Before we start our episode today, just a quick reminder that I'm giving away jetbrains. All products pack. Personal licenses for free. The all products, pack license, allows you to use all jetbrains IDs such as IntelliJ, pycharm goal and webstorm Etc. I'll choose three lucky winners and the contest will end in the next few days. Get more information on how to participate by going to this URL. Technology, you know, dot, f /. Jetbrains Dash. Give away his learning one more.
I'm take the Juno, the dev slash jetbrains Dash giveaway, special thanks to jetbrains for sponsoring this giveaway. You think about becoming a tech influencer is content is Queen and consistency, quality and value matter. That's the trifecta of creating content that sticks. Hey everyone. My name is Henry sura, one. And you're listening to the tekhelet journal.
The show will be bringing you the greatest technical leaders practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to discuss about their Journey ideas and practices that we all can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team and to make an impact in your personal work.
So let's dive into our Journal. Hey everyone, welcome to a new episode of the tekhelet journal with me Ojos Henry Surya with Robin. If you are new to the tekhelet journal, make sure to subscribe and follow the podcast on your favorite podcast app, in order to get notified for any new
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for today's episode. I'm very excited to share my conversation with Stephanie Hwang. Stephanie is a Google Cloud developer Advocate and you might have seen her online on YouTube talking about Google Cloud related Technologies, see her in action presenting at conferences or even listen to her on the how I launched this a success story. Stephanie has a personal mission to blend storytelling and Technologies to create remarkable online developer contents. Stephanie also holds her own
YouTube channel called staff. You should know where you can find Korea, tag and productivity tips and advice. There are a lot of great things that we discussed about in this episode, ranging from personal brand being attack influencer public speaking career advice. And also how women can thrive in technology. I really enjoyed this conversation. Sensation and I hope you all enjoy it as well. So let's get started. Are you a start-up in software development Which is less than
five years old. If yes our sponsor at jetbrains have a 50% startup discount offer, which allows startups to purchase multiple products and subscriptions for up to 10 unique licenses over a period of months to find out more search for jetbrains startup discount offer, or you can check out the link mention in the show notes. Hey, Stephanie, welcome to the technique, you know, very excited to have you here in this year. Hey, thank you so much for having me today. I'm so excited to be here.
So Stephanie, maybe you can tell the audience here about yourself. What's your role? And what are you up to now? Sure.
So I am a developer Advocate at Google cloud and I focus on online scalable content, specifically, and what that means is that as a DA, I go out into the community and I create content online, that makes developers want to share tweet and talk about it. And essentially, the goal is to advocate for And give feedback back to product, to eventually improve the product prior to being a DJ. I was a customer engineer or an industry. It's also known as a sales engineer.
And an interesting point about me is that I actually didn't graduate with a CS or computer science or engineering degree. So, I've had sort of a unconventional path to where I am today. In my spare time. I am a big performer, I dance. And I use a lot of that into my day-to-day work as a public speaker at Google interesting. You mentioned, you didn't graduate from CS degree.
Can you share a little bit more? What's your journey like from the University and then the turning points in your career until you have this a deferral roll? Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't know what I wanted to do at University or even out of school while I was at UCLA. I was very undecided and I ultimately did a communication studies degree because I thought I wanted to go into entertainment by the entertainment industry.
I knew that I loved being around production, and So in that major, I was able to study both interpersonal and public speaking, and then I did a few internships in the entertainment industry. I remember working at a YouTube start up for dance Channel and I also worked at Warner Brothers records. So I kind of did production assistant work here and there as well as some sales and I did one Tech internship as well. Throughout that time. I knew I had a fascination with technology though.
I didn't know that I wanted to become extremely technical at the time. I ended up finding a new minor called digital humanities. Teas where I did research in analytics and visualization, but it focused primarily on the study of humanities. So I would study art and literature and history and we would visualize it and sort of modernize that practice. So, it was clear. I had an interest in the intermediary and fusion between
Communications and technology. So when I graduated from college, I was applying all sorts of places and I ended up applying to and making it into Oracle as my first job. I didn't really notice. Too much about Enterprise technology at the time. And I did it sort of, as a Hail Mary. And I wanted to give it a shot. I knew that it was a large stable company with a well-known name. And I already knew I had an
interest in technology though. I wasn't extremely confident because I didn't have a computer science background though. They were hiring for sales Engineers. So I knew that it would be a great entry point to learn both business and technical skills. So, when I started there, I was able to start with a lot of other college grads and I embraced it. I learned as much as possible and within In that year, I joined the business intelligence and analytics team after the first year and a half.
