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Episode 294 - Let’s Stop Making Each Other Feel Stupid with Clare Sudbery

So welcome to another episode of Software-Architektur im Stream, again from the Software-Architektur Gathering here in Berlin.

I’m sitting here with Clare.

So Clare, do you want to say a few words about yourself?

Yeah, so my name is Clare Sudbery and I am a technical coach.

What that means is that I work with teams to help them to improve their software delivery practices and I have been a software engineer for at least 25 years.

I’ve stopped counting now.

Yeah, and you’re also a novelist?

I am a novelist, yes, yes.

So I have had two novels published.

The first was in 2004 and the second was in 2010, I think.

Okay, and you actually, so your talk that you gave at the conference, you started with the story.

So what kind of story was that?

So I’ll just tell you the story.

Right.

It started once upon a time.

Yeah.

Once upon a time, there was a female software engineer who had a background in maths.

So she had a maths degree and that meant that she was used to being in a minority.

So when she studied maths, she was one of maybe between five and ten percent of the students who were female and that gave her the idea that girls can’t really do maths.

This is an idea that exists within society and this was confirmed by her experience.

Only five to ten percent of these students were girls.

She ended up working in software and again, she was the only girl in the first team of software engineers or woman in the first team of software engineers that she worked with.

And she was surrounded by men and she was 25 when she got this job.

So she wasn’t straight out of college.

But it seemed like her male colleagues had all been doing it since they were children.

You know, they’d at least started coding when they were teenagers.

And it always felt like they knew so much more than she did.

There was so much more experience than she was in the next job that she did.

She she was always asking to do the interesting stuff that they told her about in the interview.

It’s a really complicated, interesting back end stuff.

But they said, no, no, no, no, you don’t get to work on that stuff.

Like she only worked a four day week and she was told that, well, you know, you’re not serious enough that you should be working seven days a week.

So no, no, you can’t possibly do the really interesting, complicated stuff.

And then in the next job, when she moved on to another job in the interview and she was applying for a senior role, they were like, well, why are you applying for a senior role?

You don’t you don’t know enough to be a senior.

And when after 12 years since she started in the industry, she was made redundant and her role was terminated.

She really she’d had enough.

She she didn’t feel like she knew what she was doing.

She’d always felt like she was on the back foot.

She was at a disadvantage and she she just didn’t want to work in software anymore.

It was a relief when she was told that her job no longer existed.

So she decided that’s it.

I don’t want to work in software anymore.

And she left the industry.

So that’s the story that I told at the start of my talk.

Yeah.

And your talk was called Let’s Stop Making Each Other Stupid.

So is this talk about stupidity or making each other feel stupid or is it about diversity?

Well, that story was, in fact, about me.

And you probably will have guessed and I expect the audience to guess, but I deliberately tell the story about somebody else.

And that’s partly because I kind of want the distance of the storytelling, but also because it could be anybody.

But it is specifically about a woman.

And I do think that even though not it’s not only women who have experiences like that, it does tend to be a stronger experience and a more likely experience for groups who are underrepresented in tech.

And actually, as a woman, I’m not in a minority in terms of the human race.

Right.

But I am in a minority in this industry.

And I’m not the only minority, you know.

So also this industry tends to be very white and people who are not straight or cisgender don’t often tend to don’t feel able to be open about that.

And when you’re not when you’re in a minority group and when you feel like you’re not the norm and you feel like you don’t belong, it does create this extra pressure.

It creates this feeling of being an outsider feeling like, oh, well, you know, I’m not supposed to be good at this stuff.

People like me aren’t good at this stuff.

And it’s not just an internal thing.

The reason you have those internal feelings is because it is an external expectation.

People are often surprised when they discover that women are software engineers.

When people meet women in the context of IT, they make assumptions about them.

Oh, well, you probably work in admin or you’re probably a product owner or a line manager.

You’re probably not a software engineer because women generally aren’t.

And those expectations and those assumptions put extra pressure on you.

But yes, the title of the talk is Let’s Stop Making Each Other Feel Stupid.

And so it isn’t just about minorities.

But my point is that when we do make each other feel stupid, which we do in this industry, it affects all of us.

It affects everybody.

But it affects underrepresented groups even more.

Yeah.

And somewhere on the internet, I read at one point that one of the reasons why we have that diversity problem is because actually people from the underrepresented groups also are more likely to quit the job.

So that is why I found your story quite interesting.

So what shall we do about it?

So what’s the solution?

There are lots of different things that we can do.

My favourite piece of advice that I give is about asking questions.

But more generally, and I will talk about that in a minute, but more generally, I think we often don’t realise how much we can have a negative impact on each other.

Because we have this attitude that the job that we do is about what we know, that focus on knowledge, that people who do this job are people who know stuff.

If that is our starting point, then suddenly we get really hung up on what people know.

Do they know the right things?

Do they have the right level of knowledge?

And then something that flows on from that is that we get very judgmental about what people know and how much they know.

And we start being critical and nitpicky about what people know.

And one of the stories that I tell in the talk is how a very frequent experience that I’ve had is that I’ve witnessed people talking disparagingly about what other people know.

And one of the contexts that that can happen is that two people will go away and they’ll go and interview somebody for a software engineering job.

They’ll come out of that interview and out of the presence of the interviewee, they’ll say, oh, my God, we just interviewed this person and they didn’t know about and then, you know, insert any random thing.

I’m just going to call it X.

They didn’t know about X.

And I don’t mean Twitter.

And and then it was, oh, my gosh, I can’t believe it.

They didn’t know about whatever the thing is.

