Why you shouldn’t wait until you overcome the fear of failure

The belief that we need to overcome the fear of failure to achieve our goals is a common misconception. The reality is that fear is an inevitable part of the human experience, especially when we are challenging ourselves and stepping out of our comfort zones. 

Let’s shift the narrative to embrace fear, acknowledge its presence, and take action despite it. 

In this newsletter, we'll explore the power of acknowledging and facing fears while pursuing our aspirations, understanding the importance of self-validation, and the journey toward embracing our authentic selves.

Fear is a natural response when venturing into the unknown and pushing our boundaries. Whether it's the fear of judgment, embarrassment, or failure, we’re not alone in experiencing these emotions. Understanding that fear is a universal part of the growth process can help us feel more grounded and less isolated in our journey.

Often, the fear of judgment stems from seeking external validation and approval. We have been conditioned to value the opinions of others since childhood. However, it's essential to recognise that our worth and value do not solely depend on external validation.

Don’t get me wrong, I totally have been there myself. The fear of judgement that believed would come from failure used to hold me back and I often still fear it. I was constantly wondering how people managed to take up space and put themselves out there without caring what other people said about them. Fears I had surrounded what other people would think, what if what I put out to the world was cringe, and how will I deal with the embarrassment if I fail in such a public way?

I recently was on TikTok and a woman was speaking about shifting to intrinsic motivations and it was brilliant. According to Frontiers, when we are intrinsically motivated, a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external products, pressures, or rewards. What a game changer. 

Reflecting on our core motivations, our "why," is a powerful tool in navigating fear. When we align ourselves with our true purpose and passion, the opinions of others become less significant. Remind yourself of the positive impact you seek to make in the world, whether it's empowering others or pursuing personal growth - it’s personal to you as an individual.

To my fellow perfections, you may not like hearing it, but overcoming the fear of failure often involves embracing imperfection. Yes, as Hannah Montana says, “everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days” - and she’s right. Setbacks are a natural part of ANY journey. By accepting that not everything will go smoothly, we free ourselves from the unrealistic burden of perfectionism!

Stepping out of your comfort zone may lead to unexpected rewards. As you take the initial leap and put yourself out there, be open to feedback. Positive responses from others can be incredibly encouraging and affirming. Embrace the growth that comes from facing your fears and receiving constructive feedback.

Finally, I also want to address that embracing fear can be an empowering experience. Realising that you can take action despite fear allows you to reclaim control over your decisions and actions. Fear becomes a catalyst for growth and a stepping stone toward self-empowerment.

Seek validation from within, reconnect with your purpose, and celebrate every step of your journey, no matter how small. By doing so, you'll find yourself living a more authentic and fulfilling life.

I’d highly recommend watching this video by Caroline Winkler on external validation: https://youtu.be/hALZgrRR51M

Let me know your thoughts on this newsletter and the video!!! It’s a good one!!

Are you a fast learner battling with imposter syndrome?

I wanted to start this one off by sharing one of my wins.

I did a talk called Navigating Imposter Syndrome in Tech for the London.js community at the Netflix UK office to over 100 people and it went incredibly well!

Ok, now to the juicy stuff.

This one is for all of my self proclaimed fast learners and those who strive to master a skill without having to put that much effort into it.

In this edition, we are unpacking an imposter syndrome type known as "the natural genius".

This type refers to those who often are seen as being good at things on their first try or with ease.

These individuals feel unworthy, guilty and shameful if they cannot easily complete a task or achieve a goal on their first go.

In school, these were the people who didn't put that much work into studying, but managed to still get great grades and be top in their class.

When transitioning from a relatively smaller environment such as school, to a larger one like university or the workplace, they realised that their natural ability isn't unique now they are surrounded by other exceptional people.

They tend to look at professionals in their field, and wonder why they aren't there and look to speed up the process to be like that professional.

Thus, bringing feelings of imposter syndrome by dismissing their own talents (usually as a result of comparison).

I was recently battling with this kind of imposter syndrome from working closely with the tech lead on my team.

Whilst being in awe of his ability to solve problems so quickly, and be super productive, I felt like I needed to be on his level.

And with my scrapping 1 year of commercial experience, with his (at least) 7 years+, I was comparing where I did not compete and I was holding myself to unreachable standards which diminished my confidence.

Experiencing this resulted in me finding it (and sometimes still finding it) difficult to ask questions when I'm stuck, asking questions in a public setting and also challenging to share how I feel with colleagues - all in fear that they will catch on to the fact that I am an imposter!