I started to notice that cloud technology in the platform and infrastructure as a service regions and sections in technology, were gaining a lot of momentum. So I decided to Pivot and do post sales implementations for our customers. For our Cloud. Technology is on the platform and infrastructure side after doing that for a year and a half. I eventually ended up getting reached out to by Google, right?
When you deal with this technology, especially when technology was not your background, is there any major challenges that you foresee along your journey, whether to keep up with the fundamentals about technology, or even to understand about technology products, are there any major challenges that you foresee them? And also how to overcome those? Yeah. So I think because I didn't come from an engineering or computer
science background. A lot of the learning I did at the time felt like I was presented a problem and I had to go back and learn the foundation or the fundamentals of a base design or what a virtual machine was how to virtualize technology and then microservice architectures had just started becoming more popular eyes back then as well. So I really didn't have a huge context about how we're data centers and on-premise Technologies before and how are
they now? So big challenge was working backwards in a sense, learning the fundamentals and foundations of computer science and Enterprise Technologies starting with the problem. And then going back and trying to understand the context of why it was a challenge and how they could solve those challenges using. Our modernized Technologies today. One of the ways that I found that worked for me was to just constantly be hungry to learn and leverage.
A lot of the mentors who had been at the company for a longer period of time, and not be afraid to ask them for one-on-one sessions to sit down with me and go to a whiteboard and begin, to architect out solutions, that involve multiple products and Integrations between databases and between message, Brokers, Etc. So, I could truly understand the big picture as opposed to just all the fine grained details. At a very low level, thanks for sharing that.
So moving on to your current role as a death row. I know, it's kind of like trendy these day to see death real role. You guys are popular in the YouTube channel linked in any kind of social media. Maybe you can share, what is a death roll. Yeah, so developer relations originally began because companies wanted a way to advocate for developers.
You had sales teams, you had marketing teams who were able to reach out to customers and clients business, decision-makers and, of course, Market the products to those audiences. But when it came to developer challenges, it was very difficult for a group of people who had specialized skills in that area to empathize.
And to be able to understand the deeper challenges that came with developers, especially those who were either leveraging API products, or we're working on creating customized Solutions on top of the company's platform. So because of this more technical approach and audience developer relations became more popular over the last 10 years. Or so now, the team that I'm on is New Google Cloud. Relatively speaking.
We are one of the first developer relations teams to focus more on the online content side. And the reason is because the person who started that team notice that creating online content reaches a vast number of people and audiences online, especially those who do not typically have access to go to Tech events and see people in person traditionally before developer relations primarily focused on offering in-person events meetups and presenting at conferences all over the world though.
That's still a huge. Focus today, online content has become even more prevalent in the industry, especially given covid and the remote working world where online and scalable content has become extremely effective at still, reaching the largest number of people and developers as possible. So that's what my team does is we do podcasts like this.
We do talks online. We do meet ups but YouTube is such an incredible platform to reach such a vast majority of people even those that you may not have been targeting because all of this information has been democratized and made accessible to anyone make sense. So what are some of the major attributes that are required to be a good death row? Yeah. So the interesting thing about devrel is that we have so many people coming from various backgrounds. And the one thing I will say is
that in developer. Advocacy specifically, most people need to have a technical or developer background in the product that you're representing or the language that you're representing for client library, for example, so public speaking is huge as well as domain expertise. And I would also say Developer empathy.
Be able to understand when a developer has an issue really work towards solving their issues and listening to them and then providing feedback back to product in an actionable way where product can take your suggestions and be able to create a feature that will prioritize developers challenges. So I would say as a conclusion developer empathy, as well as public speaking and domain
expertise. So you mentioned also in the beginning about you using your performance background and also probably gel that with Your death row row. Can you tell me more about it? How do you use your background in the performance entertainment doing production and to know? Yeah. So one thing, I didn't mention yet about my personal story, is how I transitioned from Oracle as a customer success and implementation engineer over to
Google into developer relations. So, when I was about to leave or Cole, I wanted to actually go and travel and experience the world. And I also was trying to decide what I wanted to do next. What was my next step? Stone customer engineering was a huge experience and I found Success Through that. But I was still in this searching phase where I was trying to figure out what my
true passion was. And I'm sure that you've heard the term, find your passion and you'll never work a day in your life, which I took to heart very seriously a little bit too much because I started to overthink that phrase. So I decided to look around and see what other people on LinkedIn were doing what my friends were doing. And it seemed like everybody at the time was applying to graduate school because of course, it's a logical step in your career to get more schooling.
