BSidesNcl 2021 Impostor syndrome in the IT world from a conference speakers perspective Antonio Cobo

thank you everyone for attending this call and yeah you are not mistaken you are on a conference about security and i'm not going to be talking about security i'm feeling like i'm the queer one here like i've been an imposter right and i'm going to be talking about that i'm going to be talking about something that is called imposter syndrome and it's a in the i.t wall and from a perspective of someone that gives talks at conferences so in order for you to understand that i need to share with you my story i need to to share what happened in my life so you can understand a little bit what i was feeling uh in every moment right

before the story there's always people saying oh he's writing impostor in a right in a wrong way it should be with an e actually you can write it with an e in poster or imposter with an o and as i'm from spain as you all already probably know with my accent i prefer to put it in a way that i can write in spanish english at the same time so i'm from spain i was originally a java developer and i had an opportunity to move to france in 2005 and i didn't speak french at all at that time so my english was really really worse even worse than now because i only had english high

school in spain in the 90s so not really proper way to learn english and i had one sister living in paris and she say well as you are a computer engineer my company is looking for new computer engineers so they agreed for that you can have an interview with them and let's see how it goes so i prepared the interview with my crappy english but with the feeling that well not gonna say no because i don't speak french my english is bad but i'm spending one weekend in paris visiting my sister right so it's a good plan with your weekend in paris and then you do an interview right so i have the full monday morning with

interviews with them and with my surprise they offer me the job and i was a little bit scared and feeling the really anxious all the time because i was with a feeling that i tricked them that maybe they didn't understand properly with my english and they thought that i was better so i became more and more stressed before moving them on the first month they're really really stressed i was working late to try to compensate and doing even more efforts i was feeling out of place in mind the situation i don't speak any friends on the lunch time everyone is eating a sandwich and i'm with them eating a sandwich and i don't understand anything because they

are speaking french of course and i was with a feeling that i need to prove that i'm good and not because i had one sister in the same company right so i was feeling like they will realize one day that it wasn't good so if i have to recap it's a little bit like feeling anxious all the time that i need to prove that i belong there feeling out of place like all the others are really better than me and i'm the one that is making my team really really under the average that i'm getting my team down right and that's the reason i'm working late and i'm feeling a little bit depressed sometimes because

the others are so so good even the ones that they were in french they were able to express themselves in in proper friends but of course because in their countries they also speak french but i wasn't realizing of that i was thinking i'm on the throat and they're going to they're going to show it and they're going to see that they are good they know a lot they're amazing and i'm just the guy who's been lucky all the time you know on the lucky place at the lucky moment and my surprise even make me team lead i even was a head of a can development and every time that there was someone like coming from out of france not speaking

french to the company they were always my team because they said you know how they did how you did so you should be able to leave them so it was really really stress for me it's a i changed to management part to try to help the developers and for life happened and things like that and i moved to ukraine 2014 and the same things happen again i was feeling out of place because i didn't know anybody there i wasn't used to that english i was so used to the american english of the movies and things like that or english spoken by french people that took me some time to understand properly the british english that some

men say that the proper english right my accent was too strong so they couldn't understand me properly and i was feeling anxious because of that and again i started working even late every day to try to compensate and to do a good job because i they offered me a job on my first interview and i was thinking oh again i'm so lucky i don't know what happened i tricked them and i was feeling i don't know why they they offered me the role right after a couple of years i decided to to look for another job in uk because it's everybody was telling me that you know in in uk and in london it's it's good to

at least the first years that you are there try to change every two years because you have more opportunities and so on so i started checking offers right and i applied for a company that they offered a lot of bullet points and i wasn't fulfilling all but i thought it's going to be a good experience to start being on interviews so i will find the right role in the future right so i went for the interview and i remember the two interviewers that they told me oh this role of technical project manager that is someone with strong technical background and strong delivery qualities we've been trying to feel it for more than four months and we we're not getting the right

person so i i thought well it's going to be an easy interview then because it's not going to be me right they were they were waiting for months so the interview it was nervous for me because i was so convinced that i it wasn't me that i wasn't nervous at all and the next day the the recruiter of the company called me and say oh antonio i'm going to have a chat with um with interviewers later today because i didn't have the chance with them and just i realized on all phone calls we we never talk about salaries so i don't know exactly what have your expectations so i was a little bit surprised that

why is he calling me about the salaries right now so i did say something ridiculous so it was they didn't know my current salary at that time but i asked for a lot more because i was expecting that they were going to counter offer less and then i could be happier right it's more or less when you try to negotiate you say if my current salary is x i'm gonna ask for x plus twelve thousand so they will offer maybe x plus five and i would be happy so okay okay let me let me discuss with the team and i'll come back to you okay so probably he's going to come back saying that he's not me right