The main thing I personally have done is to raise my awareness of how I personally experience imposter syndrome - and it has helped me to pause, acknowledge my feelings, and reach out to someone else.

It's also why I started this newsletter, because I want to help others with understanding it and methods that will genuinely help.

I'll share with you, three resources for those battling with this type of imposter syndrome in the workplace:

1. See the value of being a learn-it-all: I was listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast and they said the most amazing quote I had come across:
   
   "The learn-it-all will always do better than the know-it-all" - Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
   
   In the episode, they explore shift from being a know it all to now the emphasis on being a learn it all. You can read up more on it here
   
2. Support from a mentor - whether this is someone within your organisation or outside, it is essential to ask questions for your learning and development.
   
   I do also believe, the responsibility is shared between you and also your colleagues. Your more experienced colleagues also need to make an effort to reach out to you to check on how you're doing, if they can help, or even simply communicating the value of reaching out for support.
   
   So if you're reading this, please reach out and check in on your colleagues! I'll be doing a whole separate article on this.
   
3. Cultivating a growth mindset - a concept originally coined by Carol Dweck, a growth mindset is the idea that your abilities can be developed. People with this mindset don't worry about looking smart, but instead put more effort into getting smarter by taking on challenges and seeing them through. She has done a great talk on this at Google, you can watch that here

In future editions, we will be going in depth with all of these methods.

So, are you a fast learner battling with the "natural genius" type of imposter syndrome? I'd love to know your favourite tip out of the three I gave!

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Until next time,

Amber

Website | Podcast

Is imposter syndrome causing you to overwork?

I want to start off by saying a massive thank you to all of you who have subscribed to this newsletter - I cannot believe there are already over 700 of you! 

It has been incredible to receive positive feedback on my first post where I speak about experiencing imposter syndrome as a woman in tech and it's given me the encouragement to keep up the momentum. 

Now that’s out of the way - let’s get into things!

I’ll start by defining what imposter “syndrome” is. 

Originally coined as  “the imposter phenomenon” by Dr Pauline Clance (1985) from her observations in a clinical setting, there seems to be varying definitions of what it actually means. 

The impostor “syndrome” refers to the notion that some individuals feel as if they ended up in esteemed roles and positions not because of their competencies, but because of some oversight or stroke of luck.

For simplicity, throughout the series of the Imposters Methods newsletter, I’ll be referring to this phenomenon as the commonly used term, imposter “syndrome”.

From Clance’s research, she observed six different characteristics of imposter syndrome and we will be covering them all in this newsletter. 

In this edition, we are covering the Superwoman/man type. 

This type refers to individuals often seen to be workaholics, with one of the driving forces being that they feel like an imposter so they work harder in order to feel like they measure up. 

They may be ones to be working longer hours, feeling stressed when not working, sacrificing hobbies and passion to prioritise work and feeling pressured to prove their worth to colleagues. 

I have certainly experienced this form of imposter syndrome. I remember when I landed an internship and I was ready, pumped, and rearing to make an impact. 

On my first day, it was abundantly clear that the person I was replacing was a high performer, well known in the company and delivered results.

It was intimidating.

I felt like not only did I need to measure up to the standard he set, but also I placed all my value on my ability to deliver, so I adopted an approach that led me to work at an unsustainable rate.

I exceeded expectations, I got the results, but I also set myself to unrealistically high standards and burnt out throughout the process.

Clance found that those who saw themselves as imposters often felt overwhelmed, disappointed, and overgeneralised themselves as failures when they were unable to reach their goals. 

The pressure I put on myself comes from various places, but one thing that plays in my mind was being told that I needed to work twice as hard to get half of what my white counterparts would get.

That, combined with not wanting to look like I was just a diversity hire, added to this feeling of being an imposter - even though I was known for delivering, was getting great feedback from my manager, I couldn’t help but think it was because I was overworking & due to luck. 

Here are 3 bits of advice I would give myself at that period of time:

1. Create your wins tracker - it can be so easy to have the wins, but then to not internalise them and pass it off as nothing. Unfortunately, because of that feeling of being an imposter, I didn’t have the confidence to ask for a salary that I felt I was worth and also felt like I hadn’t achieved enough to warrant it. But I had those wins, and a wins tracker to document all the things both big and small is a great way to start to build a case for yourself.
   
