Throughout my career, I always felt imposter syndrome.
It was a bit stronger for me because for some reason, wearing heels and pencil skirts/dresses meant I had to prove myself a little bit more to make sure I was taken seriously.
When I started my current job, I also started an Instagram account to share my journey. It was important to me to share that I existed. That I was a feminine individual who also happened to be a software engineer. I wanted to talk about clean code, how to not be afraid of the terminal, promote CI/CD and a bunch of other cool topics that I encountered in my day-to-day. I also wanted to do this while wearing what I normally wear.
One fine day, one of my posts got meme-ifed and became a "thing":
That's cool, I guess. Until you read the comments. Never read the comments. Ugh:
I mean, these people have NEVER met me. They assumed that some Joe Blow took a random photo of a girl and plastered this quote on it. I didn't exist. I couldn't exist. I was not real. I was an imposter.
Nevertheless, I coded.
Sure, these comments were depressing and it was hard not to respond to each one and put them in their place. But in the end, I found a better way to respond. By continuing to teach and mentor others, by writing about experiences like this one as well as how to overcome them and sharing it with other women and girls, and to keep being one successful badass!
If there's one thing everyone should know, it's that there's NO developer uniform ;)
To celebrate International Women's Day, I also wanted to share that I am now also a published author! 🤯 I wrote a book called Coding for Kids Python and I am so extremely proud of it. It was a lot of work but so worth it. I can't wait to see it in the hands of parents, educators, and little coders!
Keep on coding! Great things happen when you do.
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/AdrienneTacke
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adriennetacke/
Website: https://www.adrienne.io
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