Ep16 - Imposter Syndrome: You're Not Alone

Welcome to Bytes in Balance, the podcast where we navigate the wild world of software engineering together. I'm Dan, and this is Demian. We have been juggling code, teams, and sanity for over 35 years combined, from junior devs to principal engineers.

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Sometimes we even bring guests to shake things up. This podcast is our way of tackling the stress, burnout, and growth pains that come with the job. It's as much a balancing act for us as it is for you. Grab a seat and let's navigate this madness together. You'll find some interesting links in the episode description if you want to learn more about us or the topics we discuss. All right, let's get started.

Hey, Dan. Welcome back to this next episode of Bytes Imbalance. What are we talking today? Yeah, I think today we decided we're going to talk about imposter syndrome. And why do you think this is an important topic? This comes up a lot. It's something that I think is not unique to the tech industry, but you hear about a lot in the context of the tech industry.

and i thought we could just go through like what is it at a high level how have we personally experienced it you know maybe we can talk about some of those aspects that are unique to the tech industry or what makes it different here and then just talk about our experience with it what's made it worse what's helped it

I don't think this is the kind of episode that we're going to cover this topic completely end to end in 45 minutes or whatever. I think this can be maybe a little more open-ended and just kind of expanding on our personal experiences here.

Yeah, I think it's an important and interesting topic because, I don't know in your case, but in my case, you know, I have stepped on a bunch of really good, great folks suffering from this. It's one of those things that people have sometimes even a hard time admitting.

and talking about this. And I think it's just healthy to have this conversation and point out that there is a lot of folks, great folks out there in the industry suffering from this. And anyhow, there is light at the end of the path.

Well, yeah, even in that phrasing, though, you make it sound like this is something that you and I have like conquered or gotten over. But I think one of the things that I've realized is that you feel it differently in different stages of your life or your career, but it's not something that goes away completely. In fact, I think. Sometimes as I got promoted to a senior engineer and a principal engineer, I think that some of those I experienced it almost worse.

Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think I have conquered mine. And of course I think through the years we have made probably solid steps into improving, but it's always a work in progress.

Let's try to define it first. How would you try to explain what is imposter syndrome to someone who isn't familiar with that term? Competent people particularly. And I say competent people because there is evidence that these people is competent in the workplace, etc. And it's this feeling that some of these people has that they are not good enough or they are inadequate or they don't belong.

there or they are not smart enough and that sometimes eventually translates to that feeling or that thought that they are just faking it basically you know you need the job you're faking it to actually be there and get your paycheck And I think this is people that is very self-aware in that sense. This could be a constant thought in some cases that could cause a lot of anxiety and trouble.

I think that's a great definition. I think you touched on a couple of important points that people who tend to be more self-aware and even people who tend to be more competent, honestly, tend to be more, um,

more susceptible to this so yeah i think you defined it right it's like this generalized feeling that despite the success that you have achieved so far whether it's getting into college whether it's getting a job whether it's getting promoted you know it's this feeling that oh the people that saw that in me

It was a mistake. I'm actually secretly incompetent. I have all these things that I don't know or can't do. And eventually, I'll be found out. Eventually, someone will realize, hey, you don't really know Dijkstra's algorithm. Get out of here. It's that kind of hard-to-pin-down feeling that you're an imposter. I have in my notes something that says, like, someone is going to later have that aha moment, you know, and finally expose you.

Yes, yes. So there's a lot of overlap here with generalized anxiety that anyone in any field, in any facet of life can experience. And I've certainly experienced that. And that's something that therapy has helped me with both in my workplace, but also in my personal life. But I think there's some aspects of the tech industry that make it worse or at least different. Before I dive into that.

Maybe I thought it'd be useful to go through a couple of our personal experiences with it. Because again, I think this is something that you experience differently at different stages of your career. The first time I remember feeling like this was my freshman year of college. And I started taking computer science classes. I was at a university where you start out taking major classes like right away. And I had never really done much programming before.

college i guess i had done some visual basic which honestly probably put me ahead of a lot of other kids in that class and looking back on this but you know i was not realizing that i was looking ahead at these other kids who already had been programming in java or c plus plus or whatever

were the languages that we were learning at the time. I just had this general feeling that they were all so far ahead of me. They'd been programming since they were 12 or 13, and here I was 18 or 19, which looking back on it was ridiculous, but I was feeling like, oh my God, I'm too late. I've missed the boat.

good at math in general like i passed my math classes i got good grades but i'd never considered myself someone that was great at there are certain kinds of math combinatorics permutations all this crap that i just hated and couldn't do and those kinds of feelings i would look at other kids in my class and see them

anxiously raising their hands and having all the answers, and I didn't. And yeah, I felt like at times my professors were going to take me aside and be like, hey, I don't think you're cut out for this.

