Rub[berDuck]yConf, I :mustache: you a question
Scherner De La Fuente, Tara
I :mustache: you a question. That's what I send via Slack to folks I'm reaching out to when I'm stuck. Over these first few years of my career, the reach outs are fewer and the problems more specific and/or challenging. Now? I often get that inquiry in a DM. What I'm discovering more and more: That whole rubber duck thing is no joke—moreover, it's often the unofficial mentoring of our industry. What do our own questions teach us? What do they teach others? How can you be a great rubber duck? Beyond that moment, what can the rubber duck do for your career-the easy way?
 Okay, so RubyConf, I must ask you a question, is the title of my talk? You know, the problem is I planned this part of the talk where I would say that I was just saying sentences because my voice usually shakes at the beginning of these, but fuck it, my voice is not shaking. So, okay, boom! And we've already gotten the first curse word out of the way. Normally my body is a big betrayer, but I guess it's just not going to betray me this time, which is kind of a betrayal, right, asshole? Okay, so we're going to start strong now. Years ago, I failed my PhD exams twice. How's that for starting strong? And then I really, but I really wanted that piece of paper. I worked years to get the piece of paper. So I bought a PhD from a diploma mill from a sort of a semi-accredited university. And so I do have a PhD, it's on my bookshelf at home, because I'm not really proud of it. I don't even post on LinkedIn where I put all of my really important certificates. And that, by the way, in the background is Tara the Goat, which it's not a coincidence she was named after me, and she's awesome. But I clearly take LinkedIn very seriously. But back in the PhD years, my first mentor, Jim Schiff, who really ramped up his efforts to get me passing the exams after I failed them horribly, he helped shape my understanding about how I learn, how I process information, and how I communicate what I learn. And he said to me, this is the first new goat, he said to me, Tara, you like to walk around the barn before going inside. And that really sums up how I learn and how I approach different things. And you're all kind of discovering this during the talk as well. We're sort of walking around the barn. But that description has been essential to my understanding of how I process what I'm trying to learn or can't seem to learn. And one of the reasons I'm giving this talk is because I struggle with grasping concepts more than the average person. And this is a talk about learning at all levels. We're always learning. But at least in terms of how we mentor or more informally, often peer-to-peer how we mentor or are mentored and how we learn about ourselves is what I'm going for. My problem with learning was really brought home to me again during coding boot camp. We paired with new people every single day. And we organized our way around the room such that we started with the slow, people who wanted to go slow were at one end of the room. And the people I called the golden children were over at the other end of the room. I was hanging out by the windows over there as far as I could get. It turns out, of course, that some of my perceptions about what people knew or didn't know was wrong. But I did, I got a clear impression from all of the different people I was pairing with that how I was learning was very different. I was making progress, but it was very different. I want to emphasize that while there was progress, that knowledge of difference can do a real number on a person. And I don't want to make this a talk about things that you can't translate into your own experiences. So you're just going to have to trust me when I say that the struggle was real and it was beyond the norm. So I'm just going to stop for a moment because I'm going to tell a lot of stories so I figure I may as well make some actual points that you should learn how you learn. It's essential to learn how you learn and it's helpful if you are helping someone else to learn to help them figure that out. But ideally, you'll learn how you learn so that you can communicate what you need. I wish I could go back to those PhD exams. I feel like I have a better chance of advocating for myself and explaining to my professors what I would need in some different test-taking strategies in order to succeed. But I can't. So I want you to learn how you learn so that you can communicate that with others. And then learn how you don't learn. Fail a whole bunch of times. I am very good at this. As you go into code and you fail a whole lot trying to solve different things, it's the same thing with learning how you learn. And what failed for you one time might succeed for you the next. And so you really do have to try a variety of things in order to sort that out. And I mentioned this specifically in this talk because I think when you work with different people and you're trying to mentor folks even informally, you really need to learn to look for a variety of different ways that they are learning as well and kind of modify what you're doing when you can. And then even though some of your colleagues might attend a talk on being a good mentor, you are really the person vested with the vested interest in learning. And so I mean that I'm sure that is quite obvious. But it's really it doesn't matter if somebody comes and gives you the thing that tells you how you learn. It's my responsibility now to take that and communicate that with others and figure out how to make up for my weaknesses in learning. And I want to make a distinction between what I experience with my slow learning and imposter syndrome which I also have because I fit somewhere in that circle. A key point from my PhD exam failure example is that I'm a real misfit when it comes to learning and communicating what I know. And I realize that everyone kind of thinks they're a special snowflake and I am. But we all are. And that's why we all think that. But I want to make sure that my own failure is really clear. I'm not sure why I want this so badly. But I do. I want to make sure that you understand my failure, that it was beyond the norm. Because prior to me failing my PhD exams only one other person in the previous decade had failed the exams. And he admitted to taking a nap during the timed exams. And then filed a grievance and was allowed to write his dissertation and continue. And I'm not bitter in the slightest. I'm bitter. But I mean this was big. And I have a large monthly payment that reminds me on the regular that I don't learn like other people learn and how I learn can be expensive. And my story gets worse. Spoiler alert, the reason I'm sharing this is that it isn't this dire for most folks. And I hope that's encouraging. Even if things are this dire in similar or different ways, one can still succeed. And I say that from the stage of the national conference for my primary programming language while gainfully employed. So that's my evidence of you can still succeed. That's all I got. I really like you people. Okay. Also I want to make sure that we have a common understanding of what I mean by the concept of being a rubber duck. By the way my friend Robin drew this. She also designed the Goat User Story stickers. And it's so much better when it's not in VGA. You're just going to have to trust me that she's really talented. So if you need a graphic designer. The idea of a rubber duck, I believe it originally comes from the book the Pragmatic Programmer where a programmer is debugging by explaining the code line by line to a literal rubber duck. And that meaning has come to mean different things as things do. But it usually involves something inanimate or say someone who doesn't provide technical knowledge to the solution. Many ways it's used now you might start an email or a Slack message to somebody and you solve it simply through writing it out to the person. So in that way they're kind of inanimate. Okay. Back to it gets worse. As I was saying. I have a new job recently and I am trying to learn a ton faster and not be found out as a learning misfit. I wrap up my day and then I start reading code books. I'm taking online courses. I'm watching YouTube videos about coding. I'm trying to grok all the things at once. I'm also learning a new programming language so that's part of it. But my body is a betrayer. I don't know if this is true for everyone but my body is. And it's like the more I try to keep being a learning misfit a secret the more my food issues flare up and I gain weight. And I mean a lot of weight. I'm really good at that. It's as if by hiding my misfitness my body makes me confront not fitting in a physical way. And it really sucks. So now I must ask you the most obvious question. Why the fuck am I sharing expensive failures, my learning issues that are outside the norm and food issues of all things at a tech conference. And I am in a small part I am using you. If my own beliefs about psychology and how it's connected to physiology are correct then by confessing my true fears of being found out as a learning misfit by putting those out there I'm hoping that it might solve the problem. Because I'm actually very good at losing weight when I'm not struggling with these things. And you're basically all being my rubber ducks right now. I realize you're not inanimate but just as being part of an audience and not necessarily a dialogue with me you are my confessor rubber ducks. I'm Jewish by the way which is why it's a rabbinic duck and not a priest duck. So you are all being my rubber ducks right now. And the theory for me is that once this is out there once I'm explaining the problem to you that the solution will be okay. Like I have confessed this thing that is really difficult for me and that hopefully will free me after I have a proline. I want one proline and then I want to be freed from the sugar. Just one. That's all I want. Okay another reason for sharing my personal shit with you is that we are all vulnerable meat sacks. We are all vulnerable meat sacks. And we might have come to this room or this talk for different reasons but a key reason that I'm up here is so that you have knowledge rather than just information but knowledge you know from me how important smoothing the way for somebody else can be. Somebody else who is dealing with like you know outside the norm struggles or even inside the norm struggles because again we are all