The Battle Against Imposter Syndrome As A New Developer

welcome back to another web development podcast episode where we help aspiring developers get jobs and junior developers grow i have lost count of the number of people struggling with imposter syndrome trying to become a developer i would argue like everyone that comes into my chat my live streams my podcast episodes you've all faced it and if you're saying you haven't faced it you're kind of full of crap like we've all faced those bumps try to become a developer no one goes through an easy path entirely so i kind of want to shed some light on you know essentially four developers right here that have gone through some bumps in the road trying to become a developer it's not an easy path and i kind of want to you know make this a bit more personal dive into things a bit and hopefully you can find this relatable by the end of the episode maybe we can leave you with some advice going forward so i brought these fine gentlemen on my podcast we reviewed coding temple um in the previous episode maybe two previous episodes but i brought him back uh great vibe so we're gonna jump i guess you know what let's go ahead and do our intros we'll do like 30 second intro introduce yourself for those that have not seen the previous episode we'll start with you russell all right i'm russell anderson i'm 40 years old i uh live in the southeastern united states i've been a developer about five six months now um been a bumpy road but but but a good one all right how about you eric hi my name is eric jang uh i i've been a developer for what almost a year now uh it's pretty pretty much nothing new going on okay cool how about you sydney yeah i'm sydney i live in the midwest uh around milwaukee and uh not a developer but mostly work in the the data science field data analyst field um and uh as well from coding temple graduated uh was part of that august cohort all right cool all right so let's jump into the meat of things um i'm gonna share a few things and you know if you've watched my live streams you're gonna hear a few things i've talked about in the past but i want to share a few bumps in the road that i've hit um because i there were so many points where i felt like i wasn't going to become a developer in fact like i went through am i even going to be successful in life right i was faced with this decision of it's taking a long ass time to become a developer there's local mills right i know people in the mills i might just need a job to be able to pay the rent so i stopped hopping from home to home try to afford rent right that was the situation i was at when i was becoming a developer i almost gave up i truly did i was picking up part-time jobs um i just i got lost and for those that don't know i actually went to coding bootcamp at the end of that journey it was like okay you know what if i can't become a developer within like four or five months or so like i really have to choose a different path at this point i've invested way too much time into it i remember going in i was surrounded by people multiple people that had like computer science degrees and they were knocking data structures and algorithms problems out of the park i'm sitting here struggling feeling so stupid like so i'm like how am i surrounded by all these people like i just i can't get it does my brain not work like that is it not fast enough and like man i i remember like second week in my train got stopped uh because i would take the train and commute was like two hours into chicago two hours out and i would take the train into full stack academy and i got stuck and the trucks got frozen i was stuck there for like six hours i was already struggling i missed a little bit of class and i was already falling behind i remember talking to um the director at the time like you know is this even the right fit to continue this like i'm already like it was kind of just like it felt like a sign for me to just give up and i'm glad i didn't i didn't and i went to school the next day but that was the moment that i almost just completely gave up on my journey of becoming a developer and that confidence the thing is like i didn't i didn't think or do anything to like move me past that moment i just kept going forward and that confidence didn't even come for like a year later into being an actual professional developer like i struggled all the way through a coding bootcamp and becoming a developer with like no confidence whatsoever um man i just i came so close to giving up and when i talk to so many aspiring developers they're they're in the same path right everyone has their different story they have their different challenges but um i like i don't i don't really have the secret to like get past that imposter syndrome right and for me it's like even when i give people that advice it's it's you have to just keep moving forward that a confidence will eventually come you have to trust a process um so like i don't have this formula the secret to get past imposter syndrome is just literally continue moving forward gaining more accomplishments until you slowly build up that confidence but you know that's sometimes i sell my journey as like an easy road to becoming a developer it's not it was a rocky one i took like two years three months to become a developer i finally got that first position but that's kind of my journey um i want to hear your journeys uh like tell me you know share some of the the bumpy parts of that journey for you well for me i mean as a career changer i think you know one thing it's easy to lose sight of what success actually looks like um it doesn't matter what you're doing for work in this country your your your personal viewpoint of success it could be drastically different than somebody else's so it doesn't matter how much money you're making it doesn't matter really um it doesn't really really your stanchion in life you know if you get satisfaction of if you go home and you're happy you know you can make you make a good life and you know that's one of the reasons why i chose software engineering even though that wasn't my initial reason and i came to that because of how difficult it is um you're not necessarily going to have easy days as as as some of us do in some of our professions and what i mean by an easy day is a day you just show up and you really don't do anything you're not challenging any way shape or form and the actual process of becoming