they forgot it

12:31

. They pick it up that much quicker . And

12:33

I felt like for some reason , I

12:35

had to remember everything

12:38

, every piece of syntax

12:40

. I had to remember like I

12:42

needed to come to these solutions quickly

12:45

, because I should be able to remember

12:47

all the tools that I had in my arsenal

12:49

to be able to solve that problem . And

13:24

every time I Googled

13:26

something , every time I looked something up

13:28

. That was a weakness . It

13:31

wasn't , but

13:33

it took me a long time to realize that . And

13:39

then I put more time into it and

13:41

I gained more confidence . And

13:44

then I and this was

13:46

in the first company too , but

13:49

I would interact with different departments and

13:51

then sometimes you get a bit of

13:54

like is this my

13:56

fault , is it not ? I don't believe

13:58

in ownership of faults

14:00

when it's not your fault . I think

14:02

that's dishonest and I don't want to be

14:04

dishonest . I want people

14:06

. That

14:10

is holding true

14:13

to my values . But the

14:15

other part is

14:17

forcing myself , before

14:20

I ever spoke up , to

14:23

be a little bit more critical

14:25

if I could have done something

14:27

better before I spoke up . Now

14:30

I'm giving like

14:32

I'm saying how I fixed this problem

14:34

of , you

14:36

know , taking ownership when I need to take ownership

14:39

. But you know

14:41

, those first two years I didn't take

14:43

ownership when I should have taken ownership in some situations

14:46

and I was quick to

14:48

blame in some situations

14:50

. There are some situations where , like the other person

14:53

was so , they were so humble

14:55

and it got me to be humble and it was . That was easy

14:57

. That's the easy conversation when something

14:59

goes wrong between departments and

15:01

then you get people that are

15:04

not as quick to take ownership , that are

15:06

quick to blame , and when

15:08

they do that , then I get a little bit

15:10

like my ego pops up and no , no

15:13

, it's your fault . You told me this , right . I

15:15

had many instances

15:17

of that that I had to work through and

15:20

it got better . It

15:23

only got better when

15:26

I got to know the other person . I

15:29

feel like this

15:32

is such an important part of growing

15:34

on a team . It's just

15:37

building trust with the people

15:39

that you're working with . It's such

15:41

a natural way for that ego to

15:43

drop . It's such a natural way

15:45

when you know and you can trust

15:47

they have good intentions for you . But

15:50

I didn't know that at the time and

15:53

it took me probably

15:55

until the end maybe not

15:57

the end , but it took me a while to

16:00

really start getting my ego in check

16:02

and not blaming other departments

16:04

right away . Sometimes it was their fault , sometimes it wasn't

16:07

, but the wording like , even if I shift my

16:09

perspective , the wording could be better . Like

16:27

, even if I

16:29

shift my perspective , the wording could

16:32

be are going to look at me as a bad developer

16:34

, a developer they can't work with

16:36

. I don't know why I

16:38

had this mindset and

16:40

, holy shit , was it freeing the

16:43

more I admitted . Fuck , I

16:46

forgot . I'm sorry . Okay

16:48

, you're right , you did tell me this . I think

16:50

I should have asked this follow up question , this clarifying

16:53

question . That's probably my fault . I could

16:55

have done better there , and it's so often

16:57

when you do that , if you've done this working in

16:59

positions , you can , when your ego

17:01

drops , the other person's ego drops . It's

17:05

easy for me to say this . What I'm saying

17:07

is true . It's

17:09

much harder for me to implement

17:11

. This Ego is just one

17:13

of those things that you're going to battle for a while if

17:15

you have it . Some people have conquered it sooner

17:18

in life than I did , and

17:21

these kind of things are still things I have to check

17:23

myself on . Sometimes . These things aren't

17:25

things I've solved necessarily

17:28

. I continue to work on them , but

17:30

I'm at a much better place . I

17:32

continue to work on them , but I'm at a much better

17:35

place . It took me so long

17:37

to finally find my value

17:39

in a company and

17:42

that wasn't until my third

17:45

company and

17:56

then my third company . I remember having to deal with neurological problems that were like

