What\u2019s one of your biggest fears when it comes to your career? As a recovering \u2018Imposter\u2019, for me it was failure. Failing to continue pulling the wool over everyone\u2019s eyes. Failing to succeed in the career I\u2019d taken a massive risk for. Failing to \u201cfit in\u201d. Failing at the simplest of things. Failing a company that gave me my first role in tech. Failing my family, my friends…. Failing myself and having to start again. There was a lot riding on this career change. I could NOT under ANY circumstances fail…..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s a lot of pressure for a perfectionist like myself! I\u2019d worked in the same industry for 19 years prior to switching it up. I\u2019d known my job inside out and I was good at it. I could do it on auto-pilot. But I wasn\u2019t passionate about it. This is different though. I\u2019m a changed human! I enjoy my job. I enjoy problem-solving. I enjoy learning new things. I enjoy making a difference. I\u2019m passionate about doing the best job I can. You\u2019d think that\u2019s the perfectionist in me, but it\u2019s the closeted imposter, who seeks constant validation that they\u2019re doing alright!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s progress though! I mean, I\u2019m only partly joking… I NEED that validation! Not because I think I need to prove myself, but because I want to im<\/em>prove myself. There\u2019s absolutely no point in me thinking I can compete with people with many, many years more experience than me, and I have no intention of trying. What I am <\/em>going to do is listen, observe, take notes, learn everything I can from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s always been a strong belief of mine that we should own our mistakes, our failings, and our near-misses. It helps us to create a psychologically safe environment for everyone around us, and it\u2019s that psychological safety that helps prevent mistakes, encourages collaboration, and creates a happy workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe one way to get me to work my hardest was to doubt me\u201d<\/p>Michelle Obama<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t believe in \u2018weaknesses\u2019 (as in \u2018tell me about your biggest weakness\u2019). I\u2019ve always been pretty stubborn like that. And so I accidentally developed a \u2018growth mindset\u2019. I say \u2018accidentally\u2019 because I find it conflicts with my dark sense of humour. People (including myself!) don\u2019t expect it from me, and so I then have to convince myself (and others) that it really is me <\/em>saying these things! So I don\u2019t see something as being a weakness. I see it as an opportunity to learn and grow. Calling it a weakness sounds defeatist to me. Maybe I\u2019m not so good at something. I\u2019m good at other things. I\u2019m just not so good at the thing<\/em>. YET. I\u2019ll get good – just give me time! I can\u2019t be good at everything all the time!<\/p>\n\n\n\n How am I going to get better at the thing<\/em>? Well, I\u2019m going to practice. And I\u2019m unlikely to get it right the first time. I might get it wrong many, many times. But each time I\u2019ll learn something, and I\u2019ll get closer to getting it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How fortuitous to work in an industry that seeks to \u201cfail fast, learn fast\u201d! I can do both of those things! Let\u2019s reframe how we think about failure… If I write some code, and it does what I want it to do first time, I\u2019m \u0644\u0644\u063a\u0627\u064a\u0629 <\/em>cautious about it! That\u2019s partly down to self-doubt, and partly down to the words of a wise man, spoken during a eureka moment I thought I was having during my<\/p>\n\n\n\n career-change journey… \u201cThat\u2019s probably <\/em>not doing what you think it\u2019s doing\u201d. He was right. It was doing what I thought I wanted <\/em>it to do, but that was purely accidental. It wasn\u2019t doing what I actually <\/em>thought it was doing. Those words have stayed with me (haunted me, some might say!) since 2018. But it was probably one of the most important things I could\u2019ve heard, and it\u2019s always at the back of my mind when I run some code – whether it does what I want it to, or not, It\u2019s made how I think about, and write code much more robust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, what\u2019s my point? My point is, failure isn\u2019t a bad thing and we should stop looking at it that way. It\u2019s part of the journey from not being able to do the thing<\/em>, to being able to do the thing<\/em>. As a \u2018recovering Imposter\u2019, I can tell you, it\u2019s incredibly <\/em>liberating to surrender yourself to failure! Accept that you\u2019re not perfect. Accept failure. Accept that learning is an iterative process. It can be frustrating, and it can take longer than you want it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As another very wise man once said, \u201cit\u2019s called software development<\/em>, not software done<\/em>\u201d. I\u2019m a software developer<\/em>. I will continue to develop <\/em>in my career. I\u2019m completely comfortable with that now. I don\u2019t want to know everything. Not yet <\/em>anyway…<\/p>\n\n\n\n My name\u2019s Debi, and I once unwittingly inserted 69 million <\/strong>rows into a table.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u2019s one of your biggest fears when it comes to your career? As a recovering \u2018Imposter\u2019, for me it was failure. Failing to continue pulling the wool over everyone\u2019s eyes. Failing to succeed in the career I\u2019d taken a massive risk for. Failing to \u201cfit in\u201d. Failing at the simplest of things. Failing a company […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2540,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"slim_seo":{"title":"Happy to be a failure - humans of code","description":"What\u2019s one of your biggest fears when it comes to your career? As a recovering \u2018Imposter\u2019, for me it was failure. Failing to continue pulling the wool over everyone\u2019s eyes. Failing to succeed in the career I\u2019d taken a massive risk for. Failing to \u201cfit in\u201d. Failing at the simplest…"},"_slim_seo_primary_term_category":0,"_slim_seo_primary_term_post_tag":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personal-development","category-wellbeing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humansofcode.org\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}