Of course, that never happened, but that's the kind of feeling, and this is the first time I remember kind of having this feeling. It seems ridiculous now that some kid who had learned Java when he was 17 wasn't some expert programmer, but that to me, I looked at those people and felt like they were and felt like I wasn't. no it's interesting because it's those things that you look back and they do seem ridiculous but when you were experiencing them they are not they are very valid feelings

Yeah, I remember lots of occasions in which this would happen. I started two companies in Venezuela and it was definitely a rough and very lonely place to be because, you know, nobody's going to come and help. And there you are. What the hell am I doing? Do I even know what I'm doing? Right. Just trying to do your best. And yeah, it's kind of tough. And then you see other people that feels way more confident than you on their conversations, etc. And you are like.

wait, this guy knows what he's doing and I have no idea what I'm doing. Yeah, some things look ridiculous when you look back, but that's what they are. That's what you were feeling back then. I remember joining Amazon, even being in meetings, and I mentioned this in a previous episode, being in meetings and trying to put together my English that was not good enough, looking around and thinking like, Jesus, all these guys are incredibly smart. What the hell am I doing here?

right and I don't understand 40% 50% of what they say in the meetings because the English and the acronyms or whatever do I even belong here that was rough too and after just pushing and persevering you ultimately get somewhere else to the other side of the road I totally get your feelings in those sense

And it's interesting how you can experience it, like you said, despite being objectively competent. I didn't actually struggle at my first job at Amazon. I think it was a combination of I had a really supportive, really good manager. It wasn't my first job out of college. I had been working part time.

at this software company, so I sort of felt like it wasn't my first corporate job. I had some amount of self-confidence in that role. I didn't actually experience it really badly at Amazon until I got promoted.

Well, maybe it was the second time. So I got promoted to SDE2 and that was fine. Again, I was only expected to kind of work within my own team. A few years later, I was an SDE3, a senior engineer. And suddenly I was expected to go interface with other teams. And my manager would bring me to other teams and be like, here's our senior.

engineer yeah i felt so bad once your title changes to principal engineer and you're like i'm a pe it's like a whole thing i would never introduce myself as that i would say i'm an engineer stuff like that and my boss would walk me in here's rp that kind of stuff absolutely made it worse this is the guy that is supposed to know what he's doing yeah exactly exactly so stuff like that for sure made it worse but yeah it was when i was suddenly put in positions where

I didn't have as much confidence and people around me sort of, I felt like they all knew a bunch of stuff that I didn't. It was a big combination of all those things. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I wonder if there is something related to shyness.

And one aspect of the previous experience that you described, because you say there's a bunch of people, you know, raising their hands and having the answers and whatever. And when I was telling the experience when I had the companies about this other person, you know, that was way more confident than I was in that sense. It's like, do I know even what I'm doing?

Then looking backwards, I realized that he didn't know what he was doing. Actually, technically, I was way more competent. But this person either was not aware of this, he was really good at talking to people or doing this type of things, and that gave him this sense of... confidence that you look from the outside and you feel like, okay, what's going on here?

I don't like to try and psychoanalyze people, but I do think people kind of fall into one or two buckets. And of course, we're all blends of these. But like, I think some people, when they feel anxious and not as confident, I think they tend to kind of look inwards. And then I think some people look outwards or reflect outwards, try to project more confidence.

look at themselves and think oh i'm struggling because i'm not competent i'm not good and then other people will react differently to that try to build up their self-confidence by being more overt more out there The other interesting thing that I get from this piece of the conversation is that the promotion aspect is very interesting that you are mentioning. And I went through similar things, by the way, at Amazon, too. But it is like I'm circling back to what is unique about this in tech.

And when you think about software development, when you're starting, there are certain aspects of it that are incredibly simple or feel incredibly simple. You write a small program, it's not working.