And actually, if they didn’t know it, that’s because up to this point, they’ve never needed to know it.

Because in fact, when we interview people for jobs, when we have colleagues, typically they are experienced professionals.

It’s OK.

Occasionally, you might have somebody who applies for a job that they’re not really qualified for.

But that doesn’t actually happen very often.

So if you encounter somebody either just in the workplace or in an interview, he doesn’t happen to know about a thing that you think they should know.

Chances are that’s because they’ve just never needed to know that thing.

And so rather than go, oh, they don’t know they should know, then what you can do is say, well, if they now need to know the thing, we can help them to learn the thing.

And we can get excited about that.

So we can say, yeah, you don’t know a thing, but I know the thing.

So I can help you to learn the thing.

And we can both go on this exciting journey together rather than just me going, well, you’re not very good, are you, if you don’t know that thing.

And then you turn that situation into something that is productive.

Also, in your talk, when you sort of complain about what others don’t know, I mean, obviously, it’s impolite, but you also spoke about the impact that it has on the other person who happened to witness that.

That’s a really good point.

Yes.

So you might think, well, the person I’m talking about isn’t present.

They don’t know that I’m being mean about them.

So it’s fine.

But the reason it’s not fine is because what happens is everybody who witnesses that conversation is very likely to be thinking, oh, I must make sure nobody ever says those things about me.

So and they start to worry as well.

They get paranoid.

They think, oh, no, I wonder if anybody’s ever said that about me.

And oh, my gosh, wasn’t there a conversation last week where I admitted that I didn’t know about a thing?

And did they then all go off and have a good old laugh about it and tell me, oh, my God, can you believe Clare doesn’t know about a certain thing?

And what it does is then we start to think, oh, well, I must make sure that I never admit to not knowing things.

And then what that creates is this situation where everybody’s paranoid about exposing their ignorance.

And therefore, they think I must hide my ignorance.

So the next time I’m in a situation where there might be something I don’t know about, I’ll pretend that I do.

And then people pretend they know things.

And that what that leads to is there’s two problems, at least two problems with that.

But one problem is that if I’m pretending to know things that I don’t know, then that means I’m going to get into some situation at work where I’m pretending to know things that I don’t know, when actually I need to know those things.

So either I’m going to lie and make bold statements that are completely untrue because I’m just pretending, or I’m just not going to be effective at tackling certain situations because I’ve pretended that I knew about them when I really didn’t.

But as well as that, it also means that other people around me who also have the same insecurities are going to see me pretending.

And they are either going to know that actually I’m lying, and they’re going to think, oh, well, she lies about it.

So therefore, I should lie about it too.

Or they’re going to think I know more than I do.

So let’s say, for instance, I’ve never used React Native before, but I’m pretending that I have because I’m worried that if I admit to it, they’re all going to go, what?

What are you doing this job for if you’ve never even used React Native before?

Like maybe we’re doing mobile development, and I’ve just never, I used Xcode, but I didn’t use React Native.

Then somebody else is going to think, oh, oh no, she knows all about React Native, and I don’t.

And now I feel terrible because I don’t know about React Native and she does.

Whereas if I’d have just gone, you know what, I’ve never used React Native before, then they could go, oh, me neither.

And I can go, brilliant, let’s learn about it together.

And now I feel better, they feel better.

I’m not making them feel insecure.

I’m not making them panic.

I’m not going to find myself in a sticky situation because I said I knew a thing that I don’t actually know.

It’s much better if I’m honest.

And also, I mean, that’s one of the points that you, I think, made in the talk regarding this is that if the team really needs you to know about React Native, then, well, they might be in trouble if you really don’t.

Yes, yes.

So let me see.

There is a question from the audience from, in Twitch, from Studelhund69.

So that’s some kind of dog.

In the internet, nobody knows that you’re actually a dog, right?

So he or she says, I feel like there is a lot of tribal energy in modern companies, which causes a lot of issues, especially during stressful periods, which again leads to bad communication decisions and so on.

Yeah, I think that’s a good point.

And it’s really interesting that they use the word tribal.

Yeah.

Because actually, it is a fundamental part of human nature for us to have this concept of ingroups and outgroups.

And we want to be in the ingroup.

And this is actually something I didn’t mention today, but I do sometimes mention, which is because we want to be in the ingroup and the ingroup, we perceive as being the people who know all the stuff.

And we want to be in that tribe, then we will do everything we can to fit in with that tribe.

And so for instance, one of the examples I give in the talk is when people use jargon, something I didn’t mention today, but I sometimes tell a story about somebody who walks into a meeting, and they’re talking about something that they can’t remember what it is, like maybe let’s just choose a random series of letters, they’re talking about AXVP.

And somebody walks into the meeting, and everybody’s talking about AXVP.

And they’re like, Oh, no, I can’t remember what AXVP is.

I know I’ve heard this term before, but I can’t remember what it is.

But I don’t, I don’t feel like I can say, so I’m just going to pretend that I understand what they’re talking about.

But as the meeting goes on, they’re like, Oh, I’ve got no idea what they’re talking about.

So they’ll say, remind me what is AXVP?

And then the people go, Oh, don’t you know what AXVP is?

And they go, Oh, God, I didn’t even understand the explanation.

But now I don’t feel like I can ask what, what, what?

And then somebody says, Oh, well, it’s all very meta.

And now they’re thinking, Oh, but what does meta mean?

I always remember when everybody’s people start using the word meta, then I know it’s got really confusing.

But they will pretend to understand, because they want to fit in.

And they want to be part of the tribe.

And that and not being part of the tribe is a stressful experience.

And so people will try to be part of the tribe.