So I decided It to apply to Stanford thinking that I wanted to go to journalism school and try to do digital journalism, which was a new field. But as I was taking the test and writing my personal statement, I realized, while I was writing it, that I wasn't applying for the right reasons. I was really doing it because I was falling, others step to apply to grad school as a logical, next step.
And I wasn't truly passionate about the field like most other applicants would be. So, I decided to move away from that approach and really reflect back on. What I wanted to do in the next two to four years, what skills would be most important and what did I enjoy doing?
So I knew that I already had an interest and fascination with production performing but also technology, so I dreamed of eventually finding something that would allow me to do both, but I kind of just left it in the back of my mind and said, okay, I don't really know any roles that would merge those two things. So, I'll just see what happens. I'm just going to keep on going with the travel plan, then at the time, Google happen to reach out. About a sales engineering position or customer
engineering. And I went through the interview process and eventually got the role, which I was super excited about. So as I was starting my journey at Google, I actually got reached out to, by somebody who was also a customer engineer and he was working on his own online content, for Google cloud and he asked me if I was interested in helping him and I thought, wow, this is interesting.
We're kind of doing this small start-up within Google creating online content using our webcams and microphones and it wasn't funded by any means. It was just a Grassroots effort. To do this, we started running around the lobby is running around. The office, is trying to find quiet, space to film demos, and invite other people on our shows
and have guests on our show. And eventually, we started doing that for about six months and devrel reached out to us to ask if we wanted to create online content in collaboration with them, on the Google Cloud YouTube channel, which we were thrilled to be involved with. So we started doing that.
And through that, my work creating online content started to Bubble Up and get more attention and I was asked to do Larger opportunities like present and host the broadcast of our largest conference Google Cloud next. So through that. I just kept saying, yes, because they were challenges, they were exciting and I could do what I had envisioned and dreamed of doing and it started to become
more real. To me eventually one thing led to another and now I started on a team of the first online, scalable developer Advocates. So that's exactly how I ended up in devrel, which was totally unexpected. But something that I wanted to do.
One thing I will say though, is that it absolutely, Literally terrified me to join devrel because I knew it was even more of a technical role that's part of the tech engineering side of Google. I didn't really have any plans on becoming more technical or joining engineering given my background, but you know I said, hey, this is an exciting yet challenging opportunity and I've always been told that if an opportunity doesn't both Challenge and excite you then
reconsider, so I said, you know what? I'm just going to try it. It's better just be more technical in the beginning of your career and challenge yourself because eventually when you You go into management or higher levels, but you'll start to lose that edge later down your career. So, I just took a chance and I've never looked back since, and it's given me so many opportunities to build my brand and become this Tech influence there. As you said, it's been a great experience. Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that. I think I can relate to some of your sharing as well. Especially when you talk about the finding of passion and trying to figure out what you should do next, trying to find out what your strengths are. And what kind of roles that will excite you. I think these are very good sharing especially for those listeners who are also Still trying to find your passion or what you should do next. So advice from Stephanie here. Definitely, you should check it out.
So about tech influencer, right? Given your online content and all that, how you should position yourself, most likely, as an expert, when you present that. So what are the basic things that you should know about being a tech influencer, especially for those people around that wants to position themselves as a tech influenza in any area that they want to Market themselves in. It's a growing field. And as I said, building your
brand is crucial. In today's market with so many people online competing for that real estate and that are spaced. So, I would say that in order to become a tech influencer. It's all about sharing content. And in the beginning, you may not know. Okay, where do I get started? What do I share? I don't have the expertise. I don't have the knowledge. I don't have the authority, but
it doesn't matter. Because everybody online is the same in the sense that they had to get started somewhere where people didn't know who they were. So I would say really Encourage Yourself to think about small pieces of information that you can You can sharing on LinkedIn on Twitter, on your social feeds and just start with anything. You can try to create a framework first.