2. Assessing a sustainable rate of working - I was working at such a pace, that I was relieved that the internship was just 3 months. I would warn myself that working at such a rate, will go from being amazing, to a new standard, and when I started to work at a “normal” level, it can be seen as underperformance (but mostly, that health is a priority - I would have cared more about being seen as underperforming though). Take the time to find a level that works for you but also means you get your tasks done in a reasonable time, you should NOT feel too burned out to enjoy your weekend - you gotta live girl!
   
3. Not comparing where I don’t compete - I was comparing myself to those who had 5+ years of experience, and I barely had 2 months worth. I saw people eating lunch and working without taking a proper break so I thought I needed to do the same. I thought I had to be as good as my manager, but that is an unrealistic goal, I would read the room and consciously remind myself about my experience level compared to those I was working with. 
   
4. (BONUS): Remove work related things (Slack, access to emails, etc) on personal mobile phone!!!!

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE: The thing about imposter syndrome, is that it puts all the blame on the individual. 

I would highly recommend reading “Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome”, the authors write that imposter syndrome puts the blame on individuals, without accounting for the historical and cultural contexts that are foundational to how it manifests in both women of colour and white women. 

I’ll be getting more into this in a few issues!

So the million dollar question, is imposter syndrome causing you to overwork?

Until next time,

Amber

Mending my relationship with failure: how to overcome it

I'll start off with speaking about how I failed my way into tech. In 2018, I realised that I didn't want to pursue my dreams of working at a Big 4 firm in finance but instead I wanted to learn how to code and eventually become a software engineer.

I started with the Code First Girls Web Development course, and I have to say it didn't come naturally to me. Every week, we were asked questions about things we covered the week beforehand and I hardly ever knew the answer.

It was brand new to learn that it was so normal to break things and to get used to not only seeing error messages but using them as a tool to debug. This was definitely not encouraged in finance. I highly doubt they say, if you get the numbers a bit wrong, it's all good!

The experience allowed me to assess my relationship with failure, and how I let it dictate how I felt and the decisions it led me to make.

You can read more about my journey into learning how to code and landing my first software engineer role.

When you think about failure, how does that make you feel?

For me, it is:

• Panicked
• Embarrassment
• Low self-esteem
• Feeling like all eyes are on me and everyone can see how awful I am
• Low mood
• Fear
• Heightened levels of anxiety
• Demotivated
• Feelings of wanting to escape

The list could honestly go on.

The questions that have helped me through this

Failure is an inevitable part of life, and finally accepting this fact made me ask myself a few questions when I failed at something.

1. What can I learn from this failure? Knowing that everyone fails and that most people learn and grow from it.
2. Should I look at this as a failure or a learning experience?
3. What would have happened if I didn't fail?

Doing technical interviews coming from a non-technical background was extremely challenging. I had a nightmare interview where I thought I was going to be asked behavioral questions but it turned out to be a full-on live coding interview. I was completely unprepared and I needed guidance throughout - it was my first ever front-end interview and I didn't have a clue!!!

However, despite me screaming internally throughout the whole thing and strongly considering just turning off my wifi in an attempt to save me from embarrassment, I learned so much from that interview.

Instead of looking back on it as a complete and utter failure, I had a great learning opportunity which was an insight into how front-end interviews are conducted. At the time, I didn't know about the importance of being able to work with APIs and what kind of questions were asked for a front-end role.

I truly believe that everything that has worked out for me comes from so many things I have failed at. The question of what would have happened if I didn't fail helps me to recognise that my greatest lessons have come from failure. If I hadn't have failed the sales graduate roles applications, I may have never ended up in tech.

Bouncing back from failure

Do not get me wrong, this DOES NOT happen overnight. When I had that awful interview, I had the worst imposter syndrome, I started to think I wasn't good enough to land a front-end role, and that maybe I should give up on my pursuit in coding.

I truly believe that failure is not who you are, it is something that you experience. When I stopped attaching myself to being a failure, I focused on my goals at hand and sourced inspiration by watching a bunch of videos of people who came in with no CS degree.

If I was truly going to land my role as planned, the options were to either quit, or keep going. I've also written a blog post with 6 tips on how to make the most out of your interviews.

When you get to a point where you are able to bounce back from failure, you can then learn to be able to mend your relationship by embracing failure and welcoming it to teach you lessons - not only something that everyone does, but that it is a necessary path for you to grow and reach your full potential.

