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We are almost in the end of March and only now I’ve managed to find some time to write about my experiences at LWT. This has been a very busy month for me as I’m practically on the road all the time, jumping from one conference to another.
I’m writing this on the plane getting back home after an amazing Women Techmakers IWD 18 Summit at Google Belo Horizonte, which deserves an entire article about it so I won’t get into many details right now, but it is a kind of poetical ending to a cycle that had begun on the very same summit last year.
Talking at LWT: my first time speaking in English to an audience was both fun and terrifying. :D
Back to LWT, I must say it was really life changing. I had set this goal of having my first English talk this year on my last year review, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Oh, well… kind of.
This is the story of how I managed to complete one of my goals for this year in record time!
PS.: If you don’t want to know the behind the scenes and is just interested on the talk content, jump for the session “The Talk” where I transcribe what I said during… you know… the talk :)
The Idea
Everything started back in November 2017 when I got a ticket to Lesbians Who Tech London Summit. What I couldn’t say back then is that I was invited into town (London) by Google (and later Facebook) because I had moved to the onsite interviewing stage.
For obvious reasons I didn’t want my former employer to know my true intentions, but since that trip appeared out of nowhere and I didn’t have an official “excuse” to do a “quick international trip”, I started desperately looking for tech conferences that would make some sense to attend to.
Luckly for me, that was the same time of the year that LWT London was happening. It was one of those magical coincidences that only happens a few times in our lives. Since I was interviewing with Facebook and they were one of the sponsors, they got me a free ticket. Thank you FB ❤ (On a side note: the Facebook hiring process is awesome… I didn’t get in, but it is still awesome!).
After two rounds of very tiresome interviews, Google on Thursday and Facebook on Friday, I got my prize: attending LWT. That weekend was magical. I’ve never been with so many queer women at the same place… and the best part of it: they all spoken the same language, they were tech ladies!
My favorite picture from my stay in London. :)
That empowering feeling took me over and I decided I needed more of it. I soon would discover the existence of LWT San Francisco and I needed to see it, somehow. Then Leanne Pittsford came on stage and told about her goals for the event and she mentioned she needed more transgender speakers.
“That’s it!” I thought… I always wanted a speaking spot at an international conference, this would be my great chance to start. And what better audience? So, I reached out to her to figure out the details during the ending happy hour.
The most amazing thing about Leanne is that even though she is such a bigshot, I mean, CEO of a conference so big like LWT (5000 attendees in SF!), she is so accessible! She told me she would love to have me there, explained about the CFP and some details how they could help sponsoring the trip and everything was set.
As soon as I got home I started working on that CFP. In the end I’ve submitted two proposals which I though would fit the context of the event. One was about the Imposter Syndrome and the other was on the Women Who Go initiative.
It was about a month or so later that I got my acceptance letter. I was so excited!
Travel Arrangements
It was time to get ready for my trip, but then I had a bit of a drawback on my plans because I’ve discovered they (LWT) couldn’t afford to sponsor the trip. They do have scholarships, but most of those are focused on students and I’m already a professional developer.
I needed the scholarship because even though I am a senior software engineer, I live in Brazil, which comes with two major penalties: first, my purchasing power really sucks (sorry for the language)… imagine your yearly earnings cut by 4, that’s how I feel everytime I travel to the USA; and, second, I’m so far away from everything that the trip itself is so expensive!
I couldn’t make my employer pay for that trip as they have some very strict rules for paying for conferences. Usually inside Brazil they support everything, especially if you have a speaking spot, but international trips have a different policy.
I was on my own… Or so I’ve thought.
The girls at LWT suggested me to do a crowdfunding campaign. My first thought was “Oh my god! Asking for money? No way I can do this!!!”.
I was really embarrassed by that proposal. I’ve never done something like this before, I just didn’t know how to handle it, so many emotions involved. Would it be fair to people? People would even care about it? I was dominated by a mixture of fear of failure and shame for asking.