But if it's too, daunting of a task, just start sharing your thoughts, your opinions or just pieces of information that you find interesting in your field. Once you start to do that, then you can start building a pattern of framework a strategy around what your Niche will be. It might be helpful to start with that too. Maybe you just want to focus on networking content. Perhaps you only want to focus on machine learning, you can definitely begin with that as
well. One thing that I like to To do, is I take documentation. I take articles and I break that down and start to understand the patterns and what my audience might want to know. What are the narratives that aren't being told to your audience today. For example, I begin to learn by understanding common technology architectures. Let's say, I want to focus on a broad Architectural Group of topics like streaming analytics or iot. Maybe you want to focus on how
to scale your architecture. Is it maybe you want to focus on kubernetes and microservices? In my mind. It's actually great to become sort of a Generalist in this sense, even if you are considering yourself a specialist because you can create a broader narrative and story flow over. Let's say 20 topics over time. Once you kind of nailed down. Okay. These are the top 10 to 20 topics. I want to talk about overtime. Here's this broad story arc.
Then you can start creating specific episodes or specific podcast episodes, maybe even it's just a picture that you want to share or an article or a gif and a quick caption. Then the next thing you want to think about is creating frequency around that. You need to make sure that you Are sharing this content, very consistently to your audiences. If you don't have consistency, then people will not see that. You are becoming an influencer in that space.
Once you do that, you want to make sure that the content you share is valuable. It's perhaps opinionated because as you know, online people appreciate opinions, and it's targeted to your audience, it's solving one of their challenges. It's showing them something they didn't know before. The think about becoming a tech influencer is content is Queen and consistency. Quality and value matter. That's the trifecta of creating content that sticks and two
books. I recommend about creating valuable content is content, rules, and made to stick. And I also follow Gary Vee on social media, because he is all about creating content. So, I recommend checking out his tips as well. Thanks for sharing that, especially for those of us who are still thinking about creating content. So I think just do it.
Find your Niche, find specialty where you are good at obviously and then Start creating the content and be more frequent and consistent in terms of your message and in terms of value. So, specifically about format. I know there are few things that we can explore things like blog posts, YouTube videos podcasts, or any specific other content, are there any channels that basically more effective than the others? I've had this question before, and it's interesting.
I think that depending on the audience, of course, everybody has a preference, whether they like to consume information via YouTube, or articles or perhaps live, Game on Twitch TV. There's live coding on there. For example, they are all valuable and you can build an audience through any of those means, if you follow my three tips around consistency quality and value of information. I think that there is something to be said, around YouTube and blog posts being something
that's proven to be effective. I think those are two solid forms of mediums to use, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't give live coding or livestreams the chance, because there's probably Less people on those platforms doing such a thing. So it could actually carve out a good opportunity for you to go there and start building your brand there. The other tip I'll say is, don't just focus on one medium.
The key thing about creating content is sharding, your content, in other words, create one piece of content and then replicate it across mediums. And that's how you reach an even broader audience. So if you're creating an article, maybe think about doing a podcast, if you think about doing a podcast, create an article around it, create a video film yourself, doing the podcast less work on your part. And you really maximized. Expand your efforts.
Thanks for the tips. I should also follow one of your tips as well going forward. So I've heard this quote before public, speaking is actually the number one fear in the world, even much scarier than being that itself. What are some of your advice for people, you know, want to do public speaking? Not necessarily on stage, but also recording their first YouTube video because I'm sure that will verify some of us really, really bad. Including me, first time. I did it taste like, wow, what
am I doing? What am I doing? Yeah, can you I share some of your tips around that. So in my past, I had the opportunity to take public speaking in college. Since I was a communication studies major, but I also spoke on stage a lot because I had done pageants. I was a dancer. I was very used to performing on stage. And then in my first position at Oracle, I presented many times and in front of customers, as well, as in front of our colleagues. Luckily.
I've had someone of a predilection to speak in front of others and onstage. But by no means, was it a natural tendency or natural skill for me? And a lot of people come up to me and say, wow, you're so Actually, I public speaking, you seem very authentic on camera. But that is something that I've built over the last seven years, at least. And it really takes practice. I think that's the key thing to understand. I joined an office club called Toastmasters and I think they
have that at many offices. Many companies around the world and it essentially got you in front of a group of colleagues. You come up with a topic every week and you present for our two to five minutes and there's somebody who sort of critiques you or counts. How many times you use um's while? I didn't love that method. It really does help if you Have it available to you.
If you want to give it a try. I personally find it better to Simply get yourself in front of a camera or in front of a mirror. If you don't want to film yourself yet and just speak for 2 minutes on any topic and then watch yourself. If you did film yourself and critique yourself, if you're comfortable with it and or send it to your friends or colleagues who you know, are better.