a software engineer is the same way and i've had that process too um impostor syndrome um unsure yourself uh there's a lot of emotions and thoughts that go along with it um pushing through is really the only way but um just like don said there's no right answer um i know for me uh failing at the live interview has been new and it's been tough to deal with i'm not accustomed to not looking good in front of people i'm trying to get a job from um and it's been a it's it's hard to adjust to um and i'll share a little bit more a little bit later but but well you know we all we all go through tough times um what i what i have found in my personal journey as far as this has been concerned there's been more there's been a lot of dark days but it hasn't necessarily been dark outside it's just been dark inside you still see the sunlight too it's kind of weird it's kind of strange i like that how about you guys i i guess i would add on on the topic of imposter syndrome uh my journey has been um you know also quite rough uh coming from a mechanical engineering background to a software engineering boot camp um you know there were days when you know i've broken down right there are days where it's like damn you know why am i doing this why not just you know switch to a different boot camp or do something completely something else right when i just go to work at mcdonald's you know as long as i'm paying the rent you know what am i upset about uh but i i think ultimately it's important very important to have a very good support system like i had my friends who had my back during that time right i'm not gonna lie i have cried during uh the duration of the boot camp but it was my friends and also my colleagues throughout the the cohort that supported me that i'm able to continue my journey to this point um and i would say probably the best lesson i've learned thus far is the connections you've made with people in life there are going to be a lot of people they're all they're all going to be your supporters you know they all have faith in you it it ultimately comes down to if you have faith in yourself but when you when you uh struggle to believe in yourself you know reach reach out to your friends reach out to your family members yeah i feel that so much um yeah from from my side and maybe even going as to why i decided to go to the boot camp i think it was because i felt like an imposter to begin with um i didn't go for to become a full-stack developer but to enhance and and put my my data technical skills on on steroids i was a data analyst but i didn't feel like one the technical maturity stack that i had at best was excel google sheets and a couple of g suite apis but that's not really using any technical skills so for me it was um i feel like an imposter because i look at other people that are data analysts at other roles at other companies and they have they have a stack and they can talk sql and python and all these amazing languages and they know what it means um so i think for me it was because of imposter syndrome i wanted to get rid of it um but then i ended up having a different kind of imposter syndrome where it's like i'm uncomfortable but that's kind of a good thing but i felt that i didn't belong but it was i think because i want i didn't feel that i belonged um but that was a good thing because it means i was not comfortable and the opposite for imposter syndrome would be not growing just being static doing nothing you're not growing so i think feeling uncomfortable and feel like an imposter is a good hit it's a good thing in a weird way you know that's that's interesting so i heard a phrase a long time ago um if you if you kind of have a feeling if you kind of have a gut feeling or an idea you're supposed to do something and you're afraid of doing it but you have a couple options in front of you and this one is a bit easier not so afraid you know it's probably more achievable you absolutely should tackle what you're afraid of specifically like you got away like what's actually going to give you the most value but like that lesson essentially is like you have to kind of charge forward into those uncomfortable situations and you like you said you can use that imposter syndrome as fuel you can like it's a double-edged sword it can be debilitating and it can fuel you and sometimes i mean maybe this is unhealthy but for me it's like man i'm not doing good enough like i i can achieve a lot more i can accomplish a lot more and like having that constant nagging feeling of i'm not doing enough and i'm always critical and i know i can achieve more it's like that's been very stressful in my life and that's part of who i am of my personality but that literally is my driver if i erase that i don't have a drive anymore right so it's that double-edged sword that you have to have to balance and you know whether that's super healthy or not maybe it is maybe it isn't but like a common thing i hear with a lot of people is you know that can be a little bit of a fire under your butt it can be that motivation but how do you balance it and not completely burn out i completely agree you can't have your cake and eat it too there's the anxiety and stress part of it but then i lost the fire in my belly so wait but you know just like anything you have to learn how to be successful so in this process you're you know you're learning something new um you don't know what that's going to look like when you get to the end of the tunnel so you don't know so you really don't know what success is going to look like so you know as uh to what you say don about imposter syndrome driving you and and creating a fire under you that's what it's really done for me while initially it the first month and a half it paralyzed me i'll be honest it completely paralyzed me and there's many jobs or else it's like that i'm not even apply to that because you know what i know that they won't even that they won't even take a look at me but after i after i fell on my face a few times i started to sit back and be like you know what it really doesn't matter how i feel if i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it so you know let's go do something if you don't if you're too scared to do this let's go do something else and so you know i think it's part of how you look at it but also you know um i have that same fire as you do dawn you know there's been times in my life where i've switched up because i didn't