vulnerable meat sacks. So beyond the career related practical reasons that might be a good reason for being a good mentor I'm hoping to appeal to you on that level. You might not put on 50 pounds every time you are under a lot of stress and trying to hide your learning misfitness because you might not have any but we all need folks to support our efforts and to support the efforts of other folks and I'm hoping that you will do this because I am why this stuff matters. You are why this stuff matters and we are to borrow the name of one of my favorite podcasts we are greater than coat. We are why this shit matters and within your own boundaries I want to be up here suggesting that you try to facilitate other people learning and growing in their careers and I'm not saying you have to go in and fix people's food issues but if you can ease the way in your career with your colleagues and that kind of thing that can help them deal with the other shit that they've got going on. So I started with this to give you examples other than your own especially if you don't have any about how easing the code building process can ease up other areas. So now you may be asking why would anybody hire slow learning Tara and that is an excellent question but first of all I mean hopefully I'm a nice person and people like being right. That's it thank you. Oh my god I love a ringer. Thank you I'll get you your twenty dollars later. So as you can see I'm a freaking delight but really I mean people who experience the world differently see possibilities instead of obstacles and that is a great trait to have when you're dealing with code. My whole life in terms of like the food issues and the learning thing it's my whole life has been obstacles and I'm so used to failure I just keep going I go back around the barn if it didn't if it wasn't ready to go in the first time I'm just going to go back around the barn again. I am a good person to have around I'm going to dig in there I'm going to build your feature debug your problem it'll be fine. Okay I'm getting to the practical stuff now we have circled the barn and Sonya my first engineering mentor she was my official engineering mentor she she paid attention to how I learned and when we paired one on one she would ask me specific questions about the code that we were doing in the context we were doing it and she would say things like do you understand what object dot method is doing here that was not their names they had better names but do you understand what object dot method is doing here do you know why we changed that thing to do this thing and the specific in context check ins helped me know that she cared about my progress and this is where the more traditional imposter syndrome comes in is that I don't even know to this day whether she purposely asked me things that I would know to instill confidence in me or did I just know more than I thought I knew it's probably a bit of both but we just never know these things but I got to the opportunity to be Sonya's rubber duck because I really brought very little technical knowledge to the table fresh out of boot camp but I she asked questions of me that were really questions she was asking for herself not these object dot method questions but asking what she should do next should she be concerned about this thing or that thing and that taught me what questions a senior engineer would be asking about their code and it was a mentoring process and even though I was in that silent mostly silent role of kind of a rubber duck for her I learned a whole heck of a lot and so I think one of the things I want to give is a takeaway is that first of all people can learn from folks more seasoned or less seasoned than themselves so it can be any pairing scenario but honestly there is an opportunity to teach and to learn in those pairing sessions and I hope folks take advantage of that quite a bit especially if you're helping to level somebody up a bit. I want to talk about a different sort of a mentor than I had. I had a variety of colleagues who were all very good at helping me answer some of the questions that I had but I had questions that I call of them stupid questions and you can talk to me later about whether I should ever say that again but I call them stupid questions and they were the questions like there were the questions that I knew like a junior engineer and newbie would ask and I asked those across the team you know Jeremy you're here I asked you all kinds of questions but what you may or may not know is that I saved my stupid questions for Daryl. Daryl is there on the right. He taught me how to rebase first of all which was very exciting. He walked me through my first rebases and he celebrated with me when I did one successfully by myself. He was not there when I nearly passed out when I did something really horrible with the rebase once but and I was literally pale and clammy and texting Kerry Miller from the floor of my apartment. I sucked in some code and something happened but Daryl was there for most of my stupid questions and here's what happened is he established trust with me with this rebase instruction and then I asked him one of my stupid questions that I knew would reveal that I should not have been hired and I asked him that and I asked him not to tell anyone that I asked that question and he did not tell anyone. So from then on I decided this is perfect I'm going to limit my exposure and I'm going to ask Daryl all of my stupid questions and only one person will know they never should have hired me and that is a fantastic technique. What I want to suggest because most of you maybe already have that first job is that you establish trust with some of your less seasoned partners or heck even you're just you know same level colleagues establish trust with them and develop a secret pact if you have to but it is important in order to have those special moments and those people who mean so much to you and level up your career it is important to first establish trust in order to get to that place. So here's some easy career boon mentoring and rubber ducking can have is that once I felt more confident that I had reached at least within the norm spectrum of junior developers I confessed the pact to our boss Daryl and I had the same boss and I told him Daryl was not my mentor but he mentored me and Daryl got promoted I don't think it was because I told but it couldn't have hurt Daryl was very talented and so I'm sure that is why he got promoted but it couldn't hurt that he even though he was not an official mentor he mentored the junior developer on the team and I made sure that his boss knew it was career building for me and I wanted to make sure it was career building for him. So the takeaway there I hope probably obviously is certainly you want to show gratitude to those folks who do take the time to care about your learning and keep your secrets that you're asking stupid questions but also build trust as a potential secret pack provider. It's very important. This happened recently and I don't know if you can tell but like the VGA it's washed out but can I name you in my RubyConf talk and I get to name him as you can see Brian Hall replied you can name me as long as it's either good or you're calling me an asshole and this is in Slack if you do not recognize it's lay out there but Brian was also a different kind of a mentor. Daryl had been promoted and moved on to a different team so I really picked the right person to tell all my secrets to because he left the team. No one was left on the team who knew I should never have been hired so that was fantastic. I had a solid footing in coding and I didn't pair much with Brian when he worked at Living Social with me. We did some SQL, some active record and we did some jQuery together but we didn't have a whole lot because soon enough the dark days of the Living Social layoffs came and we went our separate ways but fortunately we continued maintaining Slack with a lot of the Living Social employees and so Brian and I kept in touch and when I started at my new job I still had coding questions and of course I didn't want them to know I was stupid and that they should not, well I wasn't stupid, I never thought I was stupid, I just thought I'm a slow learner and I did think they should have hired me and I'm glad that they did but I still didn't want them to know how little I knew in those early days when I was trying to learn all the things and I was stressed out because I don't learn very well. Anyway I would contact Brian via Slack and without sharing proprietary information of course we would discuss the things that I was working on in code and soon enough, by the way he would help me and that was great, but soon enough we ended up having to reach out because I was asking fewer questions and that became a milestone that I think was important for me to recognize and I would suggest that if you find yourself in a similar position where somebody is asking you questions and they start to dwindle that that's a great thing to point out to them like I don't know if you've noticed but you reach out to me less, you're still welcome to do so but that's probably a cool thing that you're reaching out less, you're probably feeling more confident and I was and then what happened with Brian is he just turned into a real asshole, no that's not true it's just because he told me, yeah, no he didn't but he stopped being able to answer my questions because I mean I'm sure he would have been able to if he'd been working on the code with me but I'd reached a level where I was now working on projects that were far enough along and asking more technical questions that I finally just sort of I could no longer just ask him a question and without us being in the same code base he'd be able to help me and that too was an important milestone and it was great, he recognized it and it helped me to really acknowledge that as well that's a pretty exciting thing to realize especially when you are a vulnerable meat sack who has learning difficulties, it was pretty exciting to realize that so as I've worked with developers newer than me I've gotten to try out these questions which I think is kind of fun and I literally I pinged Slackbot to do this slide but this is what I send to folks and you can tell I was up late, that was actually early but I send this message and it's a pretty good icebreaker, I mean it's hard not to smile when you get a mustache and an inquiry, it's hard to turn down