Always happy. I'm always happy to talk about, slang imposter syndrome and what it means to be a woman in tech. So, this is my talk.So thanks a lot for coming everybody as well. Okay. So just a quick agenda. So first of all, just go through I'll just tell you a little bit about myself, and then, we'll do a bit of, you know, what is impostor syndrome or what do I think is impostor syndrome is all about. I'll talk you through some action steps to, possibly, overcome this personally, or I'll tell you how I overcame it personally, and then maybe you can take those steps, for yourself. And, really just how to approach this, technology specifically because we all know tech changes like like that. And, that can always lead to feelings of not knowing because how could you know something that just changed 5 minutes ago? So, just some housekeeping notes.

Please give me your feedback. I am, looking at this from, a full screen, so I can't actually see the video at the same time. So I don't see any if there's any questions coming in, but I'll check at the end. Give me your feedback for this presentation, if you liked it, if you didn't like it, if you have any questions about it, on Twitter, c Watorick, like this, and LinkedIn, Colleen Watorick. I am the only one there on on, LinkedIn with that name. I'm I'm sure of it. Okay. So who am I? Colleen Wojtorek. So I have, about 20 years, over 20 years, in tech. I have I've seen it all. I've kept some receipts. I have a bachelor of science in computer science from the University of Calgary, in Canada. I'm located right now.

I'm on the west coast of Canada, and I got my degree in 2000. I've done everything across the board. I've been in help desk. I've done web development. I've been a build and release manager, but that was before DevOps was actually a thing. It was called a build release, a manager, engineer, business analyst, project manager. I've been an architect, a CTO, and a consultant. I got into tech, or I'll get to that in a second, but I've also done I've worked at startups. I've employee number 11, at a start up. I worked at a global oil and gas company, where I was employee probably 200,011. I've done work for government, a whole bunch of stuff. I'm currently a fractional CTO. So what that is is I help people, or I help companies that don't necessarily have time or the budget for a full time CTO, but definitely need that overarching technology officer viewpoint.

And I'm also a business personal trainer. So you've heard of a, like a fitness personal trainer. I'm basically a business personal trainer where I help businesses accomplish their goals. So I got into computer science, the degree program, without ever having written one line of code. And this is very true. Back in 1995, the internet was just starting to be a thing. And I was looking around, and I was thinking, okay, I need to go to school, and I need to do something that's interesting, that'll have a job at the end. And this Internet thing looks like it might be taken off. So so I went and I got a degree. I signed up and I got it got into the program. And everybody in the program was one of those people that had been coding since forever.

So that resulted in major imposter syndrome, from, myself. But I will say I beat this feeling personally quite early in my career. And, a side note, I am not a doctor or a psychologist. I only have my near bachelor of science in computer science. So I'm not professional on on that side of things, but maybe some of the things that I came up with can help you. So quickly, what is impostor syndrome? So I'm sure we all know, but I always think this is pretty funny. It's like imposter, impostor. It doesn't know what it is either. But basically it's that feeling that we don't belong despite our capabilities. Capability of course, not ability. No one has all the answers, no one can do everything. It's that feeling of a fraud that you can't contribute.

I always think that that feeling of a fraud is really interesting because being fraudulent means, to me, it means you have to have intent, to to, you know, do a trick or, you know, perform a magical act or something like this. So, I always think that's kind of interesting. There's this concept of Dunning Kruger, which is basically, you know, incompetent people don't know that they're incompetent. My hot take on this is that if you think that you don't know something or if you think that you're incompetent, you're already at a stage where you definitely don't have Dunning Kruger, because you're actually thinking about it introspectively enough. But as always, I think that a learning mindset is key, for for thinking about impostor syndrome. So what is this at a deeper level? So how do you manage this in IT when the landscape changes almost daily? There's a thought leader on every corner, which thought leader, I I have a problem with that phrase.

To me, it feels very Orwellian and and very, like, 1984, somebody teaching you how to think. But what we need to know is that our thoughts influence our feelings, but once it's a feeling, you can't really outthink it. Essentially, you can't beat a feeling with logic. So you need to fight fire with fire. You need to, change the feeling at the feeling level. So how to overcome it? So, one of the things that I feel is really important, in tech and kind of in life in general, and I think we've noticed this with all of the COVID stuff that's gone on, is that really becoming antifragile, is one of the best ways to, nip this in the bud. And it really means, like, developing resiliency. And it doesn't mean, like, just get a thick skin and kinda kinda move on with it.