And then another thing that happens is when they finally do work out what AXVP stands for, the next meeting they go into, they’ll say AXVP at every possible opportunity, look at me, I know the jargon.

And it’s almost like pulling the ladder up behind you.

So the next new person that joins this situation and doesn’t know what AXVP is, rather than welcoming them in and saying, Do you know what I mean, when I say AXVP?

Should I explain that?

They’ll just confidently say AXVP at every opportunity and almost feel good when they notice that somebody else doesn’t understand it.

Because like now I’m in the in group, and you’re in the out group, and I’m one of the special people, and you’re not.

And I think we have to sometimes make specific effort to discourage that kind of tribal attitude and behavior.

Yeah, and it’s a very dangerous path.

And also, I mean, at the end of the day, what you’re basically talking about is a breakdown of communication, right?

Because nobody really knows what they are talking about.

And I have to admit And I was in a situation once where there was like an architecture documentation and it said on one slide, so we are using Bonn Context.

And I was like, okay, so they’re using Bonn Context.

And I thought, well, I asked them what that is.

And it turned out that they didn’t know.

So they were just copying over the stuff.

So it was meaningless.

I mean, that’s basically you’re pretending to communicate and really you don’t.

Yes.

And that is something that I often notice.

So I have several times been in meetings where two people have been talking using the same words.

But I’m like, I don’t think you are both meaning the same thing with those words.

But they’re using the words as kind of a comfort blanket.

And because nobody questions the words, it never gets revealed that you know what you two are talking across purposes.

You’re not talking about the same thing.

So quite often I’ll go, what do you mean by bounded context, for instance?

And one person says, and the other one goes, oh, that’s not what I thought it meant.

And sometimes I see it as my job to surface those misunderstandings, not because I want to shame anybody.

But it’s like, well, this is fantastic.

Now we’re really getting somewhere because now we’re really digging into what we actually mean.

And also, I realize I’m slightly worried just in case anybody tuned in and is thinking, oh, no, what’s AXBP?

I don’t know what AXBP is.

I invented it.

It’s not a thing.

As far as I know.

Maybe it is.

But as far as I know, I just invented it.

It is not a thing.

Yeah, great.

So other independence that you want to talk about?

Yeah.

So one of the ones that I talk about, again, it’s one of my favorites, is about questions.

And I think it’s incredibly important for people to ask questions and to people to encourage each other to ask questions.

Which also means you have to answer them and you have to be prepared to answer them.

But also how you do it is important.

And I often tell the story of a guy that I used to work with at ThoughtWorks called Jim Gumley.

And I’ve always had this really strong memory of him walking into a room when we were having a meeting.

And he was the most senior person in that room.

He was high status.

You know, I think at the time, his job title was something like principal engineer or principal consultant.

And that was a high status role.

He was the most senior person in the room.

He walked into the room and he said something like, what’s going on?

I’ve got no idea.

I don’t understand this.

I don’t understand that.

Explain it to me.

Now, what he could have done was walk into the room and go, oh, I’m really sorry.

I’m really stupid and I don’t want to be a pain, but could you explain that to me?

Because I don’t really understand it.

And he could have been apologetic.

And I think it makes a huge difference whether you ask questions confidently or apologetically.

And I think the reason that that’s so important is because people will judge you.

They will think less of you if you encourage them to.

If you basically walk into a room saying, I’m an idiot and you should find me annoying, they will.

Whereas if you walk into him saying, I feel entirely privileged and confident and like it is absolutely my right to ask these questions because I don’t know the answers and I need to know the answers and you need me to know the answers.

So of course I’m going to ask them.

And not only does it mean you get better responses and people have a better opinion of you, it also means you’re modeling that behavior.

So the reason I was really grateful to Jim for doing that was because he was giving me permission to do it.

He was saying to everybody in that room, you are allowed to not know stuff.

It’s not something to be embarrassed about or ashamed about.

It is entirely within your rights.

And it is expected that of course there will be things you don’t know.

And it’s totally OK.

It’s actually important for you to find the answers to the things you don’t know about.

And I mean, I totally agree on how important questions are.

And I have to admit that as an external consultant, it’s basically an important part of my job task questions.

Because I have the impression that getting the right questions is already half the journey.

So maybe that is also an example where, you know, that senior person basically says, OK, these are the questions.

This is really what is not clear to anyone.

So we should rather clear it up because otherwise we are going to fail.

And then without those questions, you won’t be able to do that.

Yeah.

And actually that’s a good point because one of the things that you can do is structure your questions to demonstrate your knowledge, particularly if you are worried.

Don’t show that you’re worried.

Be confident.

But what you can say is, well, I understand this and I understand this, but I haven’t quite grasped yet how these things are connected or there’s a piece missing here.

So that you’re showing that it’s not that you know nothing.

You know some stuff, but there are pieces missing and you understand what’s missing.

You understand what you don’t know and you even understand why you need to know it.

So you can frame your questions with context that also will help people to answer those questions because they’ll know what it is that needs to be explained and what doesn’t need to be explained.

Right.

So there was a comment from a LinkedIn user who said, thanks, very interesting.

So that’s great.

But there is also a question again from Strulund69.

So they say, how to break tribal movements in meetings, teams without getting the tribe against you?

It needs so much effort, it’s almost impossible sometimes.

Well, it is effort, particularly if you feel like the tribe is against you.

But one of the things that I talk about is reframing ignorance as curiosity and excitement.

So when you ask questions, you can do it with excitement and energy and curiosity.

This is a new thing that we’re going to get to learn and I’m going to help you to deepen your own understanding as well as deepening my understanding.