17:58

my body literally would like twitch and jerk in like I . It was

18:00

weird and it took me a very long time to

18:02

figure out . I was taking a

18:04

pre-workout that was causing that I had an

18:06

electrolyte imbalance . It took

18:09

me a long time to figure that out and all

18:11

I could think about was my

18:13

health . And when

18:16

I did that , when I kind of had that

18:19

that personal

18:21

thing that came up that just mentally

18:23

sucked my energy out of me , I

18:26

couldn't make a lot of progress with my code

18:28

. I had trouble balancing

18:30

my personal life . I had trouble shutting that

18:32

off and focusing

18:36

on my mind and getting in that flow

18:38

state and

18:40

I had trouble shifting

18:44

my thoughts . My thoughts controlled me

18:46

. And my third position is when I truly realized

18:48

how little control I have over

18:51

the emotions that are attached to my thoughts

18:53

, and meditation really helped

18:55

with this . But I didn't discover that

18:57

until later , and so then

18:59

I started like the first two positions

19:02

were fairly easy because I didn't have

19:04

major life circumstances come

19:06

up that would cause me to go

19:08

into work and just not want to be

19:10

there day in and day out . It caused me to go into work and just not want

19:13

to be there day in and day out . And then my insecurities crept

19:15

in because I wasn't making

19:17

progress . And I wanted to make that

19:19

progress . I wanted to do well , I wanted

19:21

to contribute to the team and

19:25

I think those are very

19:27

natural , yeah , but it

19:30

just I had a hard time

19:32

balancing that and

19:35

I feel like it

19:38

took me a while to

19:41

realize and I looked at my all

19:44

my old managers it

19:46

took me a while to realize that I I

19:49

was too much of a people pleaser . I

19:51

felt like I wasn't really focusing on myself

19:53

enough . I wasn't focusing on a

19:55

good work life balance

19:58

. I wasn't focusing on my health . I wasn't focusing

20:00

on my fitness . The team

20:02

didn't cause me to do that . I did that right

20:05

. When things got rough with both work

20:07

and both my personal

20:09

health , I

20:11

realized the fix was

20:13

focusing more on

20:16

solving a lot of the issues

20:18

that I had in my personal

20:21

life , because I carried over into work

20:23

way more than I realized I did . I

20:25

thought I had that under control and

20:27

I didn't . So that's when I started to prioritize

20:29

mental health . That's when I started to prioritize

20:32

fitness a little bit more . But

20:37

that balance of

20:39

my personal life and my work life always

20:42

caused me to question am

20:44

I doing a good enough job ? Anytime

20:46

I would slow down . Anytime I wouldn't hit deadlines

20:49

down

20:55

anytime I wouldn't hit deadlines . And I realized , like the second , I stopped trying to please my manager