What it really means is that you become someone that shows an increase in capability, or your ability, to thrive as a result of stressors. So those stressors can be like you know shocks, volatility, virus, you know some sort of attack or failure. The way to really get around this is to adopt a learning mindset, and really understand at a deeper level that becoming antifragile is a benefit personally, of course, because then you can respond to whatever issues are coming your way. But even in business, like, businesses, really, thrive when they become antifragile. Life is problems. Right? Like, if if things were perfect, all the time, I am certain that we would go out and look for things, look for problems to solve. This is just how it is. Okay. So that's that's great. But how to really slay this dragon, right?

So these are the kind of the, 4 steps or the 4 items, that I came up with when I look back on my career journey, and I think, how did I overcome, imposter syndrome? How did I get from not knowing a line of codes to, you know, now being a CTO, for companies? And so I as I thought about it introspectively, I came up with these, four points. And the first one is really, know yourself. Right? So know your strengths, know your weaknesses, and then honestly ignore your weaknesses. Don't take time working on things that don't matter. As long as you know them and you know, okay, I'm not so good at, you know, fine tuned detailed work. Like, for example, I'm not really good at that. That's okay. I'll just find somebody to help me with that piece. Right? Find some time for, like, real in-depth contemplation, of yourself. I have, like, a meditation practice.

I am really involved in physical fitness. Basically working out is my hobby. So I do spend a lot of time just kind of thinking about things. And you so it's one of those things where you need to really know who you are and know that you're awesome and deserving. Everyone is awesome and deserving. The second point really is to embrace and practice change. So one of these things that happens is that we kind of go along life and we it's like we get into this rut. You know, we go to the same coffee shop in the morning when we go to work, when we used to go to work. You know, we we take the same route to work. We, shop at the same grocery store, you know, usually cook the same meals, these types of things.

So my my advice to this is to really embrace and practice change. So change things. One different thing every day. You know, go to a different coffee shop, walk a different way to work, you know, change something, change what you order at the coffee shop, right, this type of thing. So that really gets you into this this mindset of change and that nothing is truly really permanent. And I find that that helps. The third point is really find your people. So build a network. Find the people, that can help you along your path. Find the people that know that maybe you're a beginner in computer science and that you don't really have all the answers. Throughout my career, I've had people that have really helped me, understand, that, you know, even they don't know the answers, and they were, like, quite senior.

So find your people, build a network, find people that you can learn from. This is a quote from my sister who is actually an electrical engineer. So she's she's pretty, smart, but she's made the observation that you'll basically go farther with average intelligence and excellent social skills than with excellent intelligence and mediocre social skills. And so I think this is a really important point. And the the 4th thing is really to practice failure. So I think this one's kind of fun. It really you you should, like, pick an activity or task with the goal of failure. And I have that in quotes because failure doesn't really exist. So, one of the things I've done is I, because I'm physically active, I've gone to races, with the intent of not setting a personal best, just of, like, running that day with a whole bunch of other people, and somebody else is taking my time on a route. And for some people that would be a massive failure because I just, you know, didn't try my hardest.

Another one that I have that's interesting, and I have a photo of it here, is, you know, these things these paint nights. So I went to a paint night with my husband, and it was a, you know, a painting of a lovely tree, on a moonlit night. And, I decided to go cubist on it. And I was the only one that, you know, decided to fail, at painting it. Mine was completely abstract. And, what was really interesting actually was as I was making mine completely abstract, the people around me were getting kind of nervous about what I was painting. Not the instructor, but just the people around me were like, okay, what is she doing? And so from a group perspective, that was actually quite interesting. But this is what I say is practice failure and just realize, like, it doesn't exist. Okay. What about IT? Right? Rapid changes.

Things are constantly changing and evolving, and it's almost impossible to keep up, and that can lead to those feelings of, you know, I'm incompetent or I just don't know what I'm doing, this type of thing. Right? You know, but I'll tell you. The things that I've seen in my career so as I've said, you know, over 20 years of experience, the pendulum kind of swings and shifts back and forth. So I was actually laid off from that global oil and gas company, because they made the choice to outsource everything, outsource all of their IT, project management, development, the whole bit. They outsourced it. And I heard just about a couple months ago that they were actually insourcing now because they realized that some skills they actually needed, some some talent that's closer to home and closer to the business.