think i was doing enough i wasn't happy with the amount that i was doing whether that was right or wrong in the moment it was irrelevant to me in my head i just wasn't doing enough so you know i think it's a beautiful thing this is one of those beautiful things where if you work hard at it it doesn't matter how well or how bad it went at the beginning if you work hard at it and and get to a point where you see the results and you can see success and what you've done boy that's sweet and i know for all of us as you get older those those chances come or those opportunities become more uh fewer and far between and so and you got to jump on it when you got a chance i like that that's some wisdom right there um you mentioned this idea so i guess i'm kind of curious what you guys think i think it's crucial that you know the direction you want to head in in life right and i feel like having that even that long-term vision can be very very helpful and sometimes it's even defined like you said as what success looks like to you as you mentioned russell um and it could be a little bit more short term right what what does success look like going into this coding bootcamp what does success look like you know trying to become a developer or why am i even getting into tech in the first place and you know maybe it is like russell you felt like you know in some previous industries you weren't really challenged enough and you're like i'm not doing enough i don't know like what it is but like i got to do something else right and you had that urge um but do you do all of you feel like you have like a solid vision of like where you even want to be in five years i would say uh this actually came up in a few interviews i've had um you know my interviewer always asked you know where do you see yourself in five years and my immediate response would be the ceo of google uh i feel like but honestly speaking i think road map wise five years down the line you know it's not certain right there's things are gonna come up right everybody's life is different um and i think that's what's exciting about life right you're never certain about what you wanna do but as long as you like russell said as long as you get that reward at the end of the tunnel you feel satisfied you feel like you've accomplished something in life and i think that's pretty much what everybody strives for every year yeah [Music] um i i mean you laughed after you said it but a lot of a lot of very successful rich founders had a vision where people also laughed at them you know what i mean and i think the difference is it's like you know of course you have to build like habits like goals and habits and like even a lot of founders go through a lot of rituals in the morning to just even reinforce what they appreciate you know and really uh internalize that vision i mean everyone's gonna have different strategies but so there's tons of substance to get to that point but no one that was very successful didn't hasn't been laughed at before for their crazy crazy vision and i think um i mean i kind of have that goal financially revenue wise and i find that the higher i set that goal as long as i break down that goal into uh tons of smaller goals break it down like a year six months three months one month every week i feel like i definitely achieve my revenue goals faster than if i set that goal a little bit less that's just one thing i've noticed in myself and i think it's just an interesting phenomenon and i could see that as long as you take the action and actually map it out to get there i do think people end up further so i think that's yeah i mean i i have a five year plan um i think it's important at some point i don't think it's important for everybody but i do think it's important for some point at some point um it just depending on what you're trying to do i know with me personally i had some things happening with family a few years ago that really i wasn't really i didn't really have a plan other than trying to get a vacation every year and then with family members getting ill and understanding that i was gonna have to take a larger role in being responsible around the house that i wasn't accustomed to i knew that i was gonna have to make changes in order to do that um i didn't end up into software engineering because of that um things because of my plan i ended up in software engineering while initially it was financial uh while i was financially motivated um it has become more of a physical mental challenge in my eyes and more of a try to be better every day for me um and hopefully the financial reward will come at the end but um i think everybody's different but i think at the same time um especially with this if you're if you're changing careers in software engineering you need to have a plan and you need to have a vision about what you're going to do and how you're going to get there um whether you want to call it a two-year five-year 10-year plan you need to have something going because it's gonna be really hard to get yourself off the ground if you don't have a vision in which to get there just because it's not that it's a closed-door industry but with the newbies and especially somebody who's not familiar with with software engineering you're going to have a hard time busting down doors so you have to have you have to have a plan in which in which to get in those rooms yeah yeah i don't want to beat that horse to death but i do agree on that road map of um i think having that intent as well for me i i took some time off from my last job and i think being unemployed by design was one of the best things possible i mean sure i'll still do a couple of gigs freelance to some to some extent but i think having that ambition and drive can sometimes be a blind drive and then it's just a rabid drive towards the next role the next job but without a road map so i think for me what my mentor mentioned is like hey you need to take some time off you're very ambitious but that may be part of your bottleneck have a laser focus of what you want to do and even if you shoot straight to that line the scope like might move a little bit but you're still shooting the same way give yourself some flexibility and range of where where you're going to end up with that target it's it's not going to be it's going to be a little bit more accurate but it's instead of a spray and pray where you may not know what's actually going to be shot so yeah