Why was I worried about it? Maybe I didn’t want to feel vulnerable… maybe I didn’t want to feel rejected in case of failure… no matter the reason, I had to try! LWT was bigger than that. My goals were bigger than that.
After a huge amount of reasoning and internal debating I’ve finally pressed that button. The campaign was live!
Those were some pretty scary five seconds.
Once published I knew what I had to do, so I started sharing on every social network the campaign url. And forgot about it… for a few minutes at least. Then the first e-mail came, then other, and another one… I was getting support from so many people! I cried… I cried that time and I’m also almost crying right now remembering that feeling. You guys are so amazing, thank you very much! ❤
In a matter of hours (not even a day!), I got 100% of the funds I needed to cover the trip and so I closed the campaign. Getting that money though was another story. The Brazilian government is very good at making their citizens life hard. But I’ll save this rant for another day.
As if it wasn’t enough getting all those donations a dear friend of mine offered her house for me to stay in SF (Thank you Vanesa and Alan!!! ❤ ), which really helped keeping that trip under the budget as I highly underestimated the living costs in SF.
It was all set. Now I needed to work on my material. The talk chosen was the one on Imposter Syndrome (on a side note: I’ve used the wording “impostor” syndrome on my slides, but it seems to be that in the USA the most common writing of that word is “imposter”.)
I wanted to give people practical advice on how to deal with the Imposter Syndrome as I’m not “cured”, but I’ve managed to live with it and still accomplish great things even if my inner voice says I can’t.
I’ve figured out that the best way to structure that talk would be a list of tips, which are summarized in this tweet:
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@danicat83 on combatting impostor syndrome: 1) Take small steps to build confidence 2) Embrace new opportunities 3) Acquire knowledge on the go 4) Learn how to FAIL 5) Be data driven 6) Be your true self Bonus: Have a personal mission #LWTSUMMIT
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Before getting into details of the talk, I must say that I was impressed by how many people showed up to see it. Even though it was a breakout session, the room was full. I’ve heard that some 40 to 50 people had to stay out of the room because they didn’t have enough space. Thanks a lot for showing up!!!
The Talk
I’ve started by introducing myself as usual. Since I’m not very known in the USA I’ve presented a small bio/resume with some of my greatest accomplishments: senior software engineer at a big company (in Brazil), Google Developer Expert in Google Cloud Platform, leader of several tech communities, TEDx speaker, blogger, runner and so on… them I’ve completed: by looking just at this resume you may think I’m a pretty confident person, but I’m not. One in thing in common among all those things is that for every single one of them I felt incapable of doing them.
I’ve discovered I had the Imposter Syndrome after reading last year’s infamous Google Manifesto (aka Manifestbro) from ex-Googler James Damore. I was so pissed off by his claims that women are biologically incapable of leading or performing technical roles that I needed to write a response.
While digging for evidence to counter-argument his claims I’ve actually found out that I was doing a lot of things that I didn’t know or didn’t feel capable of doing. I realized I was feeling the synthoms of Imposter Syndrome.
The response I’ve written to his claims you can find here.
The tools I’ve been using to deal with the Imposter Syndrome since them are the following ones:
Tip #1: Take Small Steps to Build Confidence
If you go right for the biggest challenge you may not be prepared to deal with it and fail, which may give you the false impression that you aren’t capable of solving that problem, impairing your confidence.
On the other hand, if you start small and incrementaly increase the complexity no step will look too big to take. I give you an example of contributing to open source code.
My first contribution to the Go programming language was changing for spaces… yes, 4 whitespace characters:
An awesome contribution to the Go language! :)
And it was merged!
I didn’t make any new contributions to Go language after that (shame on me), but that small step was enough to help me building confidence to contribute to other projects.
If your objective is public speaking, for instance, start with a small audience. One person is enough, then make it two, three, four… you get the idea.
When facing larger problems remember that there is no problem that is unbreakable. Try to break big tasks into small steps. Even the atom (from Greek, atomon: indivisible) is divisible. Think about it. :)
Tip #2: Embrace new opportunities
We women tend to reject new opportunities while we are not 100% prepared for it.