somebody who sends this and I know that because people that I have done that with have sent it back to me, I've gotten it back and it just makes me laugh and I just know this is a person I have a good rapport with and we're going to do some mentoring, no I never think that part but that's what's happening, that is what is happening and okay we've only got three more slides, we're coming down to it I promise, so I've tried to suggest that caring about the vulnerable meat sacks that surround you might be a motivator for asking good questions and being a trustworthy mentor but also becoming a better version of yourself is a good reason, a motivator to be a good mentor or a good rubber duck everyone can learn from good questions including the person asking them and mentoring can be as easy as answering stupid questions and keeping them secret, I don't know if I clarified that but don't tell anybody I did eventually by the way tell Darrell that I had told her boss so that he could bring that up in his one on one's and performance evaluations but if none of that human stuff motivates you, I do want you to remember that Darrell did get a promotion, so that's good okay one more circle around the barn, back in the PhD days, oh my god you cannot even see that fucking owl trust me this is a really great slide okay back in the PhD days I took a few feminist theory classes and that shit bored me to tears I still don't really know what was happening in those classes but the significance was totally lost on me I didn't know why it was important, it made no sense to me, maybe this is why I failed the PhD exams no actually women's studies was not one of my areas of concentration so it was fine but I never could have imagined that joining the tech industry would teach me so much about feminist theory and lest you think that I am going somewhere else with this, it's this community, especially the Ruby community from what I can tell from the various conferences I've attended and people that I've talked to but it's this community that's taught me to see commonalities alongside difference, to learn better communication in the presence of difference and to appreciate difference and a series of mentors both formal and informal have helped me level up to a place where I get to learn more about my betrayer body and then reveal it to a large crowd of folks in the setting and most of all to appreciate, I've learned that being able to appreciate difference is so important to me and you have all inspired me to share what I've gotten from you so that I can return it all back to you and so I'm sharing this because I want you all to keep this shit up in a more conscious ways even than you have already and expand on it and grow because it has been so life changing for me, I'm eternally grateful for it and you give me hope that we can all treat one another in a way that honors our differences rather than hiding them and I'm just, I'm extremely grateful for that. Okay, I've shared some stories, I've offered some specific questions to ask of others and of yourselves and I hope that you give your best for yourselves and for those around you and I am again deeply thankful that you have all been my rubber ducks at least for a half hour or so so thank you very much, I have no idea if I have time for questions and I don't really have to dash but I do have stickers there if anybody is interested in those and I do have a question if nobody else has a question, by the way I'm totally blind up here so you'll have to say something if you have a question Oh, I have ten minutes, okay I'm gonna start because I've already got the mic Yay, I do have a question because I thought of this far too late and some of my slides don't translate well for visually impaired folks but I went to slide share I think and I couldn't add captions or anything to my slides and if anybody has a tool that they know where I can post my slides but add captions to them so that people who can't see my awesome pictures like none of you could see the owl then that would be great if you might tweet that at me oh my gosh you can't even see my Twitter account Excellent, media remedial is my Twitter handle and thank you Jennifer So that was my question, are there any others? Can you talk a bit about how to tell when you should or should not be remained for you so be sure of that? That is a really good question especially I am considering I think most people have heard about mansplaining before and nobody should go there I think one of the best things to do is to put the... how do I put this? There is a balance of power, there is a power structure that comes into play with the more seasoned engineer and the not a seasoned engineer and that could be just in say this one particular scenario and I think a great thing is to put the action and the power for that action in the other person so even just asking a question, I am a big fan of questions just let... I know a bit about EmberJS components, would you like to talk about that? or some question in that way and I am more than happy to hear from other folks in the audience who have ideas but for me asking a question and asking whether they want that assistance is a great place to start certainly do not start with, well actually... I don't care who is involved in the situation, don't start that way I was going to try to recap it but now you have lost me, I noticed you flailing but I was going to recap it a bit for the video presentation but we were asked how do you know when to step in and one of the suggestions from the back of the room that I can't see was that you ask what the person is doing or how they are doing and they can explain what they are working on in a very neutral way and then they will as you mentioned get to the part where they are flailing about, you don't have to say that and the shout out right before that and what you said is great, I am going to recap it a little bit which is just that on the one hand if you are asking what they are working on and how they are doing it then you might just end up being a rubber duck, they may during the course of explaining it figure out what is going wrong for themselves or as Betsy points out where they are struggling might be due to how they are understanding what is going on and because they are explaining to you in the way that they understand things you might get a clue on what they actually might need some assistance on so that is excellent, thank you I really like having Sam in a meeting so the suggestion which I am repeating for the sake of audio is that if you have an opportunity you see someone you think might be struggling in a particular way and you are willing to do it ask the question you think that they want to ask but might be a little nervous about asking and that also I think builds that trust as well even if they don't know for sure that you did that on their half they know you are a person who has similar questions and that itself can build a bond so I think that is great, how much time do I have left anybody know? there is like this huge, okay I am done, yay I lived!
 Okay, so RubyConf, I must ask you a question, is the title of my talk?  You know, the problem is I planned this part of the talk where I would say that I was just  saying sentences because my voice usually shakes at the beginning of these, but fuck  it, my voice is not shaking.  So, okay, boom!  And we've already gotten the first curse word out of the way.  Normally my body is a big betrayer, but I guess it's just not going to betray me this  time, which is kind of a betrayal, right, asshole?  Okay, so we're going to start strong now.  Years ago, I failed my PhD exams twice.  How's that for starting strong?  And then I really, but I really wanted that piece of paper.  I worked years to get the piece of paper.  So I bought a PhD from a diploma mill from a sort of a semi-accredited university.  And so I do have a PhD, it's on my bookshelf at home, because I'm not really proud of it.  I don't even post on LinkedIn where I put all of my really important certificates.  And that, by the way, in the background is Tara the Goat, which it's not a coincidence  she was named after me, and she's awesome.  But I clearly take LinkedIn very seriously.  But back in the PhD years, my first mentor, Jim Schiff, who really ramped up his efforts  to get me passing the exams after I failed them horribly, he helped shape my understanding  about how I learn, how I process information, and how I communicate what I learn.  And he said to me, this is the first new goat, he said to me, Tara, you like to walk around  the barn before going inside.  And that really sums up how I learn and how I approach different things.  And you're all kind of discovering this during the talk as well.  We're sort of walking around the barn.  But that description has been essential to my understanding of how I process what I'm  trying to learn or can't seem to learn.  And one of the reasons I'm giving this talk is because I struggle with grasping concepts  more than the average person.  And this is a talk about learning at all levels.  We're always learning.  But at least in terms of how we mentor or more informally, often peer-to-peer how we mentor  or are mentored and how we learn about ourselves is what I'm going for.  My problem with learning was really brought home to me again during coding boot camp.  We paired with new people every single day.  And we organized our way around the room such that we started with the slow, people who  wanted to go slow were at one end of the room.  And the people I called the golden children were over at the other end of the room.  I was hanging out by the windows over there as far as I could get.  It turns out, of course, that some of my perceptions about what people knew or didn't know was  wrong.  But I did, I got a clear impression from all of the different people I was pairing with  that how I was learning was very different.  I was making progress, but it was very different.  I want to emphasize that while there was progress, that knowledge of difference can do a real  number on a person.  And I don't want to make this a talk about things that you can't translate into your  own experiences.  So you're just going to have to trust me when I say that the struggle was real and it was  beyond the norm.  So I'm just going to stop for a moment because I'm going to tell a lot of stories so I figure  I may as well make some actual points that you should learn how you learn.  