so he called and said you know antonio we really wanted you to to feel that role and you told us that you're giving having other interviews this week so our offer instead of the x plus 12 that you ask is going to be x plus 15 so they even offer me 3 000 pounds more every year than the amount that i asked for and it was really really big complaining with my salary um of course i said yes because it's more money and i say worst case scenario after one month i realized that i'm not good and i have good money right so i accept him but i was with this kind of fear and anxiety

did i do the right thing accepting so that company was a small company 40 50 people so it was a consultancy and i was the only technical project manager a child delivery guy right all the others they were senior platform engineers senior developers and they were actually a lot of them speakers at conferences i've never thought about giving a truck at the conference at that time so i was feeling a little bit intimidated like this time i'm really the one that is lowering the level they are giving talks at conferences come on they are amazing and when i was at the beginning of the first month i was on the bench because they didn't find a client to place me so

that it was also it's what they call bench time and consultancies and it makes me even more nervous because i was thinking of course they're not finding a client for you because you're afraid and they're going to realize because they are not placing you because you're a fraud right and the reality is they were so used to place only senior platform engineers and senior developers that they struggle to place a child delivery consultant or project manager because they weren't used to so it wasn't about my qualities the fact it was from their side so they decided to organize an internal conference day that the whole company would be one day at the uh without billing to the clients

it's going to be some clients invited and some people from the company they're going to give some talks as i was on the bench i feel obliged to submit one talk right and say well i might be able to talk about this so they say okay cool we give the talk so i gave the talk some uh people say that they like me and the head of delivery said you know not that you have to take a a talk created you should submit it to conferences i say yeah right i'm gonna submit to conferences no one is going to accept this talk but they did and actually that it's vilnius in lithuania and it was my first ever talk it was in vilnius

and i got accepted there and i was really really nervous because i did check the other speakers and there were some famous speakers that you could see that they were giving talks for years and years it was a conference it was a big data conference or no height load strategy conference and my talk it was about project management and devops so the weird one like on this conference you see that i'm not talking about security it was the same i wasn't talking about high load strategies or big data but they like to talk and some people they like it i enjoy meeting other speakers and the people so i submit that talk to two other

conferences because i've already have the talk the abstract and i was surprised because it got accepted on a lot of different conferences so i enjoyed the the nice part of being a speaker meeting other people other cultures by watching other speakers life and learning from them and i visited kiev berlin new york right holland and that it was only with one talk that i was really confident because it was several times given that talk it's like when when you're a developer and you feel confident applying same principles and they'd say oh that's exactly the same but one senior consultant and the company said you know antonio you should probably prepare a little bit more and create

more talks you know okay maybe i can do that so i decided to learn more so i use pluralsight there is a course from scott hanselman about public speaking and giving tech talks and it was amazing i enjoyed it and i i checked scott hanson's talk on youtube and things like that he's really amazing so if you have the opportunity of watching live do it because it's he is really really really good and discussing with the senior consultant that it's also the season speaker he told me you know when i create a new talks i don't create the whole slides i just create the id of the talk the title and the abstract and then i submit it to conferences and

if it's accepted then i create the whole talk if not then i submit other ideas and say oh that's the agile thinking right the the mvp or the minimum marketable product okay i'll do the same crazy me so i said oh i might try to do that and they shook me an idea was to talk about technical debt and it got accepted so i got an email but they started like that that's you know antonio your talk was rated among the best by our mobile web track program committee so i was really really stressed because i the talk wasn't created so i tricked them again and i was feeling again like a fraud and oh they are going to realize because

it's a big conference in in greece that there are four or 500 people there okay antonio relax okay let's see the other speakers right let's see one of the keynotes who who is one of the keynote speakers oh scott hanselman the guy of the pluralsight course the guy that i just told you that is really amazing he was one of the keynotes i freaked out i was completely completely stressed to the fact that i cannot be on the same conference that he's been the keynote because i'm not that good so i was really really stressed it took me a lot of nights to create a talk even the the day before i was really really stressed the conference it was a

two days conference my talk was on the second day before the closing keynote by linda lucas so i was able on the first day to see all the amazing speakers giving thoughts and i was getting more and more nervous more and more answers and i was really really stressed but someone managed to help me get the facts and not the feelings so with one french speaker because at that time i was already speaking french fluently because i was already in uk told me one fact instead of focus on how i was feeling about impostor i was feeling really stressed because i was feeling that i wasn't good he said you know there is a fact that this you submitted your