Next time someone offer you a thing, like a talking spot, a new role, anything that you don’t feel completely prepared for it, please do yourself a favor and accept it. The reasoning behind this is that other people would offer you a thing if they didn’t feel you could take it.
And since we are talking about Impostor Syndrome here, they have a greater chance to be right than you. Accept it and move on :)
Tip #3: Acquire knowledge on the go
I’ve seen this picture at the IWD summit this weekend that I wish I had back in my talk:
This comes pretty close with the last tip. Even if you are not capable of doing something, there is no better way to learn it than having a clear purpose ahead of you. A target, a deadline, an objective. Those are powerful things.
The thing is that if you are too comfortable somewhere you are not learning anything. And if you aren’t learning you are also not evolving. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. That should be your new baseline.
If you are using talking to an audience of 50 people, why not trying 100 people next time? Too big of a step? No problem, back to tip #1… maybe 60 instead?
Of course there are sometimes you need to fall back to your safe zone to recharge, but don’t let this rest be too long.
Tip #4: Learn how to FAIL
Failure is an important part of life. We will expend most of our days on Earth failing at something. So you must learn to accept it so you can recover fast and try again.
I like to thing about or lives in the ways business people think about startups. The earlier you fail the better, so you won’t expend so much time in something that didn’t worth the trouble. Also learn from your mistakes so you don’t need to repeat them again.
It is important to note that once you start following tips number 2 and 3 you probably will fail more, because you are taking more risks, but you will also learn more and succeed more. In the end, still a win-win situation.
Tip #5: Be data-driven
Also inspired in the business world, gather data from your achievements, so the next time you are in a difficult situation you may have a look at how far did you get from where you started.
Using data to track my weight loss and running skills.
Like I said before, it’s not everyday that you will succeed. But looking at the long term trend will give you insughts whether you are going to the right direction or not.
I used a graph to track my weight loss objective. It’s not every day that you will lose weight, but looking at the trend I knew I was on the right path. The same logic I applied to assessing my running skills.
Looking at the data will help you keep motivated and will also tell you when something is not working and you need to change your methods.
Tip #6: Be your true self
Nobody can achieve their best if you are expending too much energy hiding an important part of theirselves.
I did this for over 30 years of my life. Now that I’m being myself I’m achieving things that I’ve never imagined I could.
I’m the same person, the only difference is that now I have all my energy focused on the things that are really important.
Me: before (2009) and after (2018). I’m always impressed by how younger me looks older than old me. lolBonus: Have a personal mission
I’ve put this as a bonus because I don’t know if everyone has the possibility of having a personal mission. I wish you could, but I may only speak for myself on that one.
When starting my transition I have had a hard time to find role models to follow and inspire me. There are only a few openly transgender people in tech out there, so I decided I would come out and be a role model for the generation to come.
Gophercon Brazil Diversity Scholarship. One of the things I’ve done I’m most proud of.
Also, it’s not only about trans people. As a woman, I also feel the need to show the world that women are very powerful. That we are capable of doing anything that a man can do. After all, we are all human beings.
So, everytime I feel bad or in doubt about doing something, I try to remember that mission. If the thing I’m supposed to do is aligned with the mission, then I must do it, not matter what! That’s how I find energy to overcome the most impossible times.
Final Words
That was a long post, but the idea was to capture a little about the behind the scenes of what that talk meant to me and how was every step from its from conception to its actual delivery.
Also, it serves the purpose of having the talk’s content available somewhere where the people that could not see it on LWT would have access to it.
I hope you enjoyed and hopefuly I’ll have time to share a bit of my other adventures anytime soon.
Finally, if you are curious, I didn’t get an offer neither at Google or Facebook back then, but I’m a strong admirer of both companies since they were some of the few select companies that had invited me to apply after my transition. Kudos for them!
In regards to my current job situation. I’ll make an announcement very soon about that. Stay tuned. :)
Overcoming the Imposter Syndrome at Lesbians Who Tech San Francisco was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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