It's essential to learn how you learn and it's helpful if you are helping someone else  to learn to help them figure that out.  But ideally, you'll learn how you learn so that you can communicate what you need.  I wish I could go back to those PhD exams.  I feel like I have a better chance of advocating for myself and explaining to my professors  what I would need in some different test-taking strategies in order to succeed.  But I can't.  So I want you to learn how you learn so that you can communicate that with others.  And then learn how you don't learn.  Fail a whole bunch of times.  I am very good at this.  As you go into code and you fail a whole lot trying to solve different things, it's the  same thing with learning how you learn.  And what failed for you one time might succeed for you the next.  And so you really do have to try a variety of things in order to sort that out.  And I mentioned this specifically in this talk because I think when you work with different  people and you're trying to mentor folks even informally, you really need to learn to look  for a variety of different ways that they are learning as well and kind of modify what  you're doing when you can.  And then even though some of your colleagues might attend a talk on being a good mentor,  you are really the person vested with the vested interest in learning.  And so I mean that I'm sure that is quite obvious.  But it's really it doesn't matter if somebody comes and gives you the thing that tells you  how you learn.  It's my responsibility now to take that and communicate that with others and figure out  how to make up for my weaknesses in learning.  And I want to make a distinction between what I experience with my slow learning and imposter  syndrome which I also have because I fit somewhere in that circle.  A key point from my PhD exam failure example is that I'm a real misfit when it comes to  learning and communicating what I know.  And I realize that everyone kind of thinks they're a special snowflake and I am.  But we all are.  And that's why we all think that.  But I want to make sure that my own failure is really clear.  I'm not sure why I want this so badly.  But I do.  I want to make sure that you understand my failure, that it was beyond the norm.  Because prior to me failing my PhD exams only one other person in the previous decade had  failed the exams.  And he admitted to taking a nap during the timed exams.  And then filed a grievance and was allowed to write his dissertation and continue.  And I'm not bitter in the slightest.  I'm bitter.  But I mean this was big.  And I have a large monthly payment that reminds me on the regular that I don't learn like  other people learn and how I learn can be expensive.  And my story gets worse.  Spoiler alert, the reason I'm sharing this is that it isn't this dire for most folks.  And I hope that's encouraging.  Even if things are this dire in similar or different ways, one can still succeed.  And I say that from the stage of the national conference for my primary programming language  while gainfully employed.  So that's my evidence of you can still succeed.  That's all I got.  I really like you people.  Okay.  Also I want to make sure that we have a common understanding of what I mean by the concept  of being a rubber duck.  By the way my friend Robin drew this.  She also designed the Goat User Story stickers.  And it's so much better when it's not in VGA.  You're just going to have to trust me that she's really talented.  So if you need a graphic designer.  The idea of a rubber duck, I believe it originally comes from the book the Pragmatic Programmer  where a programmer is debugging by explaining the code line by line to a literal rubber  duck.  And that meaning has come to mean different things as things do.  But it usually involves something inanimate or say someone who doesn't provide technical  knowledge to the solution.  Many ways it's used now you might start an email or a Slack message to somebody and you  solve it simply through writing it out to the person.  So in that way they're kind of inanimate.  Okay.  Back to it gets worse.  As I was saying.  I have a new job recently and I am trying to learn a ton faster and not be found out  as a learning misfit.  I wrap up my day and then I start reading code books.  I'm taking online courses.  I'm watching YouTube videos about coding.  I'm trying to grok all the things at once.  I'm also learning a new programming language so that's part of it.  But my body is a betrayer.  I don't know if this is true for everyone but my body is.  And it's like the more I try to keep being a learning misfit a secret the more my food  issues flare up and I gain weight.  And I mean a lot of weight.  I'm really good at that.  It's as if by hiding my misfitness my body makes me confront not fitting in a physical  way.  And it really sucks.  So now I must ask you the most obvious question.  Why the fuck am I sharing expensive failures, my learning issues that are outside the norm  and food issues of all things at a tech conference.  And I am in a small part I am using you.  If my own beliefs about psychology and how it's connected to physiology are correct then  by confessing my true fears of being found out as a learning misfit by putting those  out there I'm hoping that it might solve the problem.  Because I'm actually very good at losing weight when I'm not struggling with these things.  And you're basically all being my rubber ducks right now.  I realize you're not inanimate but just as being part of an audience and not necessarily  a dialogue with me you are my confessor rubber ducks.  I'm Jewish by the way which is why it's a rabbinic duck and not a priest duck.  So you are all being my rubber ducks right now.  And the theory for me is that once this is out there once I'm explaining the problem  to you that the solution will be okay.  Like I have confessed this thing that is really difficult for me and that hopefully will free  me after I have a proline.  I want one proline and then I want to be freed from the sugar.  Just one.  That's all I want.  Okay another reason for sharing my personal shit with you is that we are all vulnerable  meat sacks.  We are all vulnerable meat sacks.  And we might have come to this room or this talk for different reasons but a key reason  that I'm up here is so that you have knowledge rather than just information but knowledge  you know from me how important smoothing the way for somebody else can be.  Somebody else who is dealing with like you know outside the norm struggles or even inside  the norm struggles because again we are all vulnerable meat sacks.  So beyond the career related practical reasons that might be a good reason for being a good  mentor I'm hoping to appeal to you on that level.  You might not put on 50 pounds every time you are under a lot of stress and trying to  hide your learning misfitness because you might not have any but we all need folks to  support our efforts and to support the efforts of other folks and I'm hoping that you will  do this because I am why this stuff matters.  You are why this stuff matters and we are to borrow the name of one of my favorite podcasts  we are greater than coat.  We are why this shit matters and within your own boundaries I want to be up here suggesting  that you try to facilitate other people learning and growing in their careers and I'm not saying  you have to go in and fix people's food issues but if you can ease the way in your career  with your colleagues and that kind of thing that can help them deal with the other shit  that they've got going on.  So I started with this to give you examples other than your own especially if you don't  have any about how easing the code building process can ease up other areas.  So now you may be asking why would anybody hire slow learning Tara and that is an excellent  question but first of all I mean hopefully I'm a nice person and people like being right.  That's it thank you.  Oh my god I love a ringer.  Thank you I'll get you your twenty dollars later.  So as you can see I'm a freaking delight but really I mean people who experience the world  differently see possibilities instead of obstacles and that is a great trait to have when you're  dealing with code.  My whole life in terms of like the food issues and the learning thing it's my whole life  has been obstacles and I'm so used to failure I just keep going I go back around the barn  if it didn't if it wasn't ready to go in the first time I'm just going to go back around  the barn again.  I am a good person to have around I'm going to dig in there I'm going to build your feature  debug your problem it'll be fine.  Okay I'm getting to the practical stuff now we have circled the barn and Sonya my first  engineering mentor she was my official engineering mentor she she paid attention to how I learned  and when we paired one on one she would ask me specific questions about the code that we  were doing in the context we were doing it and she would say things like do you understand  what object dot method is doing here that was not their names they had better names  but do you understand what object dot method is doing here do you know why we changed that  thing to do this thing and the specific in context check ins helped me know that she  cared about my progress and this is where the more traditional imposter syndrome comes  in is that I don't even know to this day whether she purposely asked me things that I would  know to instill confidence in me or did I just know more than I thought I knew it's probably  a bit of both but we just never know these things but I got to the opportunity to be  Sonya's rubber duck because I really brought very little technical knowledge to the table  fresh out of boot camp but I she asked questions of me that were really questions she was asking  for herself not these object dot method questions but asking what she should do next should she  be concerned about this thing or that thing and that taught me what questions a senior  engineer would be asking about their code and it was a mentoring process and even though  I was in that silent mostly silent role of kind of a rubber duck for her I learned a  whole heck of a lot and so I think one of the things I want to give is a takeaway is  that first of all people can learn from folks more seasoned or less seasoned than themselves  so it can be any pairing scenario but honestly there is an opportunity to teach and to learn  in those pairing sessions and I hope folks take advantage of that quite a bit especially  if you're helping to level somebody up a bit. I want to talk about a different sort of a mentor  than I had. I had a variety of colleagues who were all very good at helping me answer some of the  questions that I had but I had questions that I call of them stupid questions and you can talk to me  later about whether I should ever say that again but I call them stupid questions and they were the  questions like there were the questions that I knew like a junior engineer and newbie would ask  and I asked those across the team you know Jeremy you're here I asked you all kinds of questions  but what you may or may not know is that I saved my stupid questions for Daryl. Daryl is there on the right.  