The other thing is, you know, about moving to the cloud. So when I started, as a web app developer, we had to build our own cloud essentially. And so then the trend obviously moved to, you know, outsourcing to the cloud. And the thing that you realize is that the cloud can cost a lot. And if you have a significant data footprint or a significant throughput on your website, it could actually cost less for you to have, your services on premise. Not to mention the fact that you don't really have full control in cloud. So I'm seeing some shifts of that pendulum going the other way. A couple years ago, it was blockchain everything. And I was, I was actually a teaching assistant on Udemy for the Ethereum blockchain. And so I know the technology quite well. I learned it, and then I helped teach it. And then the the Bitcoin blockchain as well.

Honestly, it's like it's just a linked list. It's not that big of a deal. It's, you know, things are actually more simple than you think. It's basically there's this this, saying, I'm I'm a big traveler and I love traveling, in Asia. And, there's a saying in Thailand, same same, but different. And that's no different from technology. Things are the same. They're only slightly different. What I think is really important is to take all the shiny new things and basically take that back to first principles. So what what is this thing really? What problem are we really solving? What is the the root of what's what's going on here? Simplicity is genuinely worth its weight in gold, in this case. So it's it's, this mindset of thinking that, yes, technology changes, and yes, there's something new all the time, but it's really when you go back down to its very root level, not much changes.

Okay. So these are, that's nice. Right? But what if you're, in a meeting and somebody is, you know, bringing up something and, it's starting to those those feelings are starting to bubble up inside of you. I do say, like, I don't feel impostor syndrome at all, but I do definitely occasionally feel like, oh, I just I don't know what I'm doing. And I'll I'll kind of say that to myself once in a while. But you know I have these these tips and tricks to sort of work myself out of it. So, in a pinch I say to you, remember that, we we have like this this collective human decentralized knowledge. Like, nobody knows everything.

And even if you think about, you know, what it means to type, like, google.com in your browser, and if you think about all of the different layers, that needs to that that exist in order to actually fulfill that request and then show the the page to your browser. I mean, no one knows every single piece of that. I well, I should say, I I could could not imagine somebody who understands like the TCPIP stack and DNS and all that kind of stuff. Right? So there's there's no way, you know, everyone or that there's somebody that knows everything. So we live in this collective human decentralized knowledge, environment. The other thing I'll do is I'll ask the question, what needs to be true for this idea or this concept to be true? So for example, if I'm being pitched something in a meeting, it's this brand new shiny thing, and it's going to solve all of our problems.

Well, okay, you know, let's this is kind of a first principles thinking in where you're saying what needs to be true for this idea to be true? This third point is really, my my favorite point, and, it's it's what really drives me. It's what's your long game? So if you are into strategic thinking and business development and these types of things, long game is is part of that thinking. And it's basically like like what is the the end, goal, or what is the the desire for a business. Right? And, you can apply this to yourself personally. It's also, I was kind of thinking about it, it's sort of analogous to finding your why. That find your why thing never really landed with me, but this idea of a long game, really, I find very impactful. And I say play to that game.

So so what does that mean exactly? I've given this talk before and I've we've had some a bit more discussion on this point. So for me personally, my long game is to, own my own technology company at some point in the future. So if I am in a meeting or in a on a project and, possibly, you know, somebody is is starting to trigger that that feeling of, I don't know what I'm doing or or, you know, causing some other sort of stressor, I I'll stop and I'll think, okay. What is this what's happening right here? What is this person telling me? And how does that work for for what my actual long gain is? And more often than not, it's just this, like it's like noise. It's like the the noise in the signal. If you've ever seen, like, a graph, like a trend line. Right?

It's like it's the the shaky noise bits, but you you really want to pay attention to the trend line. So that's that's a key one for me is I I always try to play to that long game. The other thing is really the understanding that we see the world, through the lens of our beliefs about things. And people will criticize you, and criticize themselves actually, obviously, based on what they think about themselves. Right? So if, somebody thinks that, you know, you're lazy, for example, chances are it's because they think that of themselves. And, so I try to take, you know, if there's any sort of, ever personal criticism or or these types of things that come my way, it's an understanding of that that that people can only see you in the way that they see themselves.