Public speakers? Because I think when you watch yourself, you'll start to see that you might be looking off to the side or you might be using your hands in a weird way, which I definitely did at the beginning. I Know what I wanted to do with my hands. So I kind of kept them. Like I was holding something and it just looked really awkward. So I had to practice that but that really helped and then just getting on stage in any form.
Maybe you're a community leader. Maybe you want to stand in front of your family and give a presentation about your favorite Netflix show. It doesn't really matter what the format or the topic is just practice getting in front of people, like I did with pageantry and just do it as many times as possible. I also took a course a couple years ago called speechless that we have available at Google sometimes and they offer virtual classes as well.
They're based in San Francisco. But the reason why I like them is that you get one-on-one time with someone who will get you thinking and on your feet, actually standing up, doing silly exercises, that feel ridiculous to you, but it's really just to get you out of your comfort zone.
So you might do a lot of weird vocal exercises, where you're just doing weird sounds and shapes with your mouth or perhaps, you need a, make up an improvised story about a princess or a prince, and they want you to just navigate storytelling and be Very improvisational about it and that just helps you to think on your feet. Be very comfortable taking questions from the audience. And also learn how to tell a story from an authentic point of view people, appreciate authenticity.
No matter what field you're in. So just practicing that authenticity and not feeling so much pressure to be or look like someone else or sound like someone else is key. Yeah. So I think the tips of studying maybe in front of mirror, another tip that I learned myself as well is that you can even record yourself using your handphone be like, Vlog Style, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever length. You are comfortable with and just watch it for yourself, personally.
Criticize yourself and also think of yourself and does it sound good, confident, natural authentic, things like that. And then once you are comfortable, maybe you recall. It daily. You can share it with you people and ask for feedback because I'm sure there are exactly but who can give a good critical feedback for you to improve on. And as you continue that practice I think over the time you get more natural, at least that's in my experience.
And also another thing that I found from your share. As well. Is that, obviously, you will find some awkward things. Either your sound, either your arms or your silence and your hands waving for me, especially doing this podcast. I learned that I talk a lot like, you know, right. So when I edited the episode basically, I learned. Oh, okay. I tell all these things. Maybe I should improve next time. So I think that's also yeah, partly. Good learning.
So everyone will have their own story, their own quirks. You just have to improve over the time. You mentioned something about storytelling. Why is it so important? For example, Tech influencer or your death Rel or even like in general and people just want to present stops. Why storytelling is very important. Storytelling is hugely important because think about the last piece of documentation, you read for a technical product. Let's say it was for machine
learning products. And this is fine, because when people write documentation, they're thinking, let me be very clear about it. Let me write the step by step, but it's hard for you to read it and to end sometimes or let's say an entire white paper, unless it has a It's story unless it draws you in. And usually, in order to draw your audience in, not only doesn't need to Target the developer persona, but it needs to really Target his or her challenge that they're trying to solve.
So in order to tell a good story and needs to be an extremely solution-oriented storyline. So you want to make sure that you present that in the beginning of your presentation or your video. What challenge are we trying to solve here? Why is it relevant to you? And then you dive into step-by-step? Okay. This is how this product solves it or how this methodology solves it. And then you can wrap up by kind of reflecting back on what you said and summarizing or providing any caveats or next
steps. So that's sort of a high level overview of how you should structure your narratives. Is there a way for us to improve our storytelling capability. We all see, for example, TED Talks. Obviously, they are like one of the best speakers in the world about storytelling and presenting their message. Is there any place where we can learn how to do the storytelling better? You presented a good example right there. TED Talks are known for great
presenters, and great. Stories instead of just consuming that information. The next time you watch a TED talk. Why don't you watch the Ted Talk and really absorb the structure in which they tell that entire story and start to take notes. What are they talking about in the beginning? Why is it captivating? And then what's the next thing? They start to move into and how do they conclude the presentation? What's the takeaway? And why was it so memorable?
And try to really analyze it if you have time. The other thing I'll say is again, practice practice, practice, if you can start to change how you do a quick presentation at work. Why don't you start by? By presenting The Challenge and then going into the solution and then a conclusion, that's very clear and direct see if that actually bodes even better with your audience and encourage
people to actually take action. So both practice and analyzer, study are two things that I do. I've actually taken a couple classes on it. I've taken master classes, which is a startup company, that has some online classes, given by some very prolific, writers and TV storytellers. So, I've taken some courses on that even Disney. I know they have a couple free courses online about how Friend Disney, tell stories, and I view great resource to follow as
well. So given in this current situation of people being locked down, working from home. Are there any difference between presenting on stage and also virtual? Absolutely. I mean, I have focused so much on Virtual from the get-go in terms of doing scalable content, but occasionally, I'll go to conferences as well. In speaking person.