He taught me how to rebase first of all which was very exciting. He walked me through my first  rebases and he celebrated with me when I did one successfully by myself. He was not there when I  nearly passed out when I did something really horrible with the rebase once but and I was  literally pale and clammy and texting Kerry Miller from the floor of my apartment. I sucked in some  code and something happened but Daryl was there for most of my stupid questions and here's what  happened is he established trust with me with this rebase instruction and then I asked him one of my  stupid questions that I knew would reveal that I should not have been hired and I asked him that  and I asked him not to tell anyone that I asked that question and he did not tell anyone. So from then  on I decided this is perfect I'm going to limit my exposure and I'm going to ask Daryl all of my  stupid questions and only one person will know they never should have hired me and that is a  fantastic technique. What I want to suggest because most of you maybe already have that first job is  that you establish trust with some of your less seasoned partners or heck even you're just you know  same level colleagues establish trust with them and develop a secret pact if you have to but it  is important in order to have those special moments and those people who mean so much to you and  level up your career it is important to first establish trust in order to get to that place. So  here's some easy career boon mentoring and rubber ducking can have is that once I felt more  confident that I had reached at least within the norm spectrum of junior developers I confessed the  pact to our boss Daryl and I had the same boss and I told him Daryl was not my mentor but he  mentored me and Daryl got promoted I don't think it was because I told but it couldn't have hurt  Daryl was very talented and so I'm sure that is why he got promoted but it couldn't hurt that he  even though he was not an official mentor he mentored the junior developer on the team and I  made sure that his boss knew it was career building for me and I wanted to make sure it was career  building for him. So the takeaway there I hope probably obviously is certainly you want to show  gratitude to those folks who do take the time to care about your learning and keep your secrets that  you're asking stupid questions but also build trust as a potential secret pack provider. It's  very important. This happened recently and I don't know if you can tell but like the VGA it's  washed out but can I name you in my RubyConf talk and I get to name him as you can see Brian Hall  replied you can name me as long as it's either good or you're calling me an asshole and this is in  Slack if you do not recognize it's lay out there but Brian was also a different kind of a mentor.  Daryl had been promoted and moved on to a different team so I really picked the right person to tell  all my secrets to because he left the team. No one was left on the team who knew I should never  have been hired so that was fantastic. I had a solid footing in coding and I didn't pair much with  Brian when he worked at Living Social with me. We did some SQL, some active record and we did some  jQuery together but we didn't have a whole lot because soon enough the dark days of the Living  Social layoffs came and we went our separate ways but fortunately we continued maintaining Slack  with a lot of the Living Social employees and so Brian and I kept in touch and when I started at  my new job I still had coding questions and of course I didn't want them to know I was stupid  and that they should not, well I wasn't stupid, I never thought I was stupid, I just thought I'm a slow learner  and I did think they should have hired me and I'm glad that they did but I still didn't want them to  know how little I knew in those early days when I was trying to learn all the things and I was  stressed out because I don't learn very well. Anyway I would contact Brian via Slack and without  sharing proprietary information of course we would discuss the things that I was working on in code  and soon enough, by the way he would help me and that was great, but soon enough we ended up having  to reach out because I was asking fewer questions and that became a milestone that I think was  important for me to recognize and I would suggest that if you find yourself in a similar position  where somebody is asking you questions and they start to dwindle that that's a great thing to point  out to them like I don't know if you've noticed but you reach out to me less, you're still welcome to do  so but that's probably a cool thing that you're reaching out less, you're probably feeling more confident  and I was and then what happened with Brian is he just turned into a real asshole, no that's not true  it's just because he told me, yeah, no he didn't but he stopped being able to answer my questions  because I mean I'm sure he would have been able to if he'd been working on the code with me  but I'd reached a level where I was now working on projects that were far enough along and asking  more technical questions that I finally just sort of I could no longer just ask him a question and without us  being in the same code base he'd be able to help me and that too was an important milestone  and it was great, he recognized it and it helped me to really acknowledge that as well  that's a pretty exciting thing to realize especially when you are a vulnerable meat sack who has learning  difficulties, it was pretty exciting to realize that so as I've worked with developers newer than me  I've gotten to try out these questions which I think is kind of fun and I literally I pinged Slackbot to do this slide  but this is what I send to folks and you can tell I was up late, that was actually early  but I send this message and it's a pretty good icebreaker, I mean it's hard not to smile when you get a mustache  and an inquiry, it's hard to turn down somebody who sends this and I know that because people that I have done that with  have sent it back to me, I've gotten it back and it just makes me laugh and I just know this is a person I have a good rapport with  and we're going to do some mentoring, no I never think that part but that's what's happening, that is what is happening  and okay we've only got three more slides, we're coming down to it I promise, so I've tried to suggest that caring about the vulnerable meat sacks  that surround you might be a motivator for asking good questions and being a trustworthy mentor  but also becoming a better version of yourself is a good reason, a motivator to be a good mentor or a good rubber duck  everyone can learn from good questions including the person asking them  and mentoring can be as easy as answering stupid questions and keeping them secret, I don't know if I clarified that but don't tell anybody  I did eventually by the way tell Darrell that I had told her boss so that he could bring that up in his one on one's and performance evaluations  but if none of that human stuff motivates you, I do want you to remember that Darrell did get a promotion, so that's good  okay one more circle around the barn, back in the PhD days, oh my god you cannot even see that fucking owl  trust me this is a really great slide  okay back in the PhD days I took a few feminist theory classes and that shit bored me to tears  I still don't really know what was happening in those classes but the significance was totally lost on me  I didn't know why it was important, it made no sense to me, maybe this is why I failed the PhD exams  no actually women's studies was not one of my areas of concentration so it was fine  but I never could have imagined that joining the tech industry would teach me so much about feminist theory  and lest you think that I am going somewhere else with this, it's this community, especially the Ruby community  from what I can tell from the various conferences I've attended and people that I've talked to  but it's this community that's taught me to see commonalities alongside difference, to learn better communication  in the presence of difference and to appreciate difference  and a series of mentors both formal and informal have helped me level up to a place where I get to learn more about my betrayer body  and then reveal it to a large crowd of folks in the setting  and most of all to appreciate, I've learned that being able to appreciate difference is so important to me  and you have all inspired me to share what I've gotten from you so that I can return it all back to you  and so I'm sharing this because I want you all to keep this shit up in a more conscious ways even than you have already  and expand on it and grow because it has been so life changing for me, I'm eternally grateful for it  and you give me hope that we can all treat one another in a way that honors our differences rather than hiding them  and I'm just, I'm extremely grateful for that.  Okay, I've shared some stories, I've offered some specific questions to ask of others and of yourselves  and I hope that you give your best for yourselves and for those around you  and I am again deeply thankful that you have all been my rubber ducks at least for a half hour or so  so thank you very much, I have no idea if I have time for questions and I don't really have to dash  but I do have stickers there if anybody is interested in those  and I do have a question if nobody else has a question, by the way I'm totally blind up here so you'll have to say something if you have a question  Oh, I have ten minutes, okay I'm gonna start because I've already got the mic  Yay, I do have a question because I thought of this far too late and some of my slides don't translate well for visually impaired folks  but I went to slide share I think and I couldn't add captions or anything to my slides  and if anybody has a tool that they know where I can post my slides but add captions to them so that people who can't see my awesome pictures  like none of you could see the owl then that would be great if you might tweet that at me  oh my gosh you can't even see my Twitter account  Excellent, media remedial is my Twitter handle and thank you Jennifer  So that was my question, are there any others?  