You just troubleshoot. You find that you miss a semicolon or something somewhere or whatever, right? And you fix it and it works. Or you're doing these small tasks of putting together a web page, a screen, a form, something like that. Those are things that are incredibly well documented. It's easy to find help. on these things and put them together, etc. As you progress as an engineer, you start attacking things that are way more ambiguous and problems that may not even have solution.

actually. And that puts you in a very tough place because you are coming from this situation in which you were fixing things quickly, you know, easily. You were used to that piece and the harder it gets in that sense, the more complex it gets and the more incompetent you tend to feel. Yeah, yeah. You're getting this positive feedback loop of solving something and seeing it work. And that's like on the order of like seconds or minutes or hours at worst.

and then also one thing that came to mind as you were talking about that is all these things are really simple but have you ever had the experience where someone else non-technical has been amazed at how like magic it is and you're like i just put a button on a web page and they're like oh you're a

wizard. I think sometimes that kind of stuff can contribute to it too. Like you get praised for doing all these things that are easy and simple to you because you know how to program. And then suddenly you start hitting these problems that are harder or don't have easy solutions. And you think, okay but i should just be able to solve this by sitting down on my keyboard and banging away for an hour or two and when i can't i'm like okay i'm a failure

No, it's moving from these very short feedback loops and dopamine cycles to these way longer ones. And you quickly enter in desperation. Like, what the hell am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I've gotten better at pulling myself out of that loop. grounding myself and all that stuff. But that's taken me years. Yeah, I think it's a years long work and process.

Yeah. So there's some other aspects too of the tech industry that I think also make it unique. I mean, I think the fact that the technologies are changing so much, I think you and I both talked about this, like both of us leaving Amazon, I've never used Kubernetes before because I've always used whatever tools Amazon had.

coming out into the world, potentially looking for a job. And I'm like, I have this huge gaping hole of technologies that I've never used. That's a way that I can experience it now. And I think it's because there are so many technologies and especially because of the job market, the way the job market is now, people feel like they have to be. an expert in all of them.

Yeah, I think this pressure that we put on ourselves that we have to be experts on specifics and specific things also could contribute to it. And what we don't realize is that the best skill that we can have is actually the skill of learning and adapting. to things, not necessarily to know a specific technologies. That's absolutely true. But there's also convincing yourself of that. And then there's convincing some recruiter out there who wants to hire you. Those are two different things.

you know i had this conversation sometimes with my mentees and it is about like if you think about how big tech recruits mostly

They don't recruit about you knowing a specific programming language or a specific technology or something like that. Most of the cases, there could be some specifics. They recruit in terms of... potential values fit and things like that and then you see roles which are laughable sometimes it's like okay you need to know kubernetes spring boot this other thing it's a huge long list of 20 25 things and it's probably a mid-level engineer and it's like

know what that this doesn't exist it's as simple as that so yeah it's a tendency that the industry definitely has yeah and you mentioned big tech to some extent i think that's definitely true i really liked and i still like the amazon behavioral interview process you know assessing people against the lps the leadership principles you know we talked about that a few episodes ago that's honestly a great way to interview people what i'm not a huge fan

of is the weird arcane leak code puzzles they're getting worse you know you and i have interviewed a ton at amazon and we asked your basic like easy and medium leak code questions not directly from leak code but you know that same kind of stuff basic computer science operations i'm specifically talking

about meta maybe but i think the other big companies are doing this too you know the job market's so bad there's so many candidates incoming they're laying people off the bar is getting higher but not in a way that's going to result in better engineers i've been poking through the meta coding puzzles they have like a um jobs

and they have a bunch of coding puzzles. They're all just these awful, super crazy math problems. They're gonna take these people and then have them building CRUD apps. Whether or not you can solve some combinatorics or statistical problem in 25 minutes.

it's frustrating and i think the reason why i'm talking about it is partly because i'm just annoyed about it in general but also partly because i think this kind of stuff contributes to imposter syndrome eight out of ten or six out of ten or whatever people that take this interview are not going to pass they're going to go away from this

well, they may go away from this experience feeling like, oh, I'm not good enough. I'm not a real engineer. And that's not true. And something that is really interesting here, given that you bring this topic, is that people need to realize that being a good engineer, or good at something in general, It's not just one or two skills, just a broad set of skills. You could have a great engineer that is not necessarily the fastest coder.

potentially, but has great judgment, has great capability of aligning people, thinking big, thinking long term. That makes that person a great engineer. He's the type of person that could build on top of a team of people with great technical skills too and align people and create a bunch of amazing things. I have seen that happen. And actually, lots of PEs in Amazon and other companies, that's what they do.

