Robbie Holmes on Imposter Syndrome

Robbie Holmes (@robbiethegeek) gave a fantastic talk at TechTalkDC yesterday. Robbie is a fountain of wisdom and the DC tech community is lucky to have him.

Here are my notes and takeaways:

Understand your privilege

Not everyone grew up the same way you did.

Two big impacts of imposter syndrome

Staying at a job that’s boring or tedious way longer than you should.
Worry people will find out you’re a fraud.

Getting acqui-hired is the best way to bring out your imposter syndrome

(Zagat to Google)
Didn’t get interviewed, placed in a “web developer” position
Everyone at Google works off of HEAD so you feel like you’re constantly breaking things!
“It was me saying I didn’t have the skills”

Joining USDS

Folks with a ton of empathy and a lot of experience
Healthcare application for Department of Veteran Affairs in node and react
React was not core competency
Team decided to move over to rails first week in

Community is important

Transitioning from being an attendee to organizer - fake it til you make it
People start looking up to you

Staying up to date on trends

Podcasts
Blogs
Social media
Know how you learn best

Learn one new skill at a time

Maybe don’t switch editors when you’re learning a new language
Focus on one thing
Reduce context switching from what you know to what you’re learning

Imposter syndrome coping strategy

Become a part of the community
- if you’re going to tech events, you’re probably in the top 25% of people at your level because you’re learning from others
- Speakers are in the top 10%
- Most people don’t engage in community, just because you’re here you are ahead of the curve
Fake it in public
- host a lunch and learn
- present at conferences or meetups
- become an organizer

Fin

A huge thank you to Robbie for sharing his story with us. And thank you Excella Consulting for hosting, and for posting a video of this talk!

Slides: http://slides.com/robbiethegeek/imposter-syndrome

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRqefvKkgfc

-D