Can you talk a bit about how to tell when you should or should not be remained for you so be sure of that?  That is a really good question especially I am considering  I think most people have heard about mansplaining before and nobody should go there  I think one of the best things to do is to put the... how do I put this?  There is a balance of power, there is a power structure that comes into play with the more seasoned engineer and the not a seasoned engineer  and that could be just in say this one particular scenario  and I think a great thing is to put the action and the power for that action in the other person  so even just asking a question, I am a big fan of questions  just let... I know a bit about EmberJS components, would you like to talk about that?  or some question in that way and I am more than happy to hear from other folks in the audience who have ideas  but for me asking a question and asking whether they want that assistance is a great place to start  certainly do not start with, well actually...  I don't care who is involved in the situation, don't start that way  I was going to try to recap it but now you have lost me, I noticed you flailing  but I was going to recap it a bit for the video presentation  but we were asked how do you know when to step in and one of the suggestions from the back of the room that I can't see  was that you ask what the person is doing or how they are doing and they can explain what they are working on  in a very neutral way and then they will as you mentioned get to the part  where they are flailing about, you don't have to say that  and the shout out right before that and what you said is great, I am going to recap it a little bit  which is just that on the one hand if you are asking what they are working on and how they are doing it  then you might just end up being a rubber duck, they may during the course of explaining it figure out  what is going wrong for themselves or as Betsy points out where they are struggling might be due to  how they are understanding what is going on and because they are explaining to you in the way that they understand things  you might get a clue on what they actually might need some assistance on  so that is excellent, thank you  I really like having Sam in a meeting  so the suggestion which I am repeating for the sake of audio is that if you have an opportunity  you see someone you think might be struggling in a particular way and you are willing to do it  ask the question you think that they want to ask but might be a little nervous about asking  and that also I think builds that trust as well even if they don't know for sure that you did that on their half  they know you are a person who has similar questions and that itself can build a bond  so I think that is great, how much time do I have left anybody know?  there is like this huge, okay I am done, yay I lived!
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Okay, so RubyConf, I must ask you a question, is the title of my talk? You know, the problem is I planned this part of the talk where I would say that I was just saying sentences because my voice usually shakes at the beginning of these, but fuck it, my voice is not shaking. So, okay, boom! And we've already gotten the first curse word out of the way. Normally my body is a big betrayer, but I guess it's just not going to betray me this time, which is kind of a betrayal, right, asshole? Okay, so we're going to start strong now. Years ago, I failed my PhD exams twice. How's that for starting strong? And then I really, but I really wanted that piece of paper. I worked years to get the piece of paper. So I bought a PhD from a diploma mill from a sort of a semi-accredited university. And so I do have a PhD, it's on my bookshelf at home, because I'm not really proud of it. I don't even post on LinkedIn where I put all of my really important certificates. And that, by the way, in the background is Tara the Goat, which it's not a coincidence she was named after me, and she's awesome. But I clearly take LinkedIn very seriously. But back in the PhD years, my first mentor, Jim Schiff, who really ramped up his efforts to get me passing the exams after I failed them horribly, he helped shape my understanding about how I learn, how I process information, and how I communicate what I learn. And he said to me, this is the first new goat, he said to me, Tara, you like to walk around the barn before going inside. And that really sums up how I learn and how I approach different things. And you're all kind of discovering this during the talk as well. We're sort of walking around the barn. But that description has been essential to my understanding of how I process what I'm trying to learn or can't seem to learn. And one of the reasons I'm giving this talk is because I struggle with grasping concepts more than the average person. And this is a talk about learning at all levels. We're always learning. But at least in terms of how we mentor or more informally, often peer-to-peer how we mentor or are mentored and how we learn about ourselves is what I'm going for. My problem with learning was really brought home to me again during coding boot camp. We paired with new people every single day. And we organized our way around the room such that we started with the slow, people who wanted to go slow were at one end of the room. And the people I called the golden children were over at the other end of the room. I was hanging out by the windows over there as far as I could get. It turns out, of course, that some of my perceptions about what people knew or didn't know was wrong. But I did, I got a clear impression from all of the different people I was pairing with that how I was learning was very different. I was making progress, but it was very different. I want to emphasize that while there was progress, that knowledge of difference can do a real number on a person. And I don't want to make this a talk about things that you can't translate into your own experiences. So you're just going to have to trust me when I say that the struggle was real and it was beyond the norm. So I'm just going to stop for a moment because I'm going to tell a lot of stories so I figure I may as well make some actual points that you should learn how you learn. It's essential to learn how you learn and it's helpful if you are helping someone else to learn to help them figure that out. But ideally, you'll learn how you learn so that you can communicate what you need. I wish I could go back to those PhD exams. I feel like I have a better chance of advocating for myself and explaining to my professors what I would need in some different test-taking strategies in order to succeed. But I can't. So I want you to learn how you learn so that you can communicate that with others. And then learn how you don't learn. Fail a whole bunch of times. I am very good at this. As you go into code and you fail a whole lot trying to solve different things, it's the same thing with learning how you learn. And what failed for you one time might succeed for you the next. And so you really do have to try a variety of things in order to sort that out. And I mentioned this specifically in this talk because I think when you work with different people and you're trying to mentor folks even informally, you really need to learn to look for a variety of different ways that they are learning as well and kind of modify what you're doing when you can. And then even though some of your colleagues might attend a talk on being a good mentor, you are really the person vested with the vested interest in learning. And so I mean that I'm sure that is quite obvious. But it's really it doesn't matter if somebody comes and gives you the thing that tells you how you learn. It's my responsibility now to take that and communicate that with others and figure out how to make up for my weaknesses in learning. And I want to make a distinction between what I experience with my slow learning and imposter syndrome which I also have because I fit somewhere in that circle. A key point from my PhD exam failure example is that I'm a real misfit when it comes to learning and communicating what I know. And I realize that everyone kind of thinks they're a special snowflake and I am. But we all are. And that's why we all think that. But I want to make sure that my own failure is really clear. I'm not sure why I want this so badly. But I do. I want to make sure that you understand my failure, that it was beyond the norm. Because prior to me failing my PhD exams only one other person in the previous decade had failed the exams. And he admitted to taking a nap during the timed exams. And then filed a grievance and was allowed to write his dissertation and continue. And I'm not bitter in the slightest. I'm bitter. But I mean this was big. And I have a large monthly payment that reminds me on the regular that I don't learn like other people learn and how I learn can be expensive. And my story gets worse. Spoiler alert, the reason I'm sharing this is that it isn't this dire for most folks. And I hope that's encouraging. Even if things are this dire in similar or different ways, one can still succeed. And I say that from the stage of the national conference for my primary programming language while gainfully employed. So that's my evidence of you can still succeed. That's all I got. I really like you people. Okay. Also I want to make sure that we have a common understanding of what I mean by the concept of being a rubber duck. By the way my friend Robin drew this. She also designed the Goat User Story stickers. And it's so much better when it's not in VGA. You're just going to have to trust me that she's really talented. So if you need a graphic designer. The idea of a rubber duck, I believe it originally comes from the book the Pragmatic Programmer where a programmer is debugging by explaining the code line by line to a literal rubber duck. And that meaning has come to mean different