thought like i did and the program committee i think it will be great so don't worry it will be great so that was the first time that i realized about checking the facts and not the feelings can be a good thing to reduce anxiety and to reduce that feeling and it was really really important that someone even someone that i met that day helped me doing that even though all the time during the conferences and all the time at the conference i'm always feeling like i'm the fraud so all of that is the feeling about the being impostor is what is called imposter syndrome so have you ever compared yourself with other team members and felt like a

friend if yes we can say i had you might have impostor syndrome at that time or have your fault in words if you have job promotion or when you get a new job offer that say i don't know how i'm getting that amount of money since then or doubted about your successes so when you have a positive feedback in at your work or is the thing when you are a conference speaker when you have a good talk and you have positive feedback and and you doubt that do you know someone who could have answered yes to any of those questions because those are traits of impostor syndrome poster syndrome is a psychological pattern when you doubt about your accomplishment

and you think that you are going to be exposed as a fraud so you have that fear that people are going to realize that you're tricking them that you are actually sabotaging yourself that's impossible thing sounds familiar a little bit of the questions hopefully yes and don't worry you are not alone if you say yes you are not alone at all there are some studies that at least 70 percent of individuals experience impostor syndrome at least once in their life and it can be more than once i can tell you there are some moments that can trigger that more often when you change the environment so when you move to a new city when you go to a new university

to do a possible grade or you change your career and you go to a different university when you move to a different company and of course when you move to a different country you can feel like that and also it triggers quite often sorry if you are part of underrepresented gender ethnicity whether you are working because you might be feeling that you are there only to fill the quota and not because you are an amazing people at your job the reality is you are there because you deserve it and you are amazing at your job not for a quote keep that in mind some traits of imposter syndrome so the feeling of being afraid or feel shame to ask for

help it happened to me quite often and it happened also to conference speakers when asking for help to refine a talk or when you have an unfinished personal project and it's unfinished because it's not perfect so you can have that you want for a talk but you don't have to finish the talk because you don't feel it's perfect right or you can't start a project because you don't know how to start and you start procrastinating so it's the same for a conference speaker you're going to start a new talk because you don't know how to stop you don't know how to create the story how to create the the flow of the words during the talk so

you procrastinate or you have the feeling that other people are talented and you are just lucky you are the lucky in my case you are the lucky guy at the lucky moment at the right time you know it's a well but they were looking for someone and at that moment i was also looking at just because i was lucky sometimes you look for standard validation so it can be on your day-to-day job like trying to get standard validation from other colleagues from other teams from your line manager when you're a conference speaker we are trying to see if all the feedback that you're getting from the conference is positive and and things like that but to regard that

you are looking for external validation you disregard any positive but you're only looking for the negative because you are convinced that it wasn't great you are convinced that it wasn't perfect your project your job or your talk so they are going to realize where it could be better and that's the reason you're looking for all that negative impact some expressions that people with imposters could say so and this one's like i have heard that more than once typical that i have been coding for more than 10 20 years my code is good no need to review it there is a chance that that person needs having poster syndrome and it's afraid that if someone is going

to review the code they will realize that that person is afraid what you want to open source this but what if they found bugs that's impossible as well the key thing is if you want to consort something it's good if they find bugs because the opposite is you don't open source that and no one find that back that's worse right or when you ask what he said okay let's what's happening oh i'll go home later yes let me finish this and that person is doing out of hours quite often especially before when we were working in the office but now people are working at home sometimes they keep connected and connected working because they want to finish

things right all of that in some cases not always it might be impossible and it's a impersonal syndrome generates what i call or like to call the the four horsemen of imposter syndrome yes there is a lot of escort on psychology a lot of aspect of one imposter syndrome or different ways of saying for me that encapsulate in a in a way what i feel with imposter syndrome and i think it's it's important and the four horsemen for me are self-doubt perfectionism anxiety and the fear of failing so we're gonna talk a little bit about each of them self-doubt it's when you feel that you will never know enough and that's the reason you feel that you're afraid because you

think that you don't know enough you are in some cases seeking out training or certifications to improve or succeed but not really to learn this only because if i have those 10 certifications that i probably don't need maybe people won't find out that i'm afraid so i need to have those certifications and don't get me wrong there's some certifications that are really useful to have you learn a lot and if you are getting a lot of certifications because your main influence is to learn from the certifications just do it my sentence is when you're feeling is just doing a lot of training and certifications because like that no one can say that you're not good at that it might be a little bit of

