Imposter Syndrome: You're Not Alone

Gregorio Rojas, co-founder of award-winning coding school Sabio, shares his initial thoughts on Imposter Syndrome.

Gregorio Rojas, co-founder of award-winning coding school Sabio, shares his initial thoughts on Imposter Syndrome.

Can we build software? Will we click click click? Hello everyone. My name is Gary audio Rojas, I am one of the co founders of Sabio, a developer bootcamp right out of Los Angeles in Irvine, California. What I want to talk to you today about is imposter syndrome, and how to inoculate yourself against it. You might not have known that you can do that, but you can. And so imposter syndrome is a very large topic. And we're going to we're going to focus very specifically on how it relates to software professionals, people in high tech roles across all industries. Now, specifically, I'm talking to you about this today because I am the head instructor at Sabio where I'm responsible, obviously, for the coding stuff, or the curriculum stuff. But we need to get people into work. And we provide mentorship, not just to get into your first job, but to excel throughout your entire career. So I am constantly talking to people who are about to get their first job. Or we're trying to get their second or third job, right so forth job. So these folks, right so imposters you the first thing it affects us all. And it's going to affect you when you go to get your first job and it's going to continue to affect you throughout your career. Right. So what we're going to talk about how to keep this from affecting us negatively in our career. Now I myself am very much like many of our students at Sabio. I am a career changer. I got a I went and got my degree in something completely different. But I switched over to computer computer science. And I became a software developer. And I know this feeling very well. So let's talk about imposter syndrome. What is that? And look in plain English imposter syndrome, you feel like an imposter. You feel like this is how people are going to describe you somehow feel like you don't deserve the job that you have. You don't deserve the role the responsibilities that you have. You have a sense of inadequacy, about or thoughts of inadequacy about what you're doing in your day to day job. You feel like an imposter you feel like you don't belong there. You feel like the resume right? Your resume the title of the door the responsibilities that you have, you shouldn't have them right now I can tell you personally that how I felt it was better described as I was afraid, I was afraid me sitting on my desk or going to work every day. And today's today is today, the day they're going to give me something that I'm not going to be able to do Is today the day that they find out that man they made a mistake Is today the day that somehow I'm going to be given something that's going to be too hard for me. And is that going to result obviously me getting, you know, walked out the door. And as much as we I mean, so for me, it wasn't the first feeling that I remember feeling his fear. You know, because I did not even though I was in the sciences, I did not know anything about coding, until maybe about nine or 10 months before I got into coding. I didn't know anything about computer science until about eight or nine months until I got into my first job as a as a QA professional. So for me, I just didn't know. And I didn't know many people probably could count on one hand people who were in the software field, so I did not know. And that not knowing led to a tremendous amount of fear. And now, one of the things that I didn't know, that exacerbates the entire situation is that the people in the industry, they don't make it any easier. There's some really great people here, don't get me wrong. I mean, some really fantastic people. And they're especially so because they're awesome. They like to share their information, they like to share their knowledge, and they're really helpful. But then there's the other side of the coin, where they're just people who are very arrogant, pompous, and their arrogance and their intelligence and their skill, it then gets combined with a sense of wanting to make you feel smaller. Alright, so those people in this industry, which is a lot, then that make you feel bad, they're gonna make you feel worse, and they're gonna make you feel maybe potentially more inadequate, and, you know, inspire and feed that feeling of fear within it within yourself. And so let's now talk about how to inoculate yourself. So, though this isn't a one time shot, this isn't a one time thing, you do this, and you're going to be good. This is something that you're going to continually have to practice throughout your career. And you're going to get to a point, right, let me tell you, it took me many, many, many years with regard to a very specific thing about how I feel about my ability to be a leader in a software development team. But as you switch roles and responsibilities, you go first from an individual contributor to a lead developer to a manager to a director to a VP as you start taking on new roles and responsibilities as As you start climbing, keep climbing that ladder, it's probably going to sneak in again, and it's probably going to get stronger. So you got to beat that back. And so over the next series of videos, we're going to talk away about how to beat that back. And how you do that is with questions. You can ask questions, you can ask a lot of questions. Okay. And so you got to ask questions, and you're going to ask questions, and what might seem like the scariest and the hardest times to do that? Okay, so the next series of videos, we're going to discuss some of the really good question some of the important times to ask the question, because questions, is how we learn. And so the number one thing that you can do to inoculate yourself against imposter syndrome is to empower yourself with knowledge that you do deserve to be here, that you are just as good. And they make many cases probably better than some of the people in the room, right. And when I say better, it's because you're more knowledgeable, but you're also not a jerk. Okay, so that's what we're going to talk about in the next series of videos. And one of the important things about this, that's going to help us all out is the recognition that we all have an opportunity to feel this way. So if you take anything away from this that you find important and valuable, please share this with everybody that everybody needs to hear about these things that we're going to talk about in these next set of videos. Share it with your friends, share it with your colleagues, share it with people who are in a position to not just affect themselves but affect others. Okay, and so we're gonna get started now with our next video. Join me over there for video number two. When you leave, anything's possible. When you come in, you want to stay.