So that’s one thing is to help kind of build that energy and excitement within a meeting.

But also, I think there’s work that can be done around that.

So if you literally have just been parachuted into a meeting with people you don’t know and there’s a negative atmosphere and there’s judgment and there’s laughter, if it’s a really toxic environment, that it’s harder to just simply be parachuted in and suddenly change everything.

You’re not going to be able to do that.

But still, asking questions confidently without apology helps to break that.

And if somebody is judgmental, you can say, oh, is this a problem?

Why?

Why is it a problem?

I mean, I need to know this.

So I’m detecting some reluctance on your part, but I mean, you know, I’m excited to know and I need to know and I’ll be able to do this thing more effectively if I get the answer to this question.

So within a meeting, that positive atmosphere, but also that kind of, well, why wouldn’t I?

You know, like, I don’t understand why you think I shouldn’t ask questions.

But also, you can do things around meetings and within cultures and within teams.

So, for instance, within your own team, you can introduce, I know you’re going to ask me about it, but I have a thing called the stupidity manifesto.

You could print it out and hang it on the wall and we’ll explain what it is in a minute.

But the stupidity manifesto is all about changing cultures.

And you can be explicit about that.

You can say in this company, in this team, we would like to value curiosity.

We would like to encourage questions.

And let’s try and change the culture.

And this is why.

And you can give all the reasons that I give.

There are videos of my talk online.

You can encourage everybody to watch the video of my talk.

You can say, we value curiosity.

We value questions.

And this is why.

So that you’re trying to change the culture and not just encourage questions, but have a dialogue about why you’re encouraging questions.

And what I like about your approach to, well, ask the questions and say, okay, I need to know.

And why is this a problem is because then you’re making the toxic environment an issue without saying, well, you know, there is a toxic environment here, so I don’t feel comfortable.

But rather you’re just pointing to that specific seemingly, well, rational thing, the information that you need.

And then, but the topic sort of shifts because now it’s about the interaction.

So that’s, I think that’s, that’s a very good, very good advice.

So the Stupidity Manifesto, do you want to read it or shall I?

Why don’t I read it?

Yes.

So it goes like this.

Let’s stop making each other feel stupid.

Instead, let’s, and then there are bullet points.

And the first one is, let’s encourage everyone to ask questions.

And let’s lead by example and be honest when we’re confused and when we don’t know something.

And let’s value curiosity over knowledge.

It’s not about what you know.

It’s about how willing you are to learn new things and how open you are to that.

Let’s prioritize clarity over jargon.

So let’s not all kind of try and prove that we’re in the club by making our language as confusing as possible.

Let’s try and be clear about what we’re talking about.

And let’s remember that we all forget things.

So sometimes there’s a thing that I don’t know, which I once knew, but I’ve now forgotten.

And that is also okay.

And let’s get excited about teaching and learning.

So whenever there’s something that somebody doesn’t know, it’s exciting for them because they’re going to learn a new thing.

And it’s exciting for me because I can help them to learn the new thing.

After this, let’s talk about the lucky 10,000.

And let’s acknowledge the broad range of knowledge in our industry and avoid judging someone if their knowledge doesn’t match ours.

And it finishes with the reiteration of let’s stop making each other feel stupid.

Yeah.

And we are looking at the top of that lucky 10,000 cartoon by XKCD.

And I thought that was also quite an interesting one.

So do you want to explain it?

Yes.

Yes.

So the lucky 10,000 is a cartoon by a cartoonist called XKCD.

And I think his website is just xkcd.com, so it’s very easy to find.

He’s got just tons and tons and tons of beautiful, insightful cartoons, but this one is called the lucky 10,000.

And he talks about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing.

And the Diet Coke and Mentos thing is the fact that if you take a minty sweet called a Mentos and you put it in a bottle of Diet Coke, a chemical reaction occurs and it creates a fountain.

It comes swooshing out of the top and it’s pretty cool.

It’s exciting.

And he does some spurious math.

So his theory is that by the time everybody is aged 30, they know about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing.

And based on the population, the birth rate of America, that means that there will be 10,000 Americans a day learning about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing.

And then he says, so let’s imagine that you meet somebody who doesn’t know about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing.

There are two reactions that you could have.

You could go, oh, have you been living under a rock?

How could you not know about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing, you idiot?

So now you’ve closed everything off, you’ve made them feel terrible, and that’s the end of that.

The alternative is that you go, oh, wow, you don’t know about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing?

Because this means that you are one of today’s lucky 10,000.

You get to find out about the Diet Coke and Mentos thing, but also I get to show it to you.

And then some people just kind of extend the idea, they’ll just say, if they meet somebody who doesn’t know a thing, they’ll say, yes, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000.

You get to learn about the thing and I get to teach you about the thing.

So now your reaction when you meet somebody who doesn’t know a thing is to always be excited because they get to learn the thing and you get to teach them the thing.

And the thing is, whatever the thing is, none of us are born with knowledge about anything.

We all learn things.

And so it’s pointless to say, how could you not know?

Well, if they don’t know, they don’t know.

It’s just the state of fact.

So now what you can do is help them to learn the thing.

And that can be an exciting journey.

And I mean, in the cartoon, I think those two persons were actually on their way to the supermarket to get Mentos and Diet Coke, which basically means that they are both going to have a lot of fun.

And I think in your talk, you also made the point, not explicitly, I think, but it sort of sums up.

If you look at our industry, I mean, there is lots of new stuff.

So we have like lots and lots of those lucky 10,000s.

And it just happens to you that one of the persons that you talk to that one day is one of those who get to know about X.