definitely would recommend exactly what the both of you said creating that road map and making it into digestible goals um otherwise you're going to try to tackle everything at the same time and you're back to square one you get that last thing that you just said and i think that's what people feel they they kind of haven't a narrow vision or they perceive themselves to have a narrow vision of becoming a developer but the actual reality of how they feel is they're feeling like they're tackling everything they're feeling like and i think that feeling becomes very overwhelming and i think you can't alleviate some of that overwhelming feeling by narrowing it down and maybe it maybe it isn't just like writing goals down and breaking that down but maybe it is just trying to solidify what where you even want to be in one to two years right maybe that's just to start and trying to visualize it um i i just i'm you know i'm i'm a sucker for i i'm constantly watching youtube videos and audio books on like productivity and just like mindset and i feel like i used to when i would listen or watch this kind of stuff i'm like this is [ __ ] like all of they're just trying to sell courses they're just trying to you know like get me into some kind of funnel and a lot of them are i'm not gonna lie a lot of them are but there's i but when you start hearing multiple you can call them gurus mentors or people that are just successful entrepreneurs when you start like i'm telling you entrepreneurs if you want to solidify really strong habits and a mindset entrepreneurs had to overcome that that is like the number one thing to be successful as an entrepreneur and you start seeing like common patterns across all of these entrepreneurs and yeah some of them are trying to sell courses but you hear the same advice enough over and over and over it's like maybe some of it worked right and so i'm gonna try it myself i'm gonna implement it myself and i feel like man vision and just planning that out and even just like and if you feel overwhelmed breaking that down into smaller and smaller goals that are achievable it's even if it's not super accurate you can kind of just see how things are going on in life and you could be flexible too right you can you could start for three months like i'm gonna go through um i don't know i'm gonna do free code camp and then maybe like treehouse or something like that whatever course you choose and then i don't know you have to watch the kids an extra five hours a week or something like that or it's like maybe treehouse their full-time program i don't i think i choose the wrong program for this because i think they are flexible but like your course all of a sudden like it was full-time now you got to break it back to part-time and you you can adjust your lifestyle and how you actually get to that goal and i think you should be flexible it should be incredibly rigid where you can't adjust things but if you're not even starting with that vision um like you said it's a lot of people are ambitious sydney but there's a lot of blind ambition and that very rarely leads you into what you're you think you want to achieve at an efficient rate you're all over the place very often just trying to figure out what to do i gotta i gotta push forward i just don't know exactly how to do it yeah i just i think this kind of thing is interesting so okay i wanna yeah i'm sorry i wanna add one more thing i feel like this idea mindset can also be applied to you know people who are practicing for coding interviews right a lot of people i myself are included in it um upon graduating right we're like oh we know data structure right we just need to practice a few problems and then tackle the interview but a lot of people don't realize that the road map you need to create that road map right you need to do sit down and write okay what data structure do i need to practice for one week two weeks you know for the whole month um that way you're more prepped for it when the interview happens instead of just you know blindly looking for a couple of uh interview questions coding challenges and then you know blindly going into an interview like that yeah i like that and just to maybe so so i don't one thing that always bugs me too about road maps and plans is that they're great until they're not where they're not flexible enough because it's not according to the plan so definitely want to readjust to like that laser focus you're removing from like maybe things that don't help that can remove the blind ambition but flexible enough where you can still readjust and reevaluate your own road map otherwise again it's kind of like almost blind road map like it's it's in the road map i can't do anything else because that's what it says so um i think eric you called it out already i think beforehand so yeah just wanted to adjust that so so no one follows my bad advice no i liked it um well let's pretend you guys didn't go through a coding bootcamp a huge struggle with a lot of people is how do i know i'm improving as a software engineer like what were those moments where you felt like oh cool like i didn't know that a few few weeks ago or like i like my code is it's better quality yeah like like whatever that means what were those moments for you guys when i press the what the play where one key and the code runs flawlessly no errors no bugs okay well i mean being able to recognize actually what code is saying and so it was a good little period where it didn't matter what it was it just looked like gibberish to me and because i was because i had certain little buzz things memorized i could get by but especially with javascript um javascript one of those it's real elegant if you can read it um and read it the right way as well and so once once i can start reading it and that little light started coming on that's when i really started to be like okay now now i'm starting to understand this a little better and then you know software engineering there's a functional understanding there's a technical understanding there's a uh abstract understanding there's a whole lot of different levels you can get by in certain conversations but you know um once you can actually talk about what you're doing and actually talk about it intelligently and every little aspect of it that's when you know you're on the right path i like in once you can explain it to someone that's not as technical as you as well and break that