do. It is interesting to understand that one specific skill, a data structures and algorithm and lead code level card is not going to define you. yeah and as you were talking about that it was kind of reminding me about another thing that i wanted to talk about which was what are some of the things that we've observed make imposter syndrome worse or what are the things that we've observed have helped and one of the things

is having management or peers who recognize those things in you the qualities that you were talking about if you have the ability to influence and organize people and get people on board and you're good at negotiating things in meetings or whatever having a man

manager that will recognize that and explicitly say to you in your one-on-ones, hey, you did a great job doing XYZ, that makes a big difference. I've had managers that I looked back on them and I liked them. They were good people. They were nice people. They were good at their jobs. But they were pretty hands-off in terms of seeing what I was doing. Or I've had other managers that were sort of really only impressed with the technical aspects of things that we were doing.

someone goes and spends all night working on some big code review and submits it the next morning, the manager's like, wow, wow, so cool. But if I were to do a really good job in a meeting and get everybody aligned on some decision, I wouldn't get the same recognition. Yeah, I realized that to some extent that would contribute. Yeah, I agree. The proper recognition of all these different broad variety of skills, I think it's important.

I mean, some of that we can do ourselves. It's reframing your thinking and being like, okay, well, yeah, I didn't write any code this week, but I actually did get a lot done. I moved the needle on these projects and I set up this meeting and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I would do that to myself when I was a PE, but it's a lot harder than

and you can just pull up your GitHub commit profile and see a bunch of green or whatever. It's not the same thing as seeing that. That's, I think, one of the things why we bias towards those. There's another aspect of management that I realized I needed, which was not just being supportive and recognizing for the things that I was doing.

But also I found in situations where I was feeling more imposter syndrome-y, one of the things that helped was having more frequent check-ins with my manager or people that I was working on a project with. But it was a case where I would find I was getting up in my own head about what I should do or what the best thing to do.

to move forward was. And I found that places where I had a manager that I could just set up a one-on-one with and say, hey, I'm feeling kind of stuck on this project. Help me through this. I've had other managers where I didn't feel as comfortable doing that. They were super busy. They needed me to have

more of a concrete agenda or thing in mind. They would struggle if I just brought this open-ended, like, oh, I'm not sure what to do. So having a manager that was kind of receptive to that, I think was really important for me. Yeah, I agree. I think that mates or breaks the experience. And it's an interesting point for managers that could be listening here, particularly one-on-ones are not only about

What have you been doing? What are you doing? Et cetera. One on one is about understanding the individual, understanding what that person needs, thinking of their careers and realizing that this person is a human that is going through his own internal processes and could be stuck in something like this and trying.

to figure it out how to help that person. I agree. I think it's a very important aspect of it. In my case, something that has helped a lot has been acknowledging it. Like it's basically when you get to this point and when you look at it, you say, yep, it is there. yep there is not much i can do right now about it and just trying to be kind with yourself with all those thoughts etc

trying to recount, you know, also your successes in the past and things that you have done well, etc. That actually helps. But I think for me, a turning point was when I started acknowledging it. There was a very interesting moment in which I had a conversation with a senior PE in Amos. that was my mentor for some time and there was a moment in which I asked like hey

Let's talk about imposter syndrome. What do you think I can do with mine? I suffer of this. I don't know how to deal with it. And he say in a very few words, something in the order of, well, you know, I really don't know. But when you go and figure it out.

please come and tell me so I can deal with mine. And you know, this is a senior PE, been in Amazon for like 20 years, probably at this point. That was the aha moment in which you say like, okay, if this guy has his own imposter syndrome, I'm fine.

And again, it's not that solved the problem, but gives you perspective when you start acknowledging it, when you start even talking about it with other folks and realizing that other folks are going through the same thing. It's like you remove the feeling that you are alone in that spot.

Yeah, I think that's a big deal. I've found that it helps people when I talk about my own, like with my own clients or even back when I was at Amazon with my mentees. So like a very specific example, if I'm working with a client or when I was at Amazon, if I'm working with a mentee on promoted. I'm probably reading their promo doc.

or I'm helping them write their promo doc. And that is a specific thing for me. And a lot of people have told me this, that doing that accentuates or makes them feel that imposter syndrome because you're sitting there staring at a piece of paper that has all these, one, you're staring at the role guidelines, which are a bunch of bullet points.

points stating in very flowery language about how amazing of an engineer you must be. You must be this tall to ride this senior engineer ride or whatever. It's very intimidating looking at all those. And of course, you know, I would talk with people, okay, you don't have to meet all of these. You hit 60, 70%.

