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https://github.com/markbrown4/presentation-wdyk

Impostor Syndrome
https://github.com/markbrown4/presentation-wdyk

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Impostor Syndrome

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README 

        
# wdyk melbourne



### 1



My talk isn't about what I know, I'd like to take a moment to talk about what *you* all know.



As humans, we are terrible at judging of our own abilities and often get it wrong.



### 2



The blue dot represents what you *think* you know

The red circle represents what you *think* others know



### 3



In reality it will be closer to this

You know some things, others know some things, and there's some overlap



How did I get this insight into what you all < think you know and what you > actually know?

The odds are that the *majority* of us in this room have experienced Impostor Syndrome at some point.



### 4



Impostor Syndrome is where we dismiss our accomplishments and success despite evidence of our competence.

It's very common in tech, and amongst minorities



### 5



So, why do we all feel like we suck?

A fair question :)



### 6



Part of the reason is that we have built up a picture in our minds of all the things that others know

In our industry there is *a lot* to know



Whether it be the people we follow on Twitter, the mailing lists we subscribe to or the conferences we attend. We are presented daily with the ideas and code of the very best in the world, and we use them as the measure by which we judge our own abilities.



### 7



We assume that *most* people know *most* of these things

If someone mentions something once, well they're probably an expert



As a result it feels like we know nothing and we fight the uphill battle to try and learn all the things



### 8



Jake Archibald has some wisdom for us



...



### 9



You might have seen ppk's post recently called Stop pushing the web forward.



...



After I googled what moratorium meant, I recognised this post as evidence of our struggle to keep up with the pace of change to our platform.



### 10



So I have some todo's for you, because web dev's *love* todo lists.



Take my advice - you probably don't suck as much as you think



Listen to Jake, make peace with the fact that you won't know all of the web



Speak at events like this or at meetups, doing that shifts the focus from what you *don't* know to what you *do* know



Stand up for what you believe in, don't assume like you don't know the best solution to a problem



Most importantly work on achieving a work life balance, instead of trying to learn every new javascript library, focus on the things that really interest you and make you happy.



### 11



If any of this resonated with you, here's the man who you can thank.  Joss's presentation called "Feeling like a better developer" is where nearly all of this content has come from, I highly recommend it if you'd like to learn more about impostor syndrome.



Because I've stolen most of Joss's presentation, take heart, *I'm* the only Impostor here :)



### 12



Thanks for listening