The largest difference between in person and online is that you just don't have audience feedback and sometimes it's really Helpful for some people to not have someone in front of them and other times, somebody will get into the studio and they'll start to look at the camera. And they might have a teleprompter and they just completely freeze because it's a new environment.
You don't have people nodding and smiling at you, and giving you non behavioral cues, which if you didn't know, account for 70% of how people understand communication, so that's the biggest challenge, right? Is being comfortable by yourself in your own skin and presenting the information without necessarily receiving any feedback from your audience in order to overcome that, Then it's just I would say to fold doing it a bunch of times in front of a camera without anyone
there. And then the second is being very comfortable in the material that you are presenting. You don't want to just show up on the day of and wing, it unless you're good at that. But the way that you're good at that is usually because, you know, the material very well and you know, the story, you know what you're about to present.
So, just go into your meetings and create content, having practiced a few times knowing what you're about to say, the same goes for on stage presenting as well. Right? So I still remember the first time I did like a live webinar as well. You're right. Right. It feels we're having nobody. You just saw the cameraman
giving you feedback and cute. Yeah, I felt weird to me and I think the key here again is just to try it out experiment and see which format that you like, but obviously these days we are forced to do virtual. So I guess we just need to get used to it. So I think from your website I saw as well that you are trying to be more prominent in terms of helping people about their career. For example, CV writing. What makes you interested in doing this. Yeah, so I decided to start my
own. I've stayed because I wanted to create a brand online and I think that's crucial these days is to build a brand around yourself. I wanted to diversify my brand, be on Google as well. I wanted to be known as Stephanie Hwang, and not necessarily stuffy Wong from Google Cloud all the time because I think it's key, you want to make sure you always have opportunities in all places, right? No matter what happens in the world. So that's one way of creating sort of like high availability
for yourself. In terms of creating your brand outside of just one thing, not putting all your Your eggs in one basket that Tech joke right there. So yeah, I did that. It's called stuff are Wang.com and you're right. I do provide Professional Services and coaching and CV or resume reviews and edits. And the reason why I started that is because I started helping my friends and family years ago, doing this and they said, well, you're actually pretty good at this and it's
really helpful. You should eventually do it. And as, you know, with covid and the quarantine people have more time on their hands and it was a great side project for me to get that up and running and start. Offer it to people. I'm hoping to build out additional offerings in the future and then on top of that, I'm actually launching my YouTube channel called stuff. You should know. And that's also another effort to create an online brand for myself and really build an audience.
When I say build an audience. It means you are becoming that influencer. And if you don't like that title, you are just becoming a content creator and forming an audience that follows you for your brand and what you offer them. So, on that channel, I'll be Reading content around career lifestyle productivity, technology, trying to keep it targeted as much as possible. But so far, it's primarily around things. Like what we just talked about today.
I like your joke about how you availability for us. Obviously having brand online. I think it's also something that all of us should think about what kind of brand you should have online. Either, maybe even in your social media. What do you want people to know you about? And I think, yeah, we have talked about so many channels and opportunities where you can do that. So in terms of, CV writing if you can share maybe some high General tips.
Some of the key things that we should think about when we write us EV. Yeah. So I think that your resume should tell a story and that's very on brand, with what I've been talking about today because I've been talking about storytelling a lot today, but really everything does follow that framework. You should tell your own story. You should make sure that your
resume represents your story. Well, and one of the things that you can do is not just put everything on your resume, but take a look at the positions that you You are aiming for or positions that you eventually want to reach later down the road. What in your resume will tell that story and gear you towards that direction. Make sure that you are putting yourself in a good position to get there. So the other thing I'll say is I really encourage people to unapologetically take ownership
in their greatest achievements. So instead of just simply describing your job function and what you do at that company, you should really be describing your biggest impact and how you were integral to making that happen. And one way to do that. Effectively is to replace all your duties with measurable
impact. So include some quantifiable metric for perhaps because it's easier for people to wrap their heads around that you want to be very specific about why how you did that and what the measurable outcome was in summary duties. Tell accomplishments so nice. So for those of you who would like to have the coaching in terms of CV writing definitely contact Stephanie and then you probably get more useful tips and even practical examples on how to To improve your CV.