these and then we go for it. But still looking at that makes it worse. The other thing is looking at the bullet points of what you have done, your own accomplishments and your own projects and reading the stories of, you know, here application that I built or delivered or whatever. That's hard to do. I have this behavioral inner.

interview worksheet that I share with my clients. And it has some bullet points of stuff for my own career that I put in there as an example. And I tell people, when I read this stuff, I'm not impressed. Because people have told me that. People have looked at it and said, this looks so impressive. I don't feel like mine match up. And I'm like,

I get the same feeling when I read them myself. It is a universal experience to some extent. And then you start downplaying your achievements. And you start downplaying the importance of certain things. I have seen that in promo docs. They are putting something that...

I mean, it was important. It was a big deal and they write it in a way that is not a big deal. And people don't realize that that's also impacting the way the committee that is reading about the promotion is going to assess them and it's going to impact the promotion itself. And sometimes we do this to ourselves. I remember doing this to myself.

On my PE promotion, I write a document. My opinion was a well-written document. I had some of these feelings, oh, this is not that impressive. And my manager took that document and basically rewrite the whole thing in a way. And when I read the second piece of the document, it was like, wait.

yeah and the thing is i think you and i and people who experience this are conscientious people they're aware of how they want to come across they don't want to come across as braggarts or egotistical or full of themselves that's a normal instinct that's a very normal

thing. I think the trick is balancing that and realizing when you're going too far, when you're going in there and cutting out all your accomplishments from your own promo doc. I do this to myself, and I'm getting better at catching myself. Actually, a good example, I'm not sure if this is super related, but when I write...

messages to people, emails, messages, whatever. I always have this tendency to start it out with an apology. Oh, I'm sorry. I was late on this. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't get back, whatever. And more and more I'm realizing, and I'm trying to catch myself and realizing, you know what, it's not necessary. I'm just going to get to the point.

to do it and that's an example of where i'm trying to sort of interrupt that cycle yeah i'm doing the same by the way i catch myself and i think it's one of those small things that are useful the other thing is that we And I don't know your case, right? Your experience. We are trained to be very self-aware of what we don't know. It's hard to meet a very experienced engineer that is cocky because...

If you have been long too long in this industry and you're a very cocky person, I don't know how have you survived. That aspect, that trait that has helped us survive, questioning ourselves, questioning what we know. Am I doing the right thing or not? The capability of changing direction if you feel that you are not. Probing, trying something else. It's actually the same character.

that we apply to those things. We apply to ourselves to some extent. That's a very interesting thing and makes me think of the Dunning-Kruger effect, which you maybe are aware of. Yeah, how does it go again? so it goes more or less like this in generally people that is very early on their careers or they are not necessarily the most competent they have a wrong assessment of their own competency they think they are very competent

They over assess their own competence. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Because basically they don't know what they don't know. And when you have been long enough in an area career or something like that, you may be very competent. You may be very skilled, but you actually don't play your own competency because you know.

all the things that you don't know. Yeah, I think that's actually one of the reasons that we haven't touched on why this doesn't go away as you age and as you get more senior and more experienced in your career, because you keep learning things and you keep learning about things that you don't know about and you learn about those faster.

You're more self-aware of those things that you don't know. Yes, yes. I'm constantly realizing just how big the world is and how much stuff out there there is. It seems much bigger to me than it did 15 years ago or something. Yeah, I agree.

All right, Dan, what else do you think that could help? What else do you have on your mind? This one is interesting. I don't know how related this is to imposter syndrome, but it feels like it does. One of the things that I've tried to get better at in my career is getting better at sort of asking what seemed to be done.

dumb questions. This would be like mostly in a meeting or even one-on-one. But a lot of times early on in my career, I would have this sense something is wrong with this document we're all reading or this project we're all on, but I would push it down.

because i was feeling imposter syndrome and i didn't think that was worthwhile and then a lot of times i would later on realize you know what i was right about that or i should have brought that up and so more and more i've tried to develop this skill of trying to bring that up when i have that feeling If I sense something is off or if I get a feeling like I don't really like this, I try to get better at raising my hand and saying.

