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Today, I'm travelling back home from my Easter holidays in Germany. I'm properly recharged and excited to pick up my work both at freistil IT and at Monospace Mentor. My live streams on Twitch and YouTube are scheduled, too. Have a great start into the week!
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Mentor Monologue
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Sometimes, I envy junior engineers because they can't get Impostor Syndrome. If you're now thinking "What? Jochen, I'm a junior engineer, and I don't go a single week without feeling like an impostor!", let me reassure you that I believe you. I'm definitely not here to dispute your emotions. The good news is, as Chris Toomey said in episode 294 of The Bike Shed podcast: "It's not Impostor Syndrome. You're just new!"
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Let's clarify the term first. Impostor Syndrome is when you feel like you're not good enough; a nagging sensation that tells you that you're a fake or a fraud who doesn't belong. The insidious thing is that, objectively, you might actually be doing just fine. Many people, even successful ones, can feel this way sometimes.
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When you're relatively new in your engineering job, it's quite common to feel out of your depth. You're still in the state where you don't even know all the things you don't know, but you know that it's a lot. The most important insight I'd like you to take away from this column is that it's normal to feel overwhelmed by this situation, and that the most effective response to this feeling is being kind to yourself.
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The reason that junior engineers feel inadequate is often that the expectations placed on them are simply too high. These might be expectations of their managers or their peers. More often than not, it's even ourselves who put the bar too high because we genuinely want to excel at our job.
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Now, if the cause for the distance between our current skill level and where we or others think it's supposed to be is these expectations, there's no reason to beat ourselves up over it. That would be as silly as blaming a sapling for not being a tree. Everyone starts at zero and grows from there.
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I'm experiencing this skill gap presently on a daily basis while I'm working on building and promoting my education business. Just getting this very newsletter out on a weekly basis is a challenge for me on so many levels! The advantage I have is that I've learned (and forgotten...) so many things over my career that I have built up a growth mindset. This mindset lets me view challenges as an opportunity for further growth, not an indictment of my shortcomings.
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And that's a stance I'd like to encourage every junior engineer, actually everyone regardless of their career phase, to take when they encounter a skill gap. Once you identify a learning opportunity, go at it like every learner: Find educational resources (books, videos, courses etc), spend time studying and making experiments, ask others for their help and feedback. And don't forget to track your growth and to celebrate the progress you're making.
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This is exactly what I'd like The Server Room to become: a community where DevOps people help each other grow, lift each other up, and celebrate every step they're taking towards their goals.
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In conclusion, let me assure you that it's okay to feel like an impostor from time to time. That doesn't mean that you are one. Be gentle to yourself and nurture your continuous growth with the same kindness you would extend to a little sapling in your garden.
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Changelog
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Since I took last week off, there were no changes in the Monospace empire worth reporting. And that's fine.
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Recommended reading
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As an online teacher, I always recommend additional material to my students with which they can expand their horizon. Here's a list of reading tips I've curated for you.
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Following up on my monologue above, I highly recommend reading this book by psychology professor Carol S. Dweck. Based on many scientific studies, it highlights how we can foster--or sabotage--our personal development, depending on the perspective we take. Here's a short talk she gave at Stanford.
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Robin seems to be enjoying being back at the office a lot. I'd loathe sacrificing the freedom of asynchronous work, but I can see his point. Food for thought.
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Almost all of us will have to deal with legacy tech eventually. This article by Martin Fowler's colleagues at Thoughtworks is an interesting start to a whole series about migrating from mainframe software to cloud-based applications. On a side note, I love the links that point to wiki pages about fundamental practices and architectural patterns that the team applied.
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I love terminal-based solutions, but the complexity of the calendar system Tim built here blew my mind. Literally--I just wasn't able to take it all in, probably due to the fact that I read the article late at night.
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Thanks for reading!
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I hope you found my News from The Server Room enjoyable and helpful. If you have any feedback or questions, simply reply to this email!
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Jochen, the Monospace Mentor
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