So, another thing that I want to talk about with you is about women in technology. Obviously, we have still this challenge in terms of number of women that is doing technology. So what are some of your message in terms of empowering women, to give it a try, to be more in technology? Me being a woman in Tech has been a very exciting Journey for me. I didn't even think that I would be in technology when I was in school.
So for anyone that's even thinking about it as a possibility or you want to Pivot your Into technology or perhaps you're even in Tech and you just want to grow and continue to push yourself or maybe you're thinking of leaving Tech. I would really ask you to think about the impact that you can make in this male-dominated industry. And just understand that where I came from was very different
than most people in technology. So don't use your background or your existing skill sets to, determine whether or not you are qualified for a position in Tech, use your drive, your mentality, your work ethic, and how much you've grown in the past couple years to push you to where you need to get in the
future. I suffer still from imposter syndrome and I specially experience that when I first joined Google, but I now today use that as motivation rather than reasons to be self-conscious or lose
self-esteem. Now, I funnel that into motivation to grow and the other thing is that if you surround yourself by people who are achieving something inspiring or a role model that you look up to use that, as additional drive to continue to push yourself in this field, because we really do need Need more women in, not just Tech, but in leadership roles in Tech and I believe that we need both men and women to continue to support one. Another as others have supported
my work. If you see another woman's work, who should be noticed, send a tweet. Share. It, send an email. Give positive feedback and recognition. I've talked a lot today about how to promote yourself online and it's very important that we do that for other women in Tech because you wouldn't believe the power of social networking. Whether that's internal at a company or externally, that's how we make progress and get with women in leadership
positions. The second thing I'll say is that I think managers and other Executives have to show visible commitment to ensuring that there's Equity diversity and inclusion of women and people of color in their team's I'm grateful. I've had incredible managers who make it a point to hire many women on my teams from all different backgrounds. Even myself who came from a very
different background. They gave me a chance, and I was able to succeed in this field when I didn't have the confidence to in the beginning compared to where I am now, so I really do think opportunity and recognition for women need to come. All levels in technology. Thanks for sharing that. So regarding imposter syndrome. I think this keyword is definitely mentioned a lot of times in a tech industry. First of all, for those of us who are not familiar with this term.
Maybe you can explain what is imposter syndrome. How do you know if you have it and like you gave some tips already, but is there anything else that we can do to improve not being too much influenced by this imposter syndrome? So imposter syndrome is this mentality or belief in which you doubt your accomplishments? For your talent because you have this internalized fear of being exposed as an impostor or a fraud. You know, you think to yourself.
How did I get here? I'm not as smart as the people around me. I'm not as talented as some.
I don't belong here. I absolutely felt that when I first joined Google and at different points in my career, when I switch teams, for example, so I'm sure many people face that it's probably has to do with both self-confidence and just being in a very challenging or highly productive environment, and maybe you have a lot of great, talented people around you and that's fine, but just think to yourself.
Okay, I see them as highly talented and they bring a lot to the table in that skill or that expertise may be there. A machine learning expert for example, but what do you bring to the table? I had to get used to telling myself that I am different from the engineers around me. I'm different from the developers. I don't have that background. But what do I bring to the table? Okay. Well, let me think I bring storytelling.
I bring public speaking and enthusiasm around that and it took a long time for me to get used to believing that in myself. And it took a long time for, I think other people to believe that in. Me. But time is everything just trust that in six months after you join a team that doubt will turn into experience and it will then turn into confidence. It just takes time and practice to get used to any change and adapt to a new skill or environment.
Yeah, so I think for me as well, I definitely have impostor syndrome just like what you mentioned everyone has it. So I think the key for me at least is that you have to be self-aware first about that. The next key action is actually to acknowledge that and also obviously To think about other things that you're good at just like what Stephanie mentioned, right? If you focus on what you're good at, and maybe you would not have that kind of fear and try to
bring that to the table. You that your work is at your school or wherever you are, try to focus on that and maybe expand a little bit. If let's say you want to have other skills that you want to excel as well. So over the time probably this impostor syndrome won't be, is such a massive things that you should worry about. But having said that we all have it from time to time, but you won't just disappear unless you really train yourself to be very confident and motivated and driven.