And it’s invitable yet, because we are not standing still.

Which leads to the question.

So we are at a conference, you know, Software Architecture Gathering.

So this is about software architecture.

It’s about software architects, probably.

So how does, why did you give that talk here?

So what’s the takeaway for people who are working on architecture?

Well, I actually give this talk at tech events generally.

So I didn’t single out architecture.

But what I do is I do try to deliver this talk at events where people are talking about technical topics.

And I think it’s really important because people do forget that everybody has these insecurities, that everybody who works, and not in, I mean, I happen to work in tech.

So I deliver this talk to technical audiences, but anybody who works in any knowledge industry, any industry that is reliant on knowledge, is likely to encounter this problem, this very specific problem, that people are judging each other for not knowing enough.

And because they’re judging each other for not knowing enough, that also means that everybody is terrified that they’re going to get found out for not knowing enough.

And everybody’s having a negative experience.

So imposter syndrome is rife, insecurities are rife.

People are miserable, people are scared.

And we all, inadvertently, tend to make it worse, because we all do things like use jargon, judge one another for not knowing things, get to have the feeling of, oh, I’m in the in group, because I get to laugh at that person for not knowing something and forget how it feels to be on the other end of that.

And so it’s very deliberate for me that the title of the talk is, and sometimes people have mistranslated it, and I’ve had to correct them when they’re putting a conference program together.

But it’s not called, stop making each other feel stupid.

It’s not called, stop making people feel stupid.

It’s called, let’s stop making each other feel stupid.

And I’m saying all of us, we, it’s not me telling you off for being a bad person.

It’s me saying we all do this.

And we are not bad people.

We are human beings with fallibilities.

And that’s really important that we acknowledge that we’re human and we’re fallible and there are things that we don’t know, but we can help each other.

We can collaborate.

We can make each other feel better and we can make each other enjoy learning.

And it’s really important that you technical people talking about technical topics are aware that this is a problem.

So maybe the takeaway, but correct me if I’m wrong, so maybe the takeaway for architects who are considered senior technical people is that there is this role model about that person who goes into the room and asks that question.

To set a role model and to say, well, I’m the senior person, but I still ask questions.

And at the same time, if there is a lack of knowledge somewhere to work on the lack of knowledge of that person and educate that person.

And that is maybe the takeaway for those senior architects?

Yeah, absolutely.

Because typically architects are in senior positions.

And I do think it’s particularly important for people in senior technical roles to do this.

And that’s partly because they are an example, they’re role models, they are setting the scene, they are people will look up to them and they will look to them for guidance for how to behave.

And so if you’re in a senior role and asking simple questions and being honest about what you don’t know, what you are doing is giving permission to everybody, including the most junior of people to say, you know what, if I can do it, you can definitely do it.

And as well as that, what can happen is not only do people in senior roles still have insecurities, still have paranoia, still have imposter syndrome, sometimes it can get worse the more you go on, because the more senior you get, the longer you’ve been in the industry, the more you feel like you’re supposed to know everything.

Surely me, I’ve been doing this for 25 years.

Surely at this point, I know everything.

And actually, not only do I not, but in some ways, I feel like I know less.

And that’s a real, really common problem.

Because the more I know, the more deeply I understand how much I don’t know, the more I’m aware of how much complexity there is that I don’t understand or that I have forgotten.

And so it’s really important for me to give myself permission to say, actually, there’s always going to be gaps.

There is no end to the road of learning.

Because apart from anything else, the amount of new complexity and new technologies is exploding and growing exponentially.

So I am never going to reach the end of this journey.

And it’s important for me to give myself permission to say, you know what, I don’t know.

There’s stuff I don’t know, and that is okay.

So I did a presentation at one point where I basically said something that might be quite similar, that if you really consider yourself the one person who is the senior technical person, the expert on everything, it’s just such an enormous amount of pressure that I don’t see why you would try to be that person.

I mean, it’s just impossible.

You have to make your peace with that, and not everybody has made their peace with that.

And I have to keep continually making my peace with that.

But I have to keep reminding myself, there is stuff I don’t know, there will always be stuff I don’t know, it’s okay.

So you talked about the imposter syndrome.

And one of the things that I learned from your talk is that you should explain jargon.

So what’s the imposter syndrome?

Very good point.

Thank you.

Thank you for asking me that question, because it’s so easy to forget that there will be somebody out there, even if they’re not watching this, there are definitely people out there who’ve never come across that term before.

So generally, the way I understand it is when people talk about imposter syndrome, it’s the feeling that you are an imposter.

So and I still have it infuriatingly, it’s crazy.

I feel like surely I should have grown out of it by now.

But I still worry that people are going to realize that even though that Clare Suppery, she delivers all of those talks, she writes those blog posts, she’s written stuff for O’Reilly, but actually, she only pretends to know about stuff.

I feel I worry that people are going to find out that I am in fact an imposter, that I’m pretending to be a knowledgeable expert, but really, I don’t know as much as I claim to know.

And I worry that they’re going to find that out and I’m going to get exposed as an imposter.

Now the fact is, the reason it’s called the syndrome is because people think that they’re imposters, but they’re not.

I’m not an imposter.

I genuinely am experienced and knowledgeable and proficient.

I genuinely know a lot of stuff.

I’m genuinely a good teacher.

You can trust me to help you with things.

But I have to remind myself of that.

And the problem is that people think that they’ve got this terrible secret, that they’re pretending to know things when really they don’t.

And at some point, they’re going to get found out.

And it’s a very, very common phenomenon, particularly for people in senior roles who’ve been doing it for a long time.