things as things do. But it usually involves something inanimate or say someone who doesn't provide technical knowledge to the solution. Many ways it's used now you might start an email or a Slack message to somebody and you solve it simply through writing it out to the person. So in that way they're kind of inanimate. Okay. Back to it gets worse. As I was saying. I have a new job recently and I am trying to learn a ton faster and not be found out as a learning misfit. I wrap up my day and then I start reading code books. I'm taking online courses. I'm watching YouTube videos about coding. I'm trying to grok all the things at once. I'm also learning a new programming language so that's part of it. But my body is a betrayer. I don't know if this is true for everyone but my body is. And it's like the more I try to keep being a learning misfit a secret the more my food issues flare up and I gain weight. And I mean a lot of weight. I'm really good at that. It's as if by hiding my misfitness my body makes me confront not fitting in a physical way. And it really sucks. So now I must ask you the most obvious question. Why the fuck am I sharing expensive failures, my learning issues that are outside the norm and food issues of all things at a tech conference. And I am in a small part I am using you. If my own beliefs about psychology and how it's connected to physiology are correct then by confessing my true fears of being found out as a learning misfit by putting those out there I'm hoping that it might solve the problem. Because I'm actually very good at losing weight when I'm not struggling with these things. And you're basically all being my rubber ducks right now. I realize you're not inanimate but just as being part of an audience and not necessarily a dialogue with me you are my confessor rubber ducks. I'm Jewish by the way which is why it's a rabbinic duck and not a priest duck. So you are all being my rubber ducks right now. And the theory for me is that once this is out there once I'm explaining the problem to you that the solution will be okay. Like I have confessed this thing that is really difficult for me and that hopefully will free me after I have a proline. I want one proline and then I want to be freed from the sugar. Just one. That's all I want. Okay another reason for sharing my personal shit with you is that we are all vulnerable meat sacks. We are all vulnerable meat sacks. And we might have come to this room or this talk for different reasons but a key reason that I'm up here is so that you have knowledge rather than just information but knowledge you know from me how important smoothing the way for somebody else can be. Somebody else who is dealing with like you know outside the norm struggles or even inside the norm struggles because again we are all vulnerable meat sacks. So beyond the career related practical reasons that might be a good reason for being a good mentor I'm hoping to appeal to you on that level. You might not put on 50 pounds every time you are under a lot of stress and trying to hide your learning misfitness because you might not have any but we all need folks to support our efforts and to support the efforts of other folks and I'm hoping that you will do this because I am why this stuff matters. You are why this stuff matters and we are to borrow the name of one of my favorite podcasts we are greater than coat. We are why this shit matters and within your own boundaries I want to be up here suggesting that you try to facilitate other people learning and growing in their careers and I'm not saying you have to go in and fix people's food issues but if you can ease the way in your career with your colleagues and that kind of thing that can help them deal with the other shit that they've got going on. So I started with this to give you examples other than your own especially if you don't have any about how easing the code building process can ease up other areas. So now you may be asking why would anybody hire slow learning Tara and that is an excellent question but first of all I mean hopefully I'm a nice person and people like being right. That's it thank you. Oh my god I love a ringer. Thank you I'll get you your twenty dollars later. So as you can see I'm a freaking delight but really I mean people who experience the world differently see possibilities instead of obstacles and that is a great trait to have when you're dealing with code. My whole life in terms of like the food issues and the learning thing it's my whole life has been obstacles and I'm so used to failure I just keep going I go back around the barn if it didn't if it wasn't ready to go in the first time I'm just going to go back around the barn again. I am a good person to have around I'm going to dig in there I'm going to build your feature debug your problem it'll be fine. Okay I'm getting to the practical stuff now we have circled the barn and Sonya my first engineering mentor she was my official engineering mentor she she paid attention to how I learned and when we paired one on one she would ask me specific questions about the code that we were doing in the context we were doing it and she would say things like do you understand what object dot method is doing here that was not their names they had better names but do you understand what object dot method is doing here do you know why we changed that thing to do this thing and the specific in context check ins helped me know that she cared about my progress and this is where the more traditional imposter syndrome comes in is that I don't even know to this day whether she purposely asked me things that I would know to instill confidence in me or did I just know more than I thought I knew it's probably a bit of both but we just never know these things but I got to the opportunity to be Sonya's rubber duck because I really brought very little technical knowledge to the table fresh out of boot camp but I she asked questions of me that were really questions she was asking for herself not these object dot method questions but asking what she should do next should she be concerned about this thing or that thing and that taught me what questions a senior engineer would be asking about their code and it was a mentoring process and even though I was in that silent mostly silent role of kind of a rubber duck for her I learned a whole heck of a lot and so I think one of the things I want to give is a takeaway is that first of all people can learn from folks more seasoned or less seasoned than themselves so it can be any pairing scenario but honestly there is an opportunity to teach and to learn in those pairing sessions and I hope folks take advantage of that quite a bit especially if you're helping to level somebody up a bit. I want to talk about a different sort of a mentor than I had. I had a variety of colleagues who were all very good at helping me answer some of the questions that I had but I had questions that I call of them stupid questions and you can talk to me later about whether I should ever say that again but I call them stupid questions and they were the questions like there were the questions that I knew like a junior engineer and newbie would ask and I asked those across the team you know Jeremy you're here I asked you all kinds of questions but what you may or may not know is that I saved my stupid questions for Daryl. Daryl is there on the right. He taught me how to rebase first of all which was very exciting. He walked me through my first rebases and he celebrated with me when I did one successfully by myself. He was not there when I nearly passed out when I did something really horrible with the rebase once but and I was literally pale and clammy and texting Kerry Miller from the floor of my apartment. I sucked in some code and something happened but Daryl was there for most of my stupid questions and here's what happened is he established trust with me with this rebase instruction and then I asked him one of my stupid questions that I knew would reveal that I should not have been hired and I asked him that and I asked him not to tell anyone that I asked that question and he did not tell anyone. So from then on I decided this is perfect I'm going to limit my exposure and I'm going to ask Daryl all of my stupid questions and only one person will know they never should have hired me and that is a fantastic technique. What I want to suggest because most of you maybe already have that first job is that you establish trust with some of your less seasoned partners or heck even you're just you know same level colleagues establish trust with them and develop a secret pact if you have to but it is important in order to have those special moments and those people who mean so much to you and level up your career it is important to first establish trust in order to get to that place. So here's some easy career boon mentoring and rubber ducking can have is that once I felt more confident that I had reached at least within the norm spectrum of junior developers I confessed the pact to our boss Daryl and I had the same boss and I told him Daryl was not my mentor but he mentored me and Daryl got promoted I don't think it was because I told but it couldn't have hurt Daryl was very talented and so I'm sure that is why he got promoted but it couldn't hurt that he even though he was not an official mentor he mentored the junior developer on the team and I made sure that his boss knew it was career building for me and I wanted to make sure it was career building for him. So the takeaway there I hope probably obviously is certainly you want to show gratitude to those folks who do take the time to care about your learning and keep your secrets that you're asking stupid questions but also build trust as a potential secret pack provider. It's very important. This happened recently and I don't know if you can tell but like the VGA it's washed out but can I name you in my RubyConf talk and I get to name him as you can see Brian Hall replied you can name me as long as it's either good or you're calling me an asshole and this is in Slack if you do not recognize it's lay out there but Brian was also a different kind of a mentor. Daryl had been promoted and moved on to a different team so I really picked the right person to tell all my secrets to because he left the team. No one was left on the team who knew I should never have been hired so that was fantastic. I had a solid footing in coding and I didn't pair much with Brian when