down that's a really hard challenge to tackle glad you brought up the abstract part of it russell that's i completely agree with it i think um at least from the data side it can be a little bit different it's still the same usually the same functions the same systems thinking and logic but i think when i was able to basically put it there's this abstract idea of what to do with data but once i started creating workflows and pipelines and processes and i was like oh my god i actually get it i can now put it into a way of working versus it was just a tool or a formula or a language now i can use it as part of a process that is now a tool not just a language um so breaking down that abstract into something that's digestible and then you could explain it to someone else it's part of a process now it's easier i get it yeah i also absolutely i'm sorry i absolutely agree with sydney too i just wanted to add that um for me uh during the time right i know a lot of people say you need to have the mindset for coding i need to develop that mindset um and at the time i didn't quite understand what they're talking about but through like practice you know a lot of experimentations you start to realize oh you can visualize what the code should look like you can visualize what the code should do and i feel like for any software engineer that's a very big uh role to have sorry but also also talking well oh you're no that's good talking talking about imposter syndrome and kind of reeling it back into what we're talking about now i think that's what's hard to see when you start this process you start this process and um even if you're not uh it doesn't matter how you start like even when you're watching tutorials that guy's smarter than you he knows way more than you do and he's telling you how to do something he's teaching you and you feel good about it and then you get into people who really done it now all of a sudden the games change because you recognize what they're talking about but you really can't participate in the conversation and so you know you have we have to be easy on ourselves because it's it's all about learning like 20 years ago when i was a cook and i was running around this five star resort you know not knowing anything i was just working hard to look like i knew what i was doing i didn't have the capacity really to learn how to be a great cook at that point i was just trying to follow along with everybody else you know sometimes we forget what it was like to be young and not know anything and we put pressure on ourselves and you know one of the reasons even though in my new job learning java has been it's been tricky it hasn't been as hard as six months ago but it's been tricky and you know one thing is i'm starting to enjoy getting myself out of trouble and you know that wasn't really the case a few months ago when i was in foster syndrome every time i get an error i'd start freaking out because it's like well if i can't fix this it's never going to get fixed and this app's never going to this hat's dead now because i'm never going to get past it so you know there's a process it's it's it's painful and beautiful at the same time and you know we got to embrace it because you know uh you know it's kind of like being a kid again in in some small ways just because even though even though you still have to deal with your life as an adult you get to enjoy these small victories um that you just don't that you just don't as an adult sometimes so you know and and you know imposter syndrome it's painful and it's painful when it's happening but there's fleeting moments where you can actually look at it and be like man i was kind of being silly right there i um any of you ever just kind of like not necessarily use it as an escape but kind of just get lost in coding and like really get entrenched in it has anyone not experienced that i've experienced it i've i've experienced it and then i i try to be careful with it because you can get tunnel vision sometimes especially when you especially when you're in a groove and you hit and you hit a problem and you know the problem isn't hard to overcome but it's just taking you longer to get to where you need to go so um and that's one of the reasons that's really uh lit my fire for coding is just that that aspect of it um being able to solve problems um not necessarily in a direct way you know not brute force you gotta find a way to do it so everything is still working and and uh you know i would hope that everybody had that moment but if you didn't it's so far it's it's coming it's coming especially if you're gonna do this professionally it's coming you're gonna get to a place where where you just can't you you can't not look away from the screen so i want to elaborate on what you're saying russell um and kind of i guess on what i'm saying too a lot of software engineers do experience it in the beginning a lot don't many don't and they're like well is it for me because they they hear other software engineers talking about kind of just getting lost in the code spending hours and like oh my god i gotta eat oh my god i gotta go to sleep right and some people are it's like those three hours they don't fly by they're this sucks i hate this and i'm going to the next file trying to debug this i hate this i hate this right and i think um you said something really important i i like it um because when you look back on it it is kind of silly especially when you're being critical of yourself over nothing but like if you i mean thinking back to like when we were children when the pressure was a bit less and we didn't have all these responsibilities it's like you can dive into coding with that mindset and i think that's um it's a very very unique thing that not a lot of industries offer and the way the types of challenges that you're tackling you can kind of get really excited like you used to as a child and like tackling a new challenge and you weren't super critical like oh my god i'm gonna fail it's like i just wanna do something fun right and like learning to have fun with coding is so like once you can start achieving that it's so crucial for your like your growth is going to accelerate and like your mind's going to start opening up to it you're not going to be so frustrated like you know i think part of it is just realizing it's like just because you don't get a bug in three hours like you know how many other software engineers have taken