They think I’ve only got this far because I’ve tricked people into believing I know what I’m doing when really I don’t.

And it’s that people think they’re imposters, but actually they’re not.

Yeah.

And I mean, first of all, I would argue that it’s quite common.

So I think, as you mentioned, quite a lot of senior people do have this imposter syndrome.

And also tend to think that if you don’t have that, then you have the other problem that you think you know, but really you don’t.

So it’s probably either that or the other one.

And I have to, that is concerning.

That is also one of the things that I noticed in your talk.

So you said that you must not make, you must not sort of belittle yourself if you ask a question.

I have to admit that I go out there and say publicly that I…

For example, I cannot really program in JavaScript, and that sort of to set expectations.

I was wondering whether you think that’s a good idea because you said that if you say, well, I’m stupid, which in a way I’m saying, so I don’t have any idea about X, like JavaScript or whatever it is, then you said that it might lead to an annoying question, but I’m not so sure.

It also means that I’m open about the things that I don’t know, and that I set a role model in that regard.

Now, that is intriguing because the way you framed that question, what you actually said was, I go out there and I admit that I don’t know JavaScript.

Then you said, but aren’t you telling me I shouldn’t do that because that implies that I’m stupid.

No, it doesn’t.

It doesn’t imply that you’re stupid.

So what I’m saying is that people should be open about what they don’t know, but confident.

So I’m not saying don’t admit that you don’t know JavaScript.

I actually think it’s extremely important that you be very honest about it and confident.

So what you could do is go out and say, I’m really sorry.

I know it’s annoying, but I’m a bit stupid.

I don’t know about JavaScript.

That I’m saying don’t do that.

But what you can do is say, you know what?

I don’t actually know very much about JavaScript.

It’s not something that I have a lot of experience in.

In my career, I’ve used other languages.

I actually happen to be very experienced in using Java, C Sharp, Python, Ruby, whatever, but I’m not experienced in JavaScript.

And because I’m not experienced in JavaScript, that means that you’re going to have to fill in some gaps for me.

Or that means that I’m going to be using overarching concepts that apply to all languages, but I’m not going to dig into the details of JavaScript because I don’t happen to know about that.

Or because of that, I brought my colleague with me who’s an expert in Java, and they’re going to fill those gaps in for me because I don’t know about JavaScript.

That is you being honest and confident.

You’re saying, I don’t think this is a problem.

I’m not apologizing.

I’m not saying you should find me annoying because I don’t know JavaScript.

I’m saying, I don’t know JavaScript.

And that is entirely reasonable because I don’t have a brain the size of a planet.

And there is a limit to how much stuff I can know.

And I just don’t happen to know JavaScript.

Hey, bite me, you know.

So that’s the thing, really important to be honest, but also really important to be confident.

And the alternative, so actually somebody asked the question in the audience, a similar question, although they framed it differently.

They said, I have the habit of saying, I’m really sorry for asking this simple question.

I know I’m being annoying or I’m sorry for being annoying.

That I said no.

And I think that the point that they were making is, I’m deliberately being humble.

I’m showing humility.

I’m saying, listen, I know this is annoying and I’m apologizing in advance for being annoying.

And my response to them was, no, no.

What you’re doing is you’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You’re telling them that you’re annoying.

You’re saying, I’m being annoying right now, which means you’re making them very likely to think, oh, yeah, you are, aren’t you?

You’re really annoying.

So you’re creating a situation that doesn’t have to exist because the alternative is to say, hey, I need to know a thing.

Can you help me?

And you’re saying, you’re not.

It’s like, this isn’t a problem.

Why would it be a problem?

Yes, it’s about exploration.

So I think you said that in your talk and I think that was great.

So there is a question from a LinkedIn user and they asked, why are some companies able to build a collaborative culture successfully while others struggle or fail to do so?

Well, I mean, I think you have to really mean it.

I think the companies that are successful, they really mean it when they say they want to build a collaborative culture and they will do things like, I’m not saying everybody has to do specifically this, but if, for instance, you were to print out the stupidity manifesto, have it on the wall and have regular conversations about it, where you say, we are a team, we are a culture that values learning, that values curiosity, that values questions, that encourages people to ask questions.

So you’re being very open and deliberate and honest and you are actively taking measures to encourage curiosity and learning and teaching.

So you’re putting your money where your mouth is.

You’re saying, we mean this, we want to do this.

And that snowballs because it means that you do encourage it, you explicitly encourage, you seek it out.

But it also means that people notice that you’re doing that.

You shout about it, you publicize it, you put it on your website, you add it to your recruitment materials, you add it to your interviews.

So I had a conversation with somebody earlier about when I’m conducting interviews, when I’m interviewing engineers, I will say to them at the start of the interview, I want this to be a positive experience for you.

I want to create an environment in which you can thrive.

I’m not going to try and trip you up.

I’m not going to ask you trick questions.

I would like to, if ideally, and I know this will be hard because everybody hates job interviews, but I would like to create a positive environment where we can collaborate together and you can ask me questions.

And if I plaster that all over everywhere, then I’m saying to people, I want people to join this company who share my values and then they will want to join, the right people will join and it will snowball.

So I totally see how you can do that in a project and I totally see how you can do that in a company with, I don’t know, let’s say a hundred people or so.

But, so I just read it up again.

Actually, that person is explicitly talking about companies.

So let’s take another example.

So Volkswagen, for example, I think they have like 100,000 employees.

So do you think that the CEO of Volkswagen can make sure that the company, if it’s not already there, of such a large organisation can change the culture in a way that it becomes collaborative?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think it really helps.