Am I the only one who feels this way? Or what do you think about this? In a sort of non-confrontational way, in a way that part of it is assuaging my own anxiety. I'm not going to reveal myself as a big imposter, but... Doing that helps me feel better about it because almost always the experience after I do this is a bunch of people will go, oh yeah, I was thinking the exact same thing or.

yeah great question it's very rare i suppose this has probably happened to me once or twice it's very rare that someone will go no you're off base irrelevant whatever and we move on that has definitely happened to me and i'm still alive to tell the story which is actually one of the things that you know sometimes

those negative experiences where you come out on the other side, you're like, okay, that was not too bad. Sometimes those actually help just as much as the positive examples. But yeah, I think that's a skill that I've tried to cultivate and I think has helped a lot. It helps me expose a little bit of vulnerability.

hey, I don't know this, but here's where I'm coming from on it. Doing that almost always prompts other people to jump on and respond and sort of engage with me. And that helps, right? Suddenly I'm not an imposter. Suddenly we're all problem solving together.

Yeah, I think I have felt very similar and gone in a similar process. It's this, you know, fear of open your mouth and exposing yourself as an imposter, if I could put it in words. And then the consequence of that is that people tend to not... talk or not say what they are feeling or what they are thinking. We could be wrong in what we are saying and that's fine. In my case it's that I started giving myself

permission to be absolutely and completely wrong. More colloquial words to brain fart. And that's okay. And when that happened, when I give myself permission to be in that position, I definitely started talking more on meetings and started commenting of what I was feeling regarding what we were discussing. And I had exactly the same experience than you.

that rarely I found myself in a position in which I was off base. And if you are, you are. You realize it, you acknowledge, pick whatever thoughts are coming from their side and just move on. And that was a very interesting experience and improvement. Yeah.

You know what's funny? I've had other negative experiences with trying to do this. You've probably run across people like this that are constantly trying to one-up you in conversation. I mean, usually outside of work, but sometimes I've experienced it at work. And in those times, I've done the same thing and I felt like they...

of took advantage of it and like made me feel stupid or whatever you know sometimes those really ate me up for a long time and now i'm kind of realizing i'm starting to actually believe that

Oh yeah, those are the people that I don't really want to work with. That's the kind of environment that I don't feel, if I don't feel safe in a team, brain farting, as you put it, then that's not the kind of team that I want to work for. Earlier in my career, I would have never had the guts to tell myself that.

have just been oh man i'm not cut out to work with these people or i'm not smart enough to work with these people that's a perspective change that i've made intentionally yeah no i agree you don't want to work in that environment definitely And there are very interesting studies or something that somebody taught me once and I use this one is that, well, I have thought about this like for five seconds, but

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's an interesting caveat of I'm not 100% sure of this thing, but it's like you say, like, is anybody else feeling the same? Yeah, I think a lot of it is just developing those scripts. I had a bunch of those for bar raising, for debriefs, you know, leading meeting discussions. There's a whole bunch of things that would just kind of roll off. Like at first, I didn't know how to close a discussion and guide people to like, okay, guys, we have to make...

decision here let's do this well i got better at that with all these little verbal rhetorical tricks and things you just kind of memorize it feels like you're putting on an act at first but then it starts coming naturally you know you develop a way to do it that sounds like you and that sounds authentic

I like that. I've thought about this for five seconds and here's my impression. You're putting it out there that you're not mentally attached. You're not emotionally attached to the idea. You're just putting it out there to see what sticks to the wall. And I think that's really smart.

Yeah, I have seen people use the what sticks to the wall. That also is another trick. Which is funny. I've never, ever done that making spaghetti. That's where it comes from, right? Testing to see if your spaghetti is cooked. Who actually does that? My grandma, probably. Really? Yeah, I grew up hearing those stories. That's funny because I use that as a phrase and a metaphor, but I've literally...

never done it, never seen it done. Yeah, I guess it's all school. All right. I love this conversation. I think it's important to talk about this. People should actually bring it more and acknowledge it more. And I think it's incredibly helpful. So I have enjoyed this conversation from that perspective incredibly.

yeah me as well like you said i think talking about it really helps as i've gotten older and as i've had more experience and talked more about it with everybody i have slowly come to realize that people are not judging me as harshly as i'm judging myself you know it's one thing to hear that

Like if someone's listening to this right now and they're stuck in this, it's one thing to just hear it. It is something that over time I've become to believe. You can point to like concrete areas where like, oh, you know, I made that mistake and nobody noticed, or I did that cool thing.

And everybody noticed you slowly start to build those up. And that is something that helps. This isn't something that's going to go away for either of us. I enjoyed talking about this. Yeah, it's a constant and continuous process and it changes in time and you just keep growing.

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