And the last point here is really like, you know, your heart is here to beat and move blood through your system. Your stomach is here to digest the food that you eat. Your brain's primary function is to think, right? So it's going to think thoughts for you, obviously. So think good ones. I mentioned, you know, the feeling of, I don't know what I'm I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. So that's a that's a thought that kind of my brain just kicks in every once in a while, and I just go, okay. Thanks, brain, for coming up with that thought. I'm gonna come up with a different one, and I I actually will sort of stop myself from thinking that. And I'll think, yeah, okay. Maybe I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll figure it out.

So, you know, think think good thoughts is what I have to say about that. So these are kind of just a bunch of sentences. What I find is that, in case of emergency, if you have like a mental picture in your mind, sometimes that's easier to, think of, when you have something something coming up. So, really, it's, making mantras for yourself. I like this one here, because this to me just shows, like, how how big the world really is or how big the universe really is, and you just occupy this tiny, tiny little spot in it. And then of course the old manuals at cloud is, one of my favorites when dealing with, some older, gentlemen at times. That one makes me laugh. And then, you know, the old this is fine, one. These ones kind of make me laugh.

So I have these mental pictures in my mind to really help snap me out of things, when I find I'm sort of spiraling. So with that, I wanted to so when I've done this talk before, there's time for an open discussion, you know, Q and A, ask me anything if there's any clarifications. If you wanna step up and do some poetry, it's a perfect time to practice change, or, take a risk if you're ordinarily a lurker. I also have like a PDF of this, and I have this little fun bingo card to help you do this type of work. You can tweet me or, again, find me on LinkedIn. I have a quick reading list here, just of a few books that, have really helped me and, sort of steer my own personal guiding principles here.

Antifragile, How Will You Measure Your Life? Clayton Christensen is awesome. Brene Brown's amazing. And, The Waking Up podcast, and the meditation app. It's by Sam Harris. And then so that's that. I'd be remiss if I wouldn't didn't say that I do have all of the image credits there as well. So I'll say that. I'll tab over here. And, yeah. So I'll say, I don't know if you guys can speak or I'll read through the comments here. Where are we? What time is it here? It is 4:13 in the afternoon. I lucked out with an awesome time zone, so I'm happy about that. What else do we got here? K. I'll connect with you all later for sure. Oh, were the slides not moving? Oh, shoot. K. I wonder, if you wanna connect with me on LinkedIn, I can show them I can send you the slide pack if they weren't moving. Sorry about that. Super.

Oh, the slides weren't moving. That sucks. They were really funny. Had a lot of pictures on them. I think these sessions are recorded. It says that it's recording. So oh, shoot. You didn't see them. That's weird. Okay. I don't know if I was supposed to import them or not. But at any rate, thank you for joining this. I will oh, yeah. The book slide. Here. I will paste all of that actually right in here. There you go. Those are all the books right there. So, was there another question? A success story that I want to share. Oh, thanks, Abby. That's an awesome question. I think my success story is that I, I really love the way my career turned out, actually. I started out when I was in university, I thought that I was going to learn how to code video games and go and live in Japan.

And it turns out that coding video games is really hard, and like I said, I'm not a real detailed thinker. So, it was not my thing, and learning Japanese is also really challenging. So I did neither of those things, but I really just, I I sort of just followed my heart and, did the things that interested me, and, really made connections with people. I I just tried to connect with as many people as I could, and I think that is my greatest success story, I think, for my career in general. If I were to think of, like, one specific thing Oh, I can't think of anything. I think that maybe my my biggest success is yet to come. There. It's a cop out. What else we got? Any advice for college students to gain more confidence in networking? Oh, great question, Winnie. Thank you. You know what?

I think you just have to do it. It's it sounds really terrible, but what you can do is you can sort of practice. So I would maybe go to a network event and, bring like a friendly there to sort of help you, and maybe get them, you know, if you have a friendly that's a bit more, outgoing, have them, you know, talk to people, like, approach people, and then you be the one that talks to the person that's, you know, the quieter person on the left or something like that.

I would suggest something like that. Set yourself up for success in that way. I I would not suggest, you know, just going to a conference and kind of dropping yourself in there and just talking to people. Those, my husband could totally do that. I've seen him go up to people while eating, like, chicken wings and, like, saying introducing himself to people, and I'm like, oh my god. This is terrifying, and he can do that. I can't. I would say just to practice and, and don't be afraid of, like people are here to help. People really want to help. If you're, you know, have a question for them, people really want to help. And people love talking about themselves.