So I think it is possible to do it without that senior leadership buy-in, but it’s a lot harder.

If somebody at the top, and not just one person, if the people at the top all agree amongst themselves that they value collaboration, that they value curiosity, that they value learning, then they absolutely can spread it throughout the company.

And there are things that they can do.

So they can, if they really mean it, then they should be hiring juniors.

They should be training juniors.

They should be encouraging everybody to value juniors and to take a part in training juniors and mentoring.

They should be saying at all levels, we value questions, we value curiosity, we value training, we value learning, and we’re going to put our money where our mouth is.

So we are going to give you time to learn because those investments pay off.

We can see that they pay off.

If you don’t have that at the top, you can still do it by talking about it explicitly.

You can do it within your team.

You can do it within your department.

You can say, if people try to encourage other ways, if you get that kind of toxic culture of people going, why are they spending time on learning?

Why are they asking questions?

Why don’t they know the things?

You can say, well, why are you asking that question?

Why is it a problem for you?

Why do you think that they should know everything?

Don’t you understand that this is an industry where nobody knows everything?

So you can challenge those attitudes, but it is difficult.

And you do need a critical mass.

And if you really are on your own and everybody else has got horrible, toxic attitudes, to be honest, leave, go somewhere else.

Yeah, that’s also a good point.

So Astrid Zawadzki asked the question- Oh, I know Astrid.

Hi, Astrid.

Yeah, so on YouTube.

Asked the question as a senior or made the comment, and I think it pretty well relates to what you said in your talk.

So she said, as a senior, especially when young deaf colleague know stuff about a new tech, I don’t yet came across, I feel like an imposter.

So say that again.

So is the new person- The new person knows something, the young person knows something about a new technology and then she feels like an imposter because she isn’t familiar with that technology because those people at the university or whatever, they learn that new technology and she hasn’t come around to that.

And I think it relates pretty well to that point, to that anti-pattern that you gave about being reluctant to train juniors.

Yeah, so I did talk about that.

And there is this idea that if you train juniors, they will slow you down and you don’t have time and it’s a waste of time and just like, no, don’t give us juniors.

But actually, one of the reasons why it is good to have juniors is they will know stuff that you don’t.

There are lots of other reasons, but that was the topic of this question.

They will know things that you don’t.

And again, that is something you can celebrate.

So that thing about going back to the lucky 10,000, that doesn’t only flow in one direction.

So I’m really glad because this highlights that.

You could think that the point of the lucky 10,000 is that there will always be juniors who don’t know stuff and there will always be seniors who know stuff and the seniors should always get excited and say, yay, lucky 10,000, I get to teach you a thing.

But it happens the other way around as well, that the juniors know stuff that the seniors don’t know.

And the juniors get to say to the seniors, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000.

And if you are really, really valuing learning, then you can get excited about that too.

And it goes back again to that idea that seniors can model that behavior by being honest about what they don’t know.

And it’s particularly exciting when a senior learns from a junior because it is a fantastic experience for the junior.

It makes them feel great.

Like, you know what?

You know stuff that I don’t know, isn’t that brilliant?

And you get to make them feel so good and you don’t have to be ashamed because actually knowledge is spiky.

It’s not a straight line from not knowing to knowing.

We all know different things.

We’re all at different places in our journeys, particularly young people and juniors don’t have to be young so juniors could be career changers, but particularly young juniors who’ve got all of that, you know, young people knowledge of technology.

The way young people use technology is actually quite different to the way older people use it.

And it’s useful.

It’s useful knowledge to have because we make assumptions that, when I say we, I mean old people like me, make assumptions about what young people do and think and know and we get it wrong.

And it’s really useful to have them come in and teach us stuff.

It’s not something to be embarrassed or ashamed of.

It’s something to celebrate.

Yeah.

And I have to admit that I took a note during your talk that I was wondering whether you’re trying to sort of give business reasons for something that is really an ethical concern, but what I just said basically points out that in fact, sometimes the juniors are the experts.

So therefore you want to have them.

And also the other thing, if I may, so we did an episode about crew resource management in aviation and in aviation, it seems to be that it’s pretty clear who’s the senior and the junior because it just boils down to how many hours they spend as a pilot.

But still, if you behave in a way that the senior makes the junior aware of that they are the junior and that they don’t know stuff, well, at the end of the day, it means that they won’t participate in the flight and don’t really pay attention, don’t point out problems.

And that is often the cause for some crashes.

And that is why in aviation, at least, pilots are taught in the simulator to behave in a way that they invite feedback from juniors.

So I thought that was an interesting point because it means even in that industry where it boils down to that one thing, like how many hours did you spend on that specific plane, which is different for our industry where we have like a myriad of different technologies, it’s still important to have those juniors because they can definitely add some value.

Do you want to tell the ending of that story that you gave in the beginning?

Yeah, because there’s a happy ending.

And that story, as I left it, had a sad ending.

And the sad ending was that the woman who I admitted was me left the industry.

But here I am, so you can guess that I didn’t stay out of the industry, I did come back.

But I think that it’s really a really good story in the context of this topic, because what actually happened was absolutely, as I said, after 12 years in the industry, I was made redundant.

And I thought, you know what, I’ve had enough.

I don’t want to be in this industry anymore.

I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing.

I don’t enjoy it, and I’d like to do something else.

So I actually spent two years being a writer and trying to make a living as a novelist, failed.

It’s very difficult to make a living as a novelist.

So then I retrained as a high school maths teacher.

And this was actually, it was an ambition I’d had since I was a child.

So I was finally fulfilling a childhood ambition to be a high school maths teacher.