days to like solve you know a similar bug right like you're going to encounter that stuff you have to realize it's it's inevitable it's not if it's when and it's over and over and over and if you can go into it like i'm just going to play around it's going to be a playground for me today and i'm going to figure out what's going on right and i think maybe sometimes it is like maybe you got to warm yourself up to it like eat eat a healthy meal before like exercise each day get a good night's sleep like all that stuff can help but if you can go into that three-hour session with that playful mindset the world of software engineering it just changes it becomes easier learning becomes easier becomes more fun like as we get older we start like we don't have the luxury of everything being super fun with no responsibility anymore and i think you have to like challenge that mindset that you've developed over time in yourself to have fun and treat it like a playground and just dig into the code like that without stressing yourself out i'm really glad you brought that up um because it obviously not a full stack developer but just the skills and the logic the syntax the ways of thinking i think it's actually affected my ways of working on soft skills and inter-communicational and ways of working in general where like instead of seeing it as this is my job i have to do this and i just happen to code or look at data now i'm seeing are there ways to improve how i work as well working with others why are we doing it this way oh this is actually kind of based off the logic of a loop or how do i repeat this process to scale it better i've seen it affected in more of my soft skills i think than anything um without even noticing it i'm not not sure if that's just when you explain it it makes sense to me where i love that joy and now i see it that i apply it to other ways of working not just on the technical side and then everything becomes more digestible and you can actually make some better ways of working better changing aside from working individually as an individual contributor that's just me though it just it changes your mindset i think you find a lot of things relatable when you talk about implementation it feels like as you're learning you feel and correct me if i'm wrong but you feel like things started becoming more enjoyable and clicking for you when you could involve it in a process involve it in something that's actually achieving something or making you know making your job easier making your life easier just like a a process you're implementing it into a real world scenario um is is that kind of what you were getting at i feel like you're my therapist because i think you described it better than than i would have done it so yeah i think you're yeah you explained it way better than i did yeah that's that's how i would say it okay so that okay so that is like i feel like that's a huge a huge key factor in everything clicking and not just like your enjoyment with coding but your understanding of it i feel like so much depth comes from that implementation and i feel like you know the advice to give aspiring developers essentially like build personal projects like what the hell does that mean like what do i even want to build what am i supposed to build what am i going to get hired for and like a thousand other questions pop up but like this is why i highly recommend it's like well you know what's a really do you have like a freelancing gig is there a tool you could build for that do you um do you want to make extra money like maybe that is you just want to see if you can make extra money by building um some sort of extension or like your own website and build your own shop on it and or maybe you um i don't know you just kind of want to build landing pages for businesses maybe you want to try to start a company and build like a pricing model around your product that you're launching like there are so many ways where you could start thinking about like how to actually take your all this knowledge you have swirling around in your brain and dive into like you can just up your game your skill level by diving heavily into implementation it's like every time i see people struggling 99 of the time they haven't like they might have built like a cat project like a portfolio of cats or something like but that there was nothing anything realistic that benefited them or anyone else and i feel like when people are like oh my god i actually like this is way off topic but like and i kind of just want to build the script for my xbox like i kind of just like want to do this random random thing i never thought i could ever build it like three four years ago or i wouldn't you know my um wife kind of just wants to she has her own um shop at the mall and she could get more business if she could just create a website um and you know create a blog around it and i i'm already starting to think about like all the things that i can build that's actually kind of useful and you can i'm just saying there's so many different things that can influence you and spur up you wanting to build that personal project that matters to you but it's when you finally dive into implementation that matters to you or anyone else i just see everything start clicking for people and it's it's getting people to realize that and trying to really think about what they want to build or even just like adapt into their process of how they even tackle everything in life it's um but yeah it's just i feel like i'm just ranting now but i feel like that implementation is just key and a lot of people aren't quite accessing it as soon as they should but that's the hard part though is because you can't have fun because you don't understand as well it's harder to have those real moments and so you know to your point on when i wasn't doing projects when i wasn't planning anything and i was just kind of piddle paddling around with the two little things i was i was trying to keep going in my github you know it wasn't fun and then when i figured out there was a couple projects that i was kind of did a little research on and i wasn't really interested on them and then i found another one that kind of helped that kind of helped me learn sass a little bit and i got a little bit deeper into react all of a sudden six days later i've slept maybe two to four hours each night and you know depending on you know uh depending on how closely i was