Fail early, fail often, fail forward

Will Smith has such an inspiring video where he says that successful people fail a lot, but they extract the lessons from the failure to come around to the next phase of success. Failure actually helps you to recognise the areas where you need to evolve.

So now we know that failure is not only necessary but its beneficial - how do we start the journey to overcome our fear of failure?

What you can do right now

1. Remember that social media shows the highlight reels. We all know it, but sometimes in the moment when I'm doom scrolling on social media and in particular with LinkedIn, I feel bombarded reading about how everyone's lives seems to be doing so well.
   
   When I saw people landing their roles, it made me question if I was good enough. The reality is that most people fail a bunch of interviews before they land their first roles.
   
   In 2020, my friend got two amazing offers to pursue a technical role. I was so happy for her and it was inspiring for me to see as she was so talented. She reminded me that she failed interviews at the top companies before she got these two great job offers.
   
   I kind of shrugged off that she failed so much because who cares now that she's in such a great position. And I realised that for others, I could focus on their wins and not on their losses, but for myself, I focused so much on my losses rather than my wins.
2. Document your wins. Sometimes, we are more likely to define ourselves based on the times we failed rather than the times we won. It can be so easy to forget the little wins, but it really helped me out to create a wins tracker. I got the idea from attending a Confident and Killing it workshop, where the founder Tiwalola showed us the template that she created called the monthly wins tracker.
   
   When I was having my low days, where I questioned all my abilities and felt like I haven't done much, I would look back at my wins tracker which told me otherwise! I still do it to this day, and it makes such a difference.
3. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Sometimes we can't necessarily get rid of that feeling of fear. I've heard people say that when you feel fear, it's the same feeling as excitement and to reframe your mind to see it as you being excited (sometimes this works for me, but also a lot of the time it doesn't).
   
   People don't necessarily think that every time I post on LinkedIn that I'm always so scared. I start thinking about what if people think this is cringe, or what if they don't like the message, what if people judge me because I'm THAT person who is active on LinkedIn.
   
   However, despite that, I continue to post anyway. It makes a huge difference when people go out of their way to comment or message me about the content I've been creating, and I add all that feedback to my monthly wins!
4. Don't feed the critic. Our inner critic can tell us that we can't, that we're not good enough, and that the worst-case scenario will happen.
   
   It look me a long time to actively become aware of this and to challenge those thoughts. Looking at my wins, starting to consider the best case scenario, getting therapy, reading, and reaching out to people have all helped with dealing with those thoughts.
   
   Please remember, that it this takes time, and to give yourself some grace knowing that we are all a work in progress.
5. Know your strengths. When we are so afraid of failure, we are convinced that our weaknesses outweigh our strengths.
   
   Confidence comes from knowing who you are and especially what your strengths are. This involves quite a bit of self-awareness, but explore what your strengths are, and also ask other people who you spend the most time with what they think your strengths are.
   
   When you focus on your strengths it is much easier to have faith in yourself.

Now you've finished reading this, I'd love to know what you'll do differently the next time you fail.

How long should it take to land your first software developer role?

Hands down my most common question asked are how long should it take to land your first software developer/engineer role and how long my coding journey was until I landed my first role.

Trust me I get it, when I was learning how to code, I was eager to land a full-time role and became hooked on reading all about various people's journeys and how they landed their first role. I was probably on No CS Degree every other day reading about their stories to keep me going while on my journey.

Let's be frank

I'm probably not the best person to ask about how long it took me in particular because I was applying in the midst of the global pandemic! In 2020, so many graduate schemes went on a hiring freeze and the job market was looking so bleak.

I remember applying for roles and places were being flooded with applicants - it was a very competitive time. Now that the market is looking so much better *hopefully* you may not have to deal with having such high competition.

Plus, I started my journey in 2018 and landed my first role in 2021, no one seems to want to hear it took around 3 years from start to finish. I didn't want to hear it either - I wanted to know how to land my role in 3 months, not years!

The answer you don't want to hear

The real answer is that it depends. I have met people who have landed their first roles after 3 months, some like me, it took years.

It depends on so many factors:

• How much time are you able to put into learning how to code?
• What pathway are you taking to learn how to code: self-taught, bootcamp, degree, apprenticeship
• Are you practicing, building projects and learning from your mistakes?
• Do you have a plan when it comes to the job application process?
• Have you been practicing doing some technical tests/ coding challenges?