So regarding women in technology. Why do you think there are some of these challenges since a long time ago? Even up till? Now? Why are these women are not prominent? What are some of the barriers
actually? Yeah. I mean, I think that there is a long history of systemic issues that exist that create this sort of glass ceiling for women in technology, as you know, computer science and technology has primarily been male-dominated because the developer community and Communities have been usually focused on male programmers, engineers and computer science
from the beginning. But also even outside of Technology seeing male CEOs and c-level, Executives has always been prevalent and that's something that most Industries face. So that coupled with technology being male dominated from the engineering perspective, create a more difficult path for women to become higher-ups in the company. I also believe that at times as I said earlier women, Men need to recognize women's work and really give them more opportunities to take stretch
goals. I think that women often times do face impostor syndrome. They don't apply for the positions that they deserve because they usually apply to ones that they know they're qualified for. Whereas. I think I've seen a stat that men more times apply to positions that they might be under qualified for, but they're willing to take the chance they're willing to take that risk. So I also think it's important for women. You really understand that they can go for those stretch goals.
They can really go for those positions. Even if you don't think you're qualified just yet. If you think, I still need another year before I should go for that promotion, you know, maybe I don't have as much experience as that guy and on my team who's going for that leadership position on my team or project manager for this new project that we're focusing on really push yourself to do that because I think it's the responsibility of everybody else
to support women in technology. But I also think there's a mentality shift that needs to happen in order for women to push themselves and continue to persevere. Fear through these glass ceilings. Thanks for sharing that. So before we wrap up, I would
like to ask you. Is there any great experience that you have found so far when you are doing your death roll, roll, any things that stand out, interesting unique, weird or whatever that is. Yeah, so I had such an incredible experience recently when I was able to start and land a project where I got to visit a Google cloud data center, and create a video around it and I'm very grateful.
Full for that experience because less than 1% of googlers gets, you visit a Data Center and see its interior and it all started because I have incredible team of supporters at Google that were able to give me an opportunity to reach out to the right people and create a story that had never been told about how we handle security at Google. We actually have six layers of Defense at Google and a lot of people are like, oh, this is like Ocean's, Eleven trying to
break into somewhere. And, you know, it's like very Mission Impossible style. So it was really cool, being able to go in and see, See, get my eyes skin. Do biometric scanning, go through a circle lock, see what the data, center floor looked like, and sounded like and see a lot of hard drives getting shredded. So that was just an incredible experience. And then on top of that, I was able to work with an amazing camera crew with drones very high production.
So, you know, that was it. Perfect example of me, being able to get that dream experience of working, both in production at that level and then also really cool technology and the physicality of Technology. Everything in the cloud isn't really in the cloud. It leads back to a Data Center. And so Hope is to one day, create more videos around the physicality of the internet and where your data resides and how it actually moves around the world. Nice. Yeah, so I saw that video as well.
You being in the Google data center. I think for those listeners who are interested to find out, do check out on the YouTube and you'll find Stephanie exploring Google cloud data center going through all these six layers of security. Lastly. I would ask you this question in which I always ask my guests in the episode. So Stephanie, can you share with us? What are your three technical? Leadership wisdom that you want to share with the audience.
Sure. So, the first one that I will leave with everyone is luck, is where preparation meets opportunity. As I've told through my stories. I had a very convoluted route to where I am today, but a lot of people are like, wow, how did you do that? It seems like you've had a lot of luck and I say that to myself all the time, like, I've had luck to get to the position. I'm in, but I really do think that preparation needs to meet opportunity in order to give you that.
Look remain, curious. Let your intuition. Tell you, when opportunity doesn't feel right and when you think you should learn more in a certain skill and just say yes to challenges that allow you to get out of your comfort zone, and challenge you continue to say yes, to those opportunities to speak, at the next largest conference. For example, just get yourself out there. The second one is that for public speaking practice makes perfect. Public, speaking doesn't come
natural to most people. It's a crucial skill in today's market. And in order to build your brand, definitely focus on practicing public speaking. And then lastly, as I've mentioned before content is Queen. It's similar to the Ray's location location, location. In this sense. It's content content. Content, expand your brand, this way and doors will open for you. If I've learned anything as a content creator over the last couple years. It's that consistency quality and value matter.
That's the trifecta. Thank you for your wisdom. Definitely, those of us who want to build online personal brand, for example, or also producing content. Stephanie. Thank you again, for being part of the show today. There's so many things that I personally also learn myself trying to build my personal brand. Stephanie, thanks so much, and hope to see you again one day. Thank you so much Henry. It was great talking to you today.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode, share it with your friends and colleagues who would benefit from listening to this episode. And if you liking this podcast, I would love if you subscribe and leave me your valuable review and feedback. It really helps me a lot. Stay tuned for the next technology, you know, episode. And until then. Goodbye.