paying attention 10 to 12 cups of coffee over the course of the day so you know it took yeah yeah well you know it took it took something to your point i took something that i cared about but it also i had to have my interest peaked in some way shape or form even though i understood and even though i even though i knew kind of i knew how to make the react project i knew how to get my render stuff onto the screen i knew about my components all that good jazz um i still wasn't speaking to me in any sort of type of way and uh you know that's the one thing i envy about somebody who could just do it like that was the thing that was really annoying about the whole learning process and seeing the people that could just dive in and screw up and break their stuff and not care because i and i didn't want it to break and like it matters and i like i don't know why i matter but it just matters and so um to your point on it is hard to have fun it took me a while to have fun it took a good while to have fun and there's still fleeting moments when i'm not having fun quite honestly um but i'm not but i also don't sit down i don't think of coding is a fun thing to do on the weekends if i'm not doing anything either so there's a flip side to that as well um i'll be able to step away from this job easier than i would have in my other careers because i'd never be able to let my other careers i take home with me and i never stopped thinking about it so um it just depends on how you look at it but to your point understanding it better makes it easier to have fun unless you're unless you already think it's fun just to play around with it and i can i can go down this dark hallway and i'll screw it up and i don't care and some of us just aren't wired that way like i know i'm not wired that way yeah that's an important thing to recognize in yourself and that you know what and i was just talking about it today um everyone obviously is wired differently and they tackle this with a different mindset and their mindset evolves in a different way than other people's and you can see some commonalities but like a big portion of this i just feel like software engineering is this weird field like we've been trained through traditional education to like just think a certain way and just learn a certain way and be able to recall information and a lot of it like lacks implementation and i feel like software engineering is this weird unique industry that forces you to challenge that narrative that you know traditional education has built up for so long it's it's i don't know i i feel like it's just really interesting and you have to i feel like you're almost just like you have to break down habits you have to break down the way you look at things the way you learn like really break them down so you can build them up in a way that's going to make you a much more successful software engineer but you also have to be able to analyze those bad habits like what am i doing that's kind of that blocker and that's a really hard thing to do and painful and painful yeah it can be very self-defeating and very painful but i mean but but that's the fun part and so and you gotta ask her and just like we've already oh i think all four of us have said it so far just you just gotta ask yourself that question before you start and so um but but it's but don't get me wrong you can know what you're getting into and still not be able to do it and so i think depending on like i know as a young person i would have been learning this as a young person that man i was already cocky but boy oh boy i would have not walked around that guy so i am glad that i am learning this later but um at the same time uh being able to have the humility to understand that you know you're not just getting advice from people who've done this before you're almost getting a road map and you're not gonna be able to process the whole road map but one day you'll be able to see where that map's gonna lead you and so um and being able to have faith in that is it's tough it's tough because again you have to make changes um and you're going to be honest with yourself and face some facts about you know who you are and what you do well because software engineering will expose your weaknesses first and then if you lack strengths uh or you have few of them it will then expose that i like that it's very insightful um okay here's what i want to do i feel like i feel like this is kind of just a casual conversation that i enjoyed you know just picking apart like our journeys and what that means but like i feel like you guys pretty insightful at analyzing you know some of the troubles that you went through and how you overcame them and you'd be surprised at how many people have trouble doing that as well and sometimes people just feel so overwhelmed and they have no energy to do it they're just trying to get through like think about like coding boot camps in the intensity it's like we're talking about like trying to analyze their habits and break them down they're just trying to survive go to sleep wake up and go to the coding boot camp again and you know i can really empathize with that so it's it's a long process and i feel like everyone's path is going to be different but these are the kind of things i'm i'm telling you it's like when you look back on it and even back on your behaviors and like how you gave up too easily that one time a lot of it does seem silly when you look back on it and it feels very real and overwhelming when you're currently experiencing it and some maybe it's helpful just to hear it's like we've all been there um but so i feel like we've given a lot of good advice but i want to wrap up with this um if you had to think about like your old self you're very different now right your old self but even before you started the let's just you know what narrow it down let's think about like before the coding bootcamp and after the coding bootcamp what advice in terms of like imposter syndrome and you know thinking about how you're going to do it do you even have the ability to do it the confidence to do it what advice would you give your old self before you started this journey gentlemen i would say um actually create a role map because i went in blindly um i actually have a roadmap and actually put in the effort to study some data structures outside of class uh you know make like like how everyone was talking about you know having the mindset um