Great learning pathways to speed up the process

If you want to learn how to code AND have a job by the end, these are some FREE schemes that I've heard great things from:

• Makers apprenticeships - this is an 18 month apprenticeship for those without a Computer Science degree and they pay you while they train you. Last time I checked, if you land a place, you are paid £25,000 during the 3 month bootcamp and then at least £30,000 for the role
• Code First Girls Nanodegree - a 13 week part-time course Monday-Thursday for women looking to land their first role in tech. There is the data, software and full-stack pathways and you apply through their partner companies. Below is a success story of going through the nanodegree with Code First Girls!
  
  
  
• Generation UK - they have various different free bootcamps in Data Engineering, Software Engineer, and AWS re/Start. All of the bootcamps vary in length, and they are typically full-time bootcamps running from 9am-5pm.

Make the most out of your interviews

I have a whole blog post on this where I share 6 tips on how to land the most out of your interviews and would highly recommend reading it here.

Final thoughts

This was a long-winded way of saying - it takes as long as it takes. Stay coding, stay curious, take breaks and you'll land the role in time, even if it's later than you wanted!

How to seamlessly transition from coding fundamentals to technical tests

When teaching with Code First Girls, I was so eager to get students from learning concepts like array methods to getting stuck in with doing coding challenges on Code Wars.

Back in 2018 when first learning how to code, I had no clue about technical tests. I figured that I could demonstrate my passion for learning and learn everything I needed to know on the job. You can read more about my journey here.

Unfortunately, that's not the case, and it's pretty much guaranteed that if you're looking for a Sofware Engineer role, you'll do some form of technical test.

One of the most difficult things for self-learners is how to go from covering the fundamentals to applying that knowledge when solving technical challenges.

Covering the fundamentals

Before you start technical tests, you should have ideally covered: variables, data types (string, number, boolean, array, object), arithmetic operators, comparison operators, logical operators, and functions.

There are so many resources to do this, with my all-time favourite being Codecademy! I see freecodecamp being recommended a lot, I've used some great Udemy courses and there is a tonne of YouTube videos on it too.

Make sure you actually get coding along! It's so easy to sit down and watch a video, I'd advise you to code with the instructor to maximise your learning.

Getting started with Code Wars

I'd highly recommend using Code Wars when first starting out. It's a website that has various different coding challenges called katas. They are ranked by how difficult they are and you can complete them in a variety of different languages. It goes from 8 kyu (the lowest - so these are the ones for beginners) to 1 kyu which is advanced.

Michaela from the Sky Get into Tech scheme shared with us a great resource to work our way up in the ranks here.

When you sign up, you pick the language that you want to code in. You are then presented with this mini coding problem:

The initiation challenge to be able to sign up to Code Wars. I promise it is not as intimidating as it may look! This one is in JavaScript.

Once you pass that, you'll finally be able to sign up and you'll have access to all the katas! Go on the sidebar at the left and click on Practice, and you can filter it by difficulty. If you are new to this, I'd recommend that you filter it to only be able to see the 8 kyu challenge.

Your first kata

Ok so, when doing this alone when first starting out, I was pretty overwhelmed by it all. I was even shook at the initiation question, let alone actually doing my first kata.

The first hurdle you may have to overcome is that imposter syndrome where you may feel like you don't know how to apply your knowledge of the fundamentals into real problem-solving. But I promise, you can, and you will get better with time as long as you practice.

I would recommend doing the Convert Number to a String challenge if it's your first one!

Once you pass all the tests for that challenge, you can submit it (by clicking on the submit button at the bottom right) and you'll be taken to a page where you can see answers that other people have submitted!

It's great to see how other people break down their problems for you to take inspiration from and look into.

*I'm tempted to make a video about this, so if you happen to be reading this and think I should - let me know!*

Using google to help

Again, when I was starting out, I literally used to google the kata questions because I wasn't sure about what I could search to help me out.

Fortunately, with the help of codebar and going to the Maker's Code Accelerator events - I actually learned how!

Let's use our first kata as an example, the challenge was to convert a number to a string. From learning our fundamentals, we know there are number methods that help you work with numbers.

Rather than to google 'how to convert number to string {chosen programming language}', you could google 'number methods {chosen programming language}'.

I did that for JavaScript and I got the method I needed in w3schools. I would advise that you use the proper docs for your programming language of choice. MDN Docs is widely used for JavaScript and Python docs if you're using Python.