And I knew it would be hard, but I didn’t know how hard.

And I mean, I won’t go into too much detail, but basically, teaching teenagers is uniquely difficult, particularly as I was in inner city schools where these teenagers were facing poverty and all sorts of problems beyond being a teenager, which already brings a lot of problems.

And really the last thing they cared about was maths.

And it was very difficult for me to control a classroom of pissed off teenagers.

So I didn’t succeed in that career.

And then I found myself without a job.

And I was like, well, what am I going to do now?

And I did not think I was coming back.

I had no plans to come back.

I thought I was done with IT, but I also had 12 years of experience as a software engineer.

And I was like, well, I do actually sort of know something about that as really the only thing I’m qualified to do and I need a job.

So I came back into the industry, but I came back in at entry level.

I got a job with a company who specialized in bringing on graduates and training them.

And I said, I’m an empty vessel, fill me up.

When I’d been teaching teenagers, I’d been jealous of them because they got to be pupils all day and they got to learn stuff.

I was like, I want to learn stuff.

So I said to my new employer, pretend I’m a graduate, pretend I know nothing.

And the great thing about that was that I could be completely honest about not knowing stuff.

I didn’t have to pretend to know things that I didn’t know.

I didn’t feel at all confident.

I felt like I’d forgotten everything.

And anyway, I was working in new spheres that I hadn’t worked in before, web development, never done web development.

So it meant that I could say, you know what?

I don’t know stuff.

I’m gonna learn stuff.

I’m gonna ask questions.

And the amazing thing was that I realized how powerful it is to confidently ask questions.

I was saying, I’m here to learn.

I’m not embarrassed about it.

I’m not ashamed of it.

And my career just went whoosh.

I mean, actually I had 12 years of experience.

I wasn’t really a junior, but I got promoted so quickly and I was so successful.

And people loved it when I asked questions.

They didn’t judge me.

They didn’t think I was stupid.

They had huge respect for me.

And it was a really useful lesson for me in the power of asking questions and being honest about what you don’t know.

And you called yourself the queen of questions.

Yes, yes, I do now have a blog.

It’s queenofquestions.kit, I think, or something like that.

But if you look up Clare Suppery, Queen of Questions, you’ll find my blog.

And there is one thing, oh, and you also have a podcast yourself.

So we should mention that and I will link to that one.

Yes, so it’s not current, but there are 27 episodes of the Making Tech Better podcast and they’re all still up on YouTube.

And if you go and look that up, there’s lots of interesting stuff there.

But going back to that scenario, because there was one, I think you asked that question, you sort of asked that question yourself, which was, should you accept a pay cut?

Because you did accept a pay cut.

That’s what you said when you applied for the junior role.

Yes, I did.

And I don’t think it was actually necessary.

It helped me to feel comfortable, that I was like, I’m not pretending to be a senior engineer.

I don’t feel like, I don’t feel capable of being a senior engineer.

So I’m just gonna say, let’s just say I’m right back in at square one.

But actually now one of the things that I do, is when I don’t know things, I have this lovely strategy that I like to use, that if I don’t know a thing and I’d like to know it, then what I will do is commit to teaching it.

So at this very event, I taught a day long workshop in combining test-driven development with LLM augmented coding.

So using LLMs to code.

Test-driven development is something I know loads about.

But when I pitched that workshop, I had never done any coding with an LLM.

And I deliberately pitched the workshop to force me to learn about it.

So what I now do is I take things that I don’t know, and I very confidently say, I’m going to learn about it in order to teach it.

And I’m entirely unapologetic about that, because I’ve realized I don’t need to say, I’m not worth something, or I’m not somebody you should pay good money to, because I don’t know things.

Because actually, I’m very capable of taking something I don’t know, turning it into a useful product that people should pay me money for.

And I don’t feel that I should take a pay cut in order to learn a new thing.

Yeah, and it’s also something that seems to be common with authors.

So if you really want to understand a subject, write a book about it, which seems to be backwards, right?

Because you assume that people who know the subject would write the books, but it’s the other way around.

Yes, yes.

So anything else we should talk about?

Any other things?

There’s one last thing that I would like to talk about, which is the event Socrates UK.

So there is a Socrates event in Germany that has been going for a long time, and there is also a UK version.

And the Socrates events are software crafting events, and they are open space or unconference events, which means that there is no published content.

There are no book speakers, I can’t tell you what the schedule will be in advance, because the content of the event comes from the participants.

Everybody leads sessions, everybody proposes content.

It tends to happen on the fly.

So you don’t even need to know in advance what you’re going to talk about.

You can decide in the afternoon and then propose a session straight away.

And it’s got this amazing energy because of that.

But also there is going to be a training day, the day before the main event, which I’m organizing, and that will have published content.

And that will be for an extra fee, you will get to have training published, delivered by a bunch of really amazing international speakers and internationally recognized experts.

But please keep an eye out.

It’s in June next year, and I’m going to be helping to organize it.

So I will be shouting about it on all of my socials.

And also that is something that you also said in your talk.

So I would like to thank ISAQB and Software Tech Gathering for hosting us here and for supporting us.

So it’s sort of an unknown level of professionalism that we had here with regards to video and audio material.

So thanks a lot.

And thanks a lot for you for having this conversation with me and with the audience.

Thanks to the audience for asking those questions and being a role model about it.

So yeah, I think that’s it.

And hope to see you again in some of the next streams.

And it might be, but this is still up in the air, that this is actually the final stream for this year, but we’ll see about that.

So keep your eyes open on the webpage for any more streams.

Thanks a lot and have a great day.

Thank you.

Thank you.