self-doubt right sometimes when you are on the wall for some time but you feel that you don't know enough and that you don't know how you are a senior developer or senior security expert when you feel that you don't know enough and with when you're a speaker and in several years giving talk and you say i don't know why they are still accepting my thoughts because i'm i'm not good enough so they're self-doubting right and sometimes they feel impressed to work harder and longer to prove your worth so when i was in france i was working harder and longer to prove that i was there because i was good not because i had a sister there but

they're saying when i moved to uk i was working harder to prove that it was my place right so all that self-doubting i think there's an image that i always like to display the imposter syndrome on the left is what i when you suffer impressive syndrome you think that what you know is that tiny tiny bit and you think that the others they know that big the reality is the knowledge of all of us they complement each other so there are some things that all of us know and some things that you only know and sometimes there are things that you only know because your experience your life and that's the reason you know him and he's good to

share with others i also like this image because it reminds me that on the left the death star of star wars and i say that that's not good so keep in mind the others may be thinking the same the the other team members the other conference speakers they might be feeling the same perfectionism is when you feel your work must be one hundred percent perfect one hundred percent of the time and if it's not you don't feel okay so you set really high goals for yourself and knowing that they are nearly impossible and when you don't reach them because they are nearly impossible you have my yourself doubt also especially when you get promoted to tim

lee as you want the whole job for the team to be perfect you have difficulty delegating because you're not sure whether it will be perfect or not so you keep working more hours and doing it more and more to try to be perfect right and the success is not satisfying you because you think i could have done better so when you're a conference speaker sentences even people are saying oh the talk was amazing it was really good thank you very much but you feel it wasn't that great because i know i could have done it better i could have said in a different way there in a different way there or i forgot to say

something that is important but they don't know for them it was really really good thought but for you you don't feel right because you know you could i could have done better then the perfectionism is what it gets the binary thinking of impostor syndrome binary thinking of imposter syndrome is when you feel this is perfect or bad so you don't see in the middle for for you if something is not perfect it's bad and that's really really problem perfection is the enemy of great when you are so striving for perfection that if it's not perfect you are not happy and you think that is bad you are missing the point that it might be great

so doing a great job is cool doing great talk is good it doesn't have to be perfect so from a conference speaker perspective you don't have to target 100 of the audience that they are going to love your top i know maybe scott hanselman is able to do that but for me if some people are thinking that the talk is great it's enough now and now i know it because i know that there is one thing that is called impostor syndrome so keep this phrase in mind all the time perfection is the enemy of great great things are great fear of failure another of the horsemen and sometimes when you ask for help you're revealing that you're playing

everyone so you don't ask for help or when or you're really really afraid of asking for help and to do it really really late when you're developing right and you should have probably asked before or applying for a job that happened quite a lot there are some people that they don't apply for a job unless they meet every single requirement especially when they're bullet points because they say well they're looking for someone with these 10 bullet points and i can fulfill only eight so i'm not going to apply the reality is if you can fulfill eight of those ten bullet points probably you aren't the top candidates and when you are going to be on that role

after some time you would be able to fill all the 10 bullet points so just apply don't don't get yourself saying i'm going to fail i'm not going to play apply for that interview oh for the conference speaker perspective i'm not going to submit my talk to that conference because it's not completely matching exactly what they want is yeah a little bit but not too much so i'm not going to ascend and they talk see i didn't do that clearly on the conference about security submitting that talk and that's a good thing because i'm here now right so it's the same for the jobs and the fear of failure also is when you fail because you may fail that's normal

thing in life that we can fail your confidence goes really really low and you feel ashamed of thinking that i was thinking that it could be possible and things like that so it happened to me i said joe and now to a job offer when i was in france to move to sweden and i feel really really depressed after that for thinking that i could do that job and the reality is i was the one refusing that job but i was suffering from personal stimulant that bad that they didn't realize and i feel really really bad because i wasn't able to do that job but the is it wasn't the right job the right moment

the right contract and it was me saying no the self-doubt perfectionism on failure can lead to something really serious that is anxiety i'm not an aspect on psychology i cannot tell people what to do just suffer anxiety or not because it might be growing in some cases so i'm going to explain how i deal myself with anxiety and the things that work with me or how do i fight imposter syndrome in general but if you feel that you have anxiety and you recognize that seek professional help then don't use only a conference talk to to deal with it because it's really important but some symptoms that you might start feeling anxious or about having anxiety