Learning how to problem solve

This also took me a while to get into the swing of things. When I was learning Ruby (that's a whole story within itself), I went to the Makers Code Accelerator events where they showed us how they broke down problems.

First, we made sure to read the whole question and understand what it wanted to do. From this, we would make a step-by-step plan on what methods we may know that could help us solve this problem and break that down into steps by writing in pseudo-code. I liked this because we considered how we would do this as humans and then translated that into code to solve the problem.

Kim Diep has created a great blog post about pseudo code called Your 10-Minute Guide to Pseudocoding.

What helped me was pairing with people at the Makers event and speaking through the problem. I became good friends with someone I met at that event and she helped out so much - she was pretty free and we agreed to meet Monday-Friday 9-12 to pair on Code Wars challenges together.

I was fortunate enough that she was better than me, so she walked me through her thought process and how she would come up with solutions. Sometimes I would know how to solve the problem, but not necessarily know how how to produce the code to make it all happen.

I cannot emphasise this enough: it takes time and practice. So many times I thought I'm never going to get it, and maybe this coding thing isn't for me. But I improved more and more as the weeks went on, and it was great to have an accountability partner to work on it with too. I think we did it for around 6-8 weeks and it was great fun and put me in a great position to start applying for jobs and finally being able to do their technical tests that were similar to the Code Wars katas!

Well that's a wrap! Thank you for reading, and I'd love to know your thoughts on this - anything that you would add?

5 tips if you're feeling unqualified to teach as a coding newbie

Let's start with some context. When I was first learning how to code in 2018 and 2019, although it was fun, I definitely found it challenging. I took two 8 week courses with Code First Girls at PA Consulting and took a break when I returned to university in 2019 where I focused on my final year of my Economics and Accounting degree.

In 2020, when 💩 hit the fan, I wanted to properly start coding again and despite the fact that my mailbox was getting flooded with rejection emails and loads of companies having hiring freezes, I wanted to make a difference and challenge myself by applying to be an instructor for Code First Girls.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't feel qualified at the time AT ALL. I was still stuck in the comfort zone of following along with tutorials without pushing myself to create projects from scratch, and I found learning JavaScript properly quite the learning curve. Plus, I hadn't yet landed my first tech role!

All the anxious thoughts were running through my head: what if they ask me a question I don't know the answer to? What if I'm really bad at teaching? What if they realise I'm an imposter and not experienced enough to teach?

Despite these thoughts, I knew that this was something I'd definitely want to at least try so I knew for sure.

I was so thrilled when my application was accepted to teach the Introduction to Web Development course!

Fortunately, I wasn't alone, there were three other super amazing and talented instructors with me which made all the difference.

Here are 5 tips on this if you're going to be teaching people how to code or are looking to do so, but don't feel qualified enough:

1. Set up an initial meeting with the instructors so you know who's teaching which lessons. I wanted to make sure I was teaching the first few lessons that were HTML and CSS focused as I didn't think I could effectively teach JavaScript at that point.
   
   It's also a great time to speak about how you want to split up the lessons. For the course, we split each of the sessions in half with a different instructor leading the sections. E.g. lesson 1's first half would be lead by me, break, and then the second half would be lead by the instructor.
   
   
2. Prepare, prepare, prepare! Before you teach a lesson, make sure to go over the material so you feel comfortable with it. I spent time going through the exercises and practiced how to explain it before being live in front of the students just so I felt familiar with the content.
   
   
3. When you're asked a question that you don't know the answer to, you can always say "does someone else want to take this?" so that another instructor can step in to answer. You can also show the students how to get the answer through Googling - not only does it show to them that developers use Google all the time, but it reinforces that we don't have all the answers and that's okay and totally normal.
   
   
4. Ask for feedback! It's always great to hear positive and also constructive feedback when you're doing something new like teaching.
   
   I remember some feedback I got was to slow down, I was just so excited when I did my first lesson, I was going a bit too fast paced. I kept checking in with the students to make sure they were okay, and fortunately they were honest and said I was going a bit too fast for them.
   
   It was great to get that feedback early on so I could adjust my teaching style in the future lessons too.
   
   Plus I had great feedback that I was energetic, explained things well and made lessons fun.
   
   
5. Give yourself some grace. Teaching is challenging for sure, and I've definitely messed up before. It's so important when you to do be as kind to yourself about it as possible, we all make mistakes!

It's still crazy that I had the guts to teach people how to code before even landing my first role in tech.