he worked at Living Social with me. We did some SQL, some active record and we did some jQuery together but we didn't have a whole lot because soon enough the dark days of the Living Social layoffs came and we went our separate ways but fortunately we continued maintaining Slack with a lot of the Living Social employees and so Brian and I kept in touch and when I started at my new job I still had coding questions and of course I didn't want them to know I was stupid and that they should not, well I wasn't stupid, I never thought I was stupid, I just thought I'm a slow learner and I did think they should have hired me and I'm glad that they did but I still didn't want them to know how little I knew in those early days when I was trying to learn all the things and I was stressed out because I don't learn very well. Anyway I would contact Brian via Slack and without sharing proprietary information of course we would discuss the things that I was working on in code and soon enough, by the way he would help me and that was great, but soon enough we ended up having to reach out because I was asking fewer questions and that became a milestone that I think was important for me to recognize and I would suggest that if you find yourself in a similar position where somebody is asking you questions and they start to dwindle that that's a great thing to point out to them like I don't know if you've noticed but you reach out to me less, you're still welcome to do so but that's probably a cool thing that you're reaching out less, you're probably feeling more confident and I was and then what happened with Brian is he just turned into a real asshole, no that's not true it's just because he told me, yeah, no he didn't but he stopped being able to answer my questions because I mean I'm sure he would have been able to if he'd been working on the code with me but I'd reached a level where I was now working on projects that were far enough along and asking more technical questions that I finally just sort of I could no longer just ask him a question and without us being in the same code base he'd be able to help me and that too was an important milestone and it was great, he recognized it and it helped me to really acknowledge that as well that's a pretty exciting thing to realize especially when you are a vulnerable meat sack who has learning difficulties, it was pretty exciting to realize that so as I've worked with developers newer than me I've gotten to try out these questions which I think is kind of fun and I literally I pinged Slackbot to do this slide but this is what I send to folks and you can tell I was up late, that was actually early but I send this message and it's a pretty good icebreaker, I mean it's hard not to smile when you get a mustache and an inquiry, it's hard to turn down somebody who sends this and I know that because people that I have done that with have sent it back to me, I've gotten it back and it just makes me laugh and I just know this is a person I have a good rapport with and we're going to do some mentoring, no I never think that part but that's what's happening, that is what is happening and okay we've only got three more slides, we're coming down to it I promise, so I've tried to suggest that caring about the vulnerable meat sacks that surround you might be a motivator for asking good questions and being a trustworthy mentor but also becoming a better version of yourself is a good reason, a motivator to be a good mentor or a good rubber duck everyone can learn from good questions including the person asking them and mentoring can be as easy as answering stupid questions and keeping them secret, I don't know if I clarified that but don't tell anybody I did eventually by the way tell Darrell that I had told her boss so that he could bring that up in his one on one's and performance evaluations but if none of that human stuff motivates you, I do want you to remember that Darrell did get a promotion, so that's good okay one more circle around the barn, back in the PhD days, oh my god you cannot even see that fucking owl trust me this is a really great slide okay back in the PhD days I took a few feminist theory classes and that shit bored me to tears I still don't really know what was happening in those classes but the significance was totally lost on me I didn't know why it was important, it made no sense to me, maybe this is why I failed the PhD exams no actually women's studies was not one of my areas of concentration so it was fine but I never could have imagined that joining the tech industry would teach me so much about feminist theory and lest you think that I am going somewhere else with this, it's this community, especially the Ruby community from what I can tell from the various conferences I've attended and people that I've talked to but it's this community that's taught me to see commonalities alongside difference, to learn better communication in the presence of difference and to appreciate difference and a series of mentors both formal and informal have helped me level up to a place where I get to learn more about my betrayer body and then reveal it to a large crowd of folks in the setting and most of all to appreciate, I've learned that being able to appreciate difference is so important to me and you have all inspired me to share what I've gotten from you so that I can return it all back to you and so I'm sharing this because I want you all to keep this shit up in a more conscious ways even than you have already and expand on it and grow because it has been so life changing for me, I'm eternally grateful for it and you give me hope that we can all treat one another in a way that honors our differences rather than hiding them and I'm just, I'm extremely grateful for that. Okay, I've shared some stories, I've offered some specific questions to ask of others and of yourselves and I hope that you give your best for yourselves and for those around you and I am again deeply thankful that you have all been my rubber ducks at least for a half hour or so so thank you very much, I have no idea if I have time for questions and I don't really have to dash but I do have stickers there if anybody is interested in those and I do have a question if nobody else has a question, by the way I'm totally blind up here so you'll have to say something if you have a question Oh, I have ten minutes, okay I'm gonna start because I've already got the mic Yay, I do have a question because I thought of this far too late and some of my slides don't translate well for visually impaired folks but I went to slide share I think and I couldn't add captions or anything to my slides and if anybody has a tool that they know where I can post my slides but add captions to them so that people who can't see my awesome pictures like none of you could see the owl then that would be great if you might tweet that at me oh my gosh you can't even see my Twitter account Excellent, media remedial is my Twitter handle and thank you Jennifer So that was my question, are there any others? Can you talk a bit about how to tell when you should or should not be remained for you so be sure of that? That is a really good question especially I am considering I think most people have heard about mansplaining before and nobody should go there I think one of the best things to do is to put the... how do I put this? There is a balance of power, there is a power structure that comes into play with the more seasoned engineer and the not a seasoned engineer and that could be just in say this one particular scenario and I think a great thing is to put the action and the power for that action in the other person so even just asking a question, I am a big fan of questions just let... I know a bit about EmberJS components, would you like to talk about that? or some question in that way and I am more than happy to hear from other folks in the audience who have ideas but for me asking a question and asking whether they want that assistance is a great place to start certainly do not start with, well actually... I don't care who is involved in the situation, don't start that way I was going to try to recap it but now you have lost me, I noticed you flailing but I was going to recap it a bit for the video presentation but we were asked how do you know when to step in and one of the suggestions from the back of the room that I can't see was that you ask what the person is doing or how they are doing and they can explain what they are working on in a very neutral way and then they will as you mentioned get to the part where they are flailing about, you don't have to say that and the shout out right before that and what you said is great, I am going to recap it a little bit which is just that on the one hand if you are asking what they are working on and how they are doing it then you might just end up being a rubber duck, they may during the course of explaining it figure out what is going wrong for themselves or as Betsy points out where they are struggling might be due to how they are understanding what is going on and because they are explaining to you in the way that they understand things you might get a clue on what they actually might need some assistance on so that is excellent, thank you I really like having Sam in a meeting so the suggestion which I am repeating for the sake of audio is that if you have an opportunity you see someone you think might be struggling in a particular way and you are willing to do it ask the question you think that they want to ask but might be a little nervous about asking and that also I think builds that trust as well even if they don't know for sure that you did that on their half they know you are a person who has similar questions and that itself can build a bond so I think that is great, how much time do I have left anybody know? there is like this huge, okay I am done, yay I lived!
ease the way in your career with your colleagues of obstacles and that is a great trait to have thing it's my whole life has been obstacles and thing and the specific in context check ins silent role of kind of a rubber duck for her I Anyway I would contact Brian via Slack and probably a cool thing that you're reaching out him a question and without us being in the same Slackbot to do this slide but this is what I send smile when you get a mustache and an inquiry, can be as easy as answering stupid questions and another in a way that honors our differences are explaining to you in the way that they