So if you, you know, come up to somebody and just be like, hey. Like, what brings you here? Like, you know, what did you think of that chat? Was that interesting or something like that? I think that one's good too. So let's see. Setting high standards lead to high expectations, but being ambitious is not bad. What's your take on that? I think, I think setting high standards is, I've set high standards my whole entire life. I have probably not met most of those standards, but, I think what's important is to not let it, get you down if you don't meet those standards. So it's, I guess if you just take it from a more of a continuous improvement, you know, how they do in DevOps, right, continuous improvement, continuous development. I think if you approach your life that way, that's, a way to, you know, set high standards.

But just, you know, realize that sometimes some things are just not not for you, so it's not gonna work out, in your favor. So I I think, that's fine. I think being ambitious is perfect way to be. Yeah. Oh, I love the food. Do I consider myself an extrovert? Thanks, Patricia. No. I don't really, because I cannot go into, like, a a a situation and just, like, start chit chatting with people. I kinda consider myself, like, as the word is ambivert. So sometimes I can be super outgoing, like, doing a presentation like this. I, like, I don't mind doing it. I I would prefer that it was a bit more interactive, and I wish I could have heard you guys, to to hear that the or to see, that the slides weren't loading because that kinda sucks. But, yeah. So there's that. I'm in the process of making a pivot in my career in the face of uncertainty and rejection. Boy, that one's tough.

So I think, actually, I think now is a great time to pivot, and to sort of capitalize on uncertainty, to be honest. I think I think if you, approach so I don't know what you're pivoting to. I think that was Sydney that asked this question. I would say, flip it on its head and just say like like, when when there's uncertainty and when there's churn, it means that there's opportunity. It's like, if there's a, you know, like a shark going around in the water, its its biggest advantage is to, like, like, stir up the other fish, right, so it can it can hunt. So I I think that that that uncertainty is really, almost of a benefit. If you can be just open minded and open to, like, whatever, ideas are sort of coming your way. Where are we here? Can get the mantras.

I don't know if if you can you guys still see my screen at all? I don't know if you can. Here's my mental picture. Those are my mattress. I don't know if you can see them. Yeah. Japanese. Boy, I I think I like, each Nissan desk is, like, 1234, and that's literally all I can remember, and probably only because I used to listen to a band that counted themselves. They were Japanese, and so they counted themselves in 1 to 4. Any woman figure in science and tech that you look up to? No no one woman in particular. I see so many every single day, like, in this, Women Tech Conference. I mean, most of the women here are just, like, amazing. I see women, like, on Twitter, that are doing, like, real infosec work, that are just amazing. So I don't necessarily really look up to anyone in particular.

I am super excited when anyone, just, you know, just reaches their goal and, is really genuinely proud of themselves. So I don't have anyone in particular. I'm really confused because I don't know what I want and get easily distracted. Yeah. Me too, actually. I'm afraid about the future and taking responsibilities. I don't blame you. I actually so I I think this is common, and I will honestly say I have felt this of myself too, because I, do get easily distracted, and that's probably why I've had such a jumpy career. Like, I've been a web developer and then a business analyst, and I've I've moved around a lot. And I don't necessarily think that that's a bad thing because for me, that's because I'm, like, a high level thinker. Like, I just don't think in very depth of detail. I you know, fear about the future, I I can understand that at these times as well.

But, not taking a responsibility is making a choice too. So I'm trying to think about that. How am I for time here? I don't think I still have some time. Did I always dream of owning my own tech company, or did I develop it over the course of my career? I always always thought that I would own my own tech company. I don't know where that came from. When I was a web developer at my first job outside after university, I remember speaking to one of my colleagues, and whenever we would get like super frustrated with like management or like a problem or whatever, I would say, well when we have our own company, this won't be a problem.

And so for some reason, something within me was always saying, like, yeah, you're gonna have your own thing, Colleen, one day. So I've I've sort of always felt that. And I've had I will say I have had a lot of false starts. I've I think I've started about 4 companies. One of which was a partnership. The other one was a full company that I, like, full on, like, had all the lawyers and the paperwork and the full bit, and that totally cratered. So, you know, I've it's like 2 steps forward, 1 step back. I failed at that many times, but I, I like I said, I don't, it's it's not failure. It's all just learning. You just need to try things or else you'll never know. Okay. So I think that's it for questions. I'll go through and, like I said, connect with everyone who's dropped their LinkedIn on there. Really sorry about the the, screen not moving around. That sucks.

Anyway, what can you do? Alright. I think that's it. I can say thank you.