I have to say, teaching people how to code so early in my journey had so many benefits (I may have to do a separate blog post on that). I always recommend it to newbies if they have the bandwidth to do so.

Demo day teaching the Python course in 2021 for Code First Girls

Teaching with Code First Girls is an amazing opportunity to use your knowledge and experience to teach beginners how to code and to give back to the CFG community.  If this is something you would be interested in, you can complete and submit this form.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this! Do you have any tips that you'd add? Have you considered teaching people how to code yet?

Landing my first role as a self-taught developer

At the time of writing this, I'm working as a Junior Software Engineer at American Express, a content creator on Code Her Journey, which is a platform sharing the latest and greatest JavaScript challenges on Instagram and Twitter, and I'm also an instructor and ambassador for Code First Girls.

Although in the title of the blog I refer to myself as a self-taught developer, I'm definitely more of a community-taught developer. I've had so many amazing people and opportunities to support me on my journey in learning how to code and landing my first role and I probably couldn't have done it without all the support!

So, what inspired me to learn more about tech?

It all started in 2018, I was doing a Mergers and Acquisitions internship in Madrid. I had big ambitions about working at the Big 4 (PwC, KPMG, EY, and Deloitte) once I had graduated but had an alarming wake-up call when my mentor told me that I’d have to do financial exams while working and if I didn’t pass, then I would be fired!

I had absolutely no idea, and to this day I’m so grateful that I sought out a mentor in the industry that helped me realise that this route definitely wasn’t for me.

I’m one who likes to plan and work towards goals, so I started to look into the effects of automation on jobs and the best skills to learn to be marketable in the future and that’s when I became interested in looking at a role in tech and possibly learning how to code.

Finding Code First Girls

I can't remember for the life of me the story of how I found out about Code First Girls but knowing me, I would have typed something like ‘free coding courses london’ into Google - I’m so grateful to have found them!

This was back in 2018 when they had two levels - level one, which was their Introduction to Web Development course, and level two which was their Web Application course where we used Python 2 and worked with APIs.

Both courses were one evening a week for 8 weeks and at the time were done in person. During the Introduction to Web Development course, they covered HTML, CSS, UX design, jQuery, and Bootstrap. I really enjoyed the course, it was at PA Consulting in Victoria, the instructors were amazing and I felt so supported throughout.

After the course, I started looking into Front End internships and was shocked at how much they wanted us to know and mostly that job adverts for the roles required applicants to have a Computer Science degree.

Tech was a whole other ball game. To land finance roles, you didn't have to say that you have a portfolio of balanced accounts to prove you can do the job. I figured I could do an introductory course and learn on the job, but boy was I wrong!

Nonetheless, I also went on to do their Web Application course and I found it so challenging. I was confused about working with Python and when doing extra coding outside of lessons, I wasn’t sure whether to do a Python 3 course or continue just learning Python 2.

I was overthinking a lot, but also asking a lot of questions but couldn’t really shake off that feeling of being stuck. By the seventh week, I was doubting that we would be able to build anything! It felt like a very overwhelming time, but again, I had great instructors, a great teammate who lived super close to me and we created a great app by the end of it!

Doing the courses helped me to stand out when applying for internships (even non-tech-related ones) - they seemed to be impressed that I was stepping out of my comfort zone by learning a new skill. I would say it definitely gave me a great foundation and instilled so much confidence in pursuing the brand new direction that I wanted to take in terms of my career.

Me in 2018 on demo day for the Web Development course at PA Consulting

Trying to find focus

This was the hardest part - because I genuinely didn’t know what I was interested in. When I went back to university in 2019 to complete my final year, I thought I would have all the time in the world to do my studies and coding at the same time but I simply didn’t.

At first, I went back to basics and decided to focus on HTML and CSS to build up some projects. This was back in September 2019 when I decided I would apply for Software Engineering and Product Management graduate schemes. When undertaking the application process, this is actually when I first came across coding tests - and quickly came to learn that HTML and CSS were not going to help me with that.

I was toggling with learning Python or JavaScript, and didn’t know which one to pick - my thoughts were that I could get up to grips with Python faster to at least past coding tests, but JavaScript seemed very in demand especially if I wanted to be a Web Developer.

During the application process, I went to my university careers centre to get my CV spruced up, and to understand what I really need to do to land my first role. Everyone said different things! Focus on Python, learn JavaScript, learn C#, do Java - it was too much while also juggling my final year so I decided to put a pause on coding and said I would possibly pick it up after graduating.