creating a role map figuring out what exactly you need to do and i know for a lot of younger generations uh we tend to not care because we don't have that responsibility on our shoulders but uh for for me right if i were to tell uh before the boot camp itself i would be like you know really sit down plan out what i need what i want to do plan out uh what i need to study that way upon graduating to camp right i wouldn't have had as much of a struggle as i would have had okay that's good advice yeah i think mine was two things i would definitely tell my younger self at any point of my younger self which i think would organically lead to exactly what you mentioned the fir the first one would be just be kind uh and be patient with yourself um because you think you're superman but you're not um the second one would be finement or because you're not superman and you can't do it all your damn self so be kind to yourself and patient and find a mentor that can help you maybe find the same advice that you just gave eric i would have never found that out without my mentor i like that that invulnerability that we think we have when we're younger it gets corrected i would tell myself um number one uh understand what the basic skills of software engineering are and live in that um loops conditional statements uh how to whatever language you're in how to render the basic way how to render um focus on that because all the other fluff will make it look good but that's not what's actually going to put the work on the screen so if you don't know how to put the work on the screen all the rest of the stuff is is is is uh isn't important and then also when you're learning a language go deep dive into it that you know try to immerse yourself while you're learning it while you're being taught it um just because it's only going to be there for that little period of time and trying to look back while you're learning something else is very difficult to do uh which is i did way too much i had my head i had my head in three weeks back and in the same week as we were learning and it was just a whirlwind so by the time everything caught up it was over um but um just like just like sydney just be kind to yourself i i don't know why but i was really hard on myself and even though i was enjoying it and i was really i was living in the moment and uh the experience was wonderful man weekends were miserable um i lost a lot of sleep on weekends whether i was working on something or not i mean there was a couple saturdays where i was until three o'clock morning just staring at the screen not doing anything like just stare at could have went to sleep at 11 and not hurt anybody got the same amount of stuff done so just be easy on yourself and this is you know it's it i was telling this to myself but i just didn't actually follow through with it it's hard it's hard it's not simple and like even if you're learning off of a uh tutorial it's hard it's not easy i don't care who's telling it to you it's hard so you're gonna have some tough moments be ready for it have your super shield whatever weapon you need whatever you need be ready for it russell because it's coming it's coming don't be surprised when it comes sometimes i got hit by the bus and i just wasn't ready and i was really upset with myself because man those head man those lights were bright those headlights were right there and i just didn't get out the way but uh but yeah but i mean just echo the same thing that both guys said i mean it's just it's uh it's just one of those things it's fun it's it's it's it's a murder scene it's all those things all in the same time it's really it's really cool it's really cool and terrible essentially have your sword and shield ready is what you're saying russell right okay i like it um damn yeah very unique very unique perspectives and advice from all three of you i loved it i think it's gonna be um i think it's gonna be a good episode so anyways you know in the comments if you're on youtube i wanna hear what you guys think um i'm telling you like this i don't even have to tell you like this is like the number one thing that just makes this journey so difficult and i think sharing stories and realizing it's going to it's going to be [ __ ] miserable at ed parts and like it's going to be long it's going it's it's not going to go the way you think it's going to go and that's okay and that doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't smart enough that doesn't mean that you aren't capable of this right but i and i and i think taking some extra time out to try to have fun and explore it a little bit um can really go a long way as well i really like that vision of just like you know acting kind of like a child again and like putting that weight off your shoulders and diving into the code and it's like trying to forget about those responsibilities and and not being so critical of yourself and just exploring like you would like you're a child again it's i've never heard that before that's just an interesting way to put it okay that's it that's the end of the episode uh so you know let us know what you think of the episode in the comments below but um let's go and do our outros uh russell if people want to reach out to you where could they reach you uh russbot 250 on twitter um i am also in and out on linkedin r anderson there might be some numbers in there i'm not sure um but hit me up hit me up if you see me um i'm around i'm always around sounds good how about you eric you're gonna invite me on linkedin uh eric jang something something i'm always on linkedin uh if you have any questions feel free to hit me up i have i am literally bored with my life so yeah okay be careful what you asked for all right how about you sydney yeah same linkedin uh sydney as in australia romero or sydneyromero.com okay cool well i appreciate you guys coming back on i think it's going to be a good episode but um like usual stick around for a couple minutes but seriously thanks so much for coming on again [Music]

Channel: DonTheDeveloper

Views: 4,532

Keywords: how to overcome imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome in tech, software developer day in the life, imposter syndrome software engineer, imposter syndrome programmer, web development, donthedeveloper podcast, donthedeveloper, don the developer

Id: 6y05koOUhKs

Length: 51min 59sec (3119 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 25 2022