is when you are you're start isolating from others so reducing your social life you're working more hours and you have trouble sleeping and if you check the phone they retrofit each other right because when you are isolating from others you are going to have trouble sleeping and also you are working more hours you are going to have trouble sleeping because you are working more hours and you are isolating from others so it's reducing your social life and all of that is going to promote anxiety and all that feeling of them self-doubt fear of failure and perfectionism so it's really serious so how do i fight it right what are the small things that i do to

try to survive that imposter syndrome remember at the beginning that i was stressing when a conference speaker told me the fact that he submitted the talk exactly like i did and not about what i was feeling at that moment that was a fact it was really important for me to keep me in check so when you're self-doubting about yourself or you're feeling a little bit like maybe you're at the front it's always good to do the list of facts about the things that you are accomplishing so whether you are delivering something or set up a all the security protocols or the list of facts depending on your context and you can do another feelings and you realize that the feelings

every person can have that different but the facts when you explain the facts they are the same for every person so for a conference speaker that the fact for every person is that i did submit the talk like everybody else and it got selected by the program committee that they have a lot of experience the feeling that i feel that i don't belong there or other speaker that they feel that i they do belong there it's irrelevant because the fact is the same for with the job offer that they have in uk for example i was really really stressed and astonished that i they offered me a lot of money that i didn't check all the facts and

the facts actually is my first job was really really underpaid and their budget for that role it was that whole amount so they gave me the whole budget because they just wanted to cover that role with the person that they think or they felt that it was the right one when i was in that company nearly three years so it wasn't that i was tricking them it's probably that my previous salary was really that low that it was underpaid save any positive feedback and check it from time to time so what i do sometimes when i have really nice messages on some slack channels or twitter about the conference i take a small screenshot and i save it

on my computer and i check it in the future because it helps well as a conference speaker it helps a lot to see if one of my talks someone's a positive comment or it made the change with one person then that talk is worth on the day-to-day job knight here save also the positive feedback and check it later to realize on the good things that you did in the past because we tend to forget on the positive and we tend to focus on the negative but if you save it and you check it from time to time you can keep yourself in check stop comparing yourself with other team members they are different person and so on you

might think that maybe your life is boring but it's not boring for others you are thinking your life is boring because you are always there living your life but for others it might be interesting you might have a lot of experience to share so something to share on the conference talk or with your team member something to share no to share so don't compare to others so i should stop comparing myself with scott hanselman because i'm not him and i will never be him and that's right have someone to talk to and the key thing on this is it has to be it doesn't have to be a good friend can be different people for me when i

was in greece it was french speaker i never know that person helped me to put the facts and feelings when you have a friend that that person knows about impostor syndrome that person can help with the doing the list of facts when you want to do a personal project or something that is it's going to be for long time or to want to create a new talk it's good to actually to avoid the procrastination and doing at the very last minute and have the feeling that it wasn't good because you did it at the last minute set yourself a small goals and a small declines so you do a step by step so when i create a new talk now

i do a lot of dry runs with colleagues in the office or soon now so i i have the deadlines that i need to present these in a couple of weeks a different version and so on so it helped me to keep the focus and not to be worried too much and it's not going to be perfect so why you should do it and wait till the day before the conference it's the same when you're doing personal projects one important thing is be kind to yourself when you you are seeing others evaluating others we usually are really kind with others we were checking the good things of others more than the negatives but we tend to

forget about ourselves all the good things so be kind to yourself and if you are feeling too stressed and things like that that you cannot cope what it helps me is to work a little bit or something with music that i don't hear anybody it helps me when i'm going to give some conferences so i'm working interviewed and putting some music and relaxing to my day-to-day job if i'm stressed working a little bit even if it's just 15 minutes it helped a lot so before pandemic i i was always buying my lunch at lunch time instead of bringing from home because that was forcing me to go out and get fresh air so that helped me a lot

just remember you are the worst critic you deserve your success everything good that is happening to you is a combination of your hard work your education your learning knowledge and all of that applied together and that's the reason you deserve it because all of that combination and now that you know what imposter syndrome it's a little bit like a poison so you know that it happened and sometimes it might get you too focused on the task but now you know it so you can try to understand when you're suffering that to focus on the task but not getting offsets it's so a little bit can help you realizing of the imposter syndrome and dealing with it and be better right

but it fits a lot and society comes and that's the last slide because i always want to finish with obi-wan kenobi when he said in my experience there is no such thing as luck so again what you're happening to you it's not luck like i was thinking before that i was a lucky boy in the lucky place at the lucky moment certainly because i work hard for that and it's happening for you it's not for lag it's because you're working hard thank you very much