But of course, lockdown happened in 2020 - I focused on passing my exams (which were online) and figured this would be the perfect time to begin a new coding journey. I was still pretty confident with HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript - so I decided to challenge myself by volunteering to teach the Introduction to Web Development course with Code First Girls in August 2020.

I was nervous about teaching and that I wouldn’t be able to answer questions, or what if I don’t explain things well - so I did what I do best: planned and practiced.

I was with 3 other instructors so organised time for us all to virtually meet and planned who would be teaching what. Thankfully, two were very well versed with JavaScript, so I was mainly focused on teaching HTML and CSS and because I wasn’t working at the time, I spent a fair bit of time doing research before teaching and practicing the slides beforehand. It went well and it was an amazing experience!

Funnily enough, it helped me to land a role as a Data Analyst in September 2020! I had experience with my degree working with Excel, R, and STATA at university and emphasised my willingness to learn during the interview for the role. That’s when I decided to focus on Python and I really enjoyed it!

However, I still knew that I wanted to be a Software Engineer - so I was looking into roles and landed a place on Sky’s Get into Tech scheme in January 2021.

The scheme was amazing - I joined because I needed a community again of like-minded women learning how to code. It’s a 14-week part-time course with the first week being the immersive week (Monday-Friday 9-5), then after that, it’s two evenings per week (Tuesdays and Thursdays).

I can genuinely say that I met the most amazing, hardworking, and inspiring women on the scheme. They have all gone on to achieve great things and it's amazing seeing us all in tech. We were in it for the long run, we picked each other up when we were low, they have helped me through so much and I'll always remember that.

Because we focused on Python, and the course accelerated my learning by so much, in April 2020, I was eager to start teaching with Code First Girls again!

I was accepted onto the Code First Girls Fellowship for 8 weeks. I'd highly recommend teaching if you have the time, it was so rewarding seeing the women succeed and also very validating when I was able to answer technical questions.

I was also attending codebar workshops, where they match you with a technical mentor and you can go through things together - so I used this to help with concepts I found confusing and Code Wars exercises.

Resources I used to learn how to code

My all-time favourite resource has to be Codecademy. I bought the pro version because the Python3 course isn’t available for free. I did a mixture of Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React using Codecademy.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Andrei Naegoie’s Python Developer Zero to Mastery course.

Non-coding wise, I believe mentors are extremely helpful in learning more about the industry, the role you want to undertake, helping with technical challenges plus it’s great getting to learn more about them and how they landed their roles in tech too.

I’ve been part of several mentorship schemes such as Black Valley, Coding Black Females, and the Mentor Circle. I would highly recommend looking for a mentor through either a scheme dedicated to matching mentees to mentors or reaching out to people on LinkedIn.

Applying for a role at American Express

The role was extremely competitive, with over 1,500 applicants. I found the role on the Coding Black Females job page and applied via email! This included my CV, and a personalised cover letter explaining why I was suitable for the role and why I wanted to work for American Express.

Although I can't expand more on the process, I had a great experience despite being pretty nervous beforehand. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming, so I felt more at ease as the process continued.

My advice for aspiring developers

1. Do research into the kind of job you want to pursue e.g. Web Development, Product Management, Backend Engineer, Data Anaysis etc
2. Have a look into job adverts and look at what skills/languages they are looking for
3. Join a course/community to learn that language and see whether you can see yourself doing it as a career
4. Reach out to people who are in the career that you’re looking for
5. Get yourself a mentor!
6. Engage in a community (the communities I’m heavily involved in are Coding Black Females, Code First Girls and Black Valley)
7. Start applying for roles even if you don’t feel ready - the feedback you get will be super helpful in landing your first role

Thank you for reading! I hope this can help someone looking for some guidance.

Rushing the process to make more progress

Confession time! Last week, I caught myself skim reading through the Codecademy articles from the pro course I'm working on, in an attempt to get through more of the course. Urgh. I wanted to tick things off because I simply wanted to get things done as quickly as possible.

The problem with this logic is that you can say, okay great, I've gone from (for example) 19% of the course to now 26% - I've gotten through so much! But in reality, because you didn't take time to read through things properly, practice, break things and keep learning, you're doing yourself a disservice more than anything (bummer, I know).

So now what? What do you do when all you want to do is learn something super quick to prepare for job applications, a project you're working on or whatever reason you've given yourself.

• Recognize that this is a marathon and not a sprint. It’s not about getting things