20:57

and the team and sometimes I just had to take a week

20:59

off and shift that focus on my mental

21:01

health . The second , I stopped trying to please

21:04

everyone and start balancing

21:06

my life . Then my work got

21:09

better . Um , now

21:11

I do think , like , like it took

21:13

a while to deal with the health issue

21:15

and I think my work could have been much

21:18

, much , much better . But it did get better

21:20

over time when I took care of my personal health . But

21:22

I realized that I'm

21:24

always trying to please other people and I

21:26

think that is

21:29

the root to

21:34

so many of my insecurities and

21:36

I've gotten much better with that . But I cared

21:38

about what people thought I

21:42

did for way too long and

21:45

it held me back as a developer , winded

21:48

, um , talk

21:51

about , like , my , my health and my , my

21:53

mental health . But it

21:56

wasn't until I

21:59

started focusing on my mental health and

22:01

my fitness and my diet , until

22:04

I started

22:07

doing better as a developer things . I

22:11

was able to process things more clearly , my memory

22:13

was better . I was I

22:16

. I I had a better perspective . Every

22:18

single interaction that I had was

22:20

the result

22:22

was better . They liked working with

22:24

me more . Now

22:28

I don't think this was

22:30

kind of a gradual fix

22:33

and I went from worse to

22:35

better . I think there were waves

22:37

of it and I would have

22:39

to . And I think , like kind of

22:41

as we go through life , you're probably going to

22:43

notice that a lot of your moods , a lot

22:45

of your drive it

22:47

can be seasonal I don't know if you've ever

22:49

noticed that , but sometimes

22:52

it isn't because of external circumstances

22:54

. There's probably a bit more involved with

22:56

it , but sometimes you're going to have big dips

22:58

in motivation , excitement and energy . Sometimes

23:00

they're going to have lulls , sometimes

23:02

you're going to be a little bit depressed

23:04

, sometimes they're going to feel a little anxiety , right

23:07

, and I think you

23:09

have to look back or at least

23:11

I had to look back and realize

23:13

this is happening again . It's

23:15

because I'm not taking care of this , it's because

23:18

I'm not taking care of this and I

23:20

really think and

23:22

I want you to hear this I really think

23:24

most insecurity , most

23:26

imposter syndrome comes

23:29

from an

23:31

imbalanced life . It comes

23:33

from not taking care of your home

23:35

, not taking care of your responsibilities

23:37

, not taking care of your , your

23:39

health and your mental health . These

23:42

things have affected my ability

23:45

to code more than anything else

23:47

. These things have affected my

23:50

confidence . These things have affected

23:52

my outlook

23:54

in life , just

23:57

my happiness , my fulfillment

23:59

, my confidence

24:03

that I'm actually going about that I

24:05

want to achieve in one year and three

24:07

years and five years . Everything

24:15

gets better , significantly

24:18

better , when you

24:20

take care of your personal stuff . A

24:22

lot of people say imposter syndrome

24:24

is normal . As a developer , it's

24:29

normal and

24:31

it shouldn't be , and

24:36

I think that's the wrong way to look at it , to call it normal . It's extremely

24:38

common . But the root

24:40

of imposter syndrome comes

24:44

from your personal shit . It comes from your

24:46

childhood . It's not a developer

24:48

thing . I promise

24:50

you , imposter syndrome

24:52

is a signal that

24:54

you have things to work on outside

24:57

the dev world , significantly

25:00

more than just growing as

25:02

a developer , because everyone

25:04

is trying to grow as a developer more and more

25:06

and more and more , and all you hear

25:08

is that imposter syndrome is just normal

25:11

. I have it to this day . Sometimes

25:13

I think people are being a little bit humble

25:15

to try to cushion

25:18

it for junior developers

25:20

, but

25:24

there are a lot of people that actually still have imposter syndrome and it's because it shouldn't

25:26

be normal , because they should have been a

25:28

little bit more critical of where it stemmed from . And

25:31

I'm telling you this because

25:33

a lot of people have imposter syndrome and I

25:35

think you can really ease

25:37

that . Feel more confident

25:40

about your trajectory as a developer

25:42

. Feel more confident that you can be a developer

25:44

, that you're hireable , that you're valuable , that

25:47

you don't have to let

25:49

your manager define how good of a

25:52

software engineer you are , that you don't have

25:54

to let anyone else define who

25:56

you are or the value that you

25:58

bring to every interaction that you have

26:00

. It comes from inside

26:03

, it's internal , and

26:05

I started getting more confident with that

26:07

as I dealt with my personal shit

26:09

. That

26:14

as I dealt with my personal shit . So I can't give you a template or a guideline to be able to make

26:16

you feel better about all of your anxiety and insecurities you have about becoming

26:18

a developer , because it's unique

26:21

to you and maybe you don't want to hear that

26:23

, but it is . It takes work . It takes

26:25

a lot of work . But

26:27

time and reflection

26:29

you combine those . Time

26:31

and reflection you combine those . You're going to make phenomenal

26:34

success in your career . You're

26:37

going to feel good about the direction you're going

26:39

and you're going to realize you

26:42

are going to never be perfect . You are

26:44

always going to have flaws . Some of these

26:46

flaws will never leave you . They're just going to get better

26:48

, and that's okay . It's

26:53

literally just about forward progress and momentum . But that's not going to get better , and that's that's

26:55

okay . It's literally just about forward progress and momentum . But that's not going to happen . You

26:57

are not going to solve that by getting better

26:59

at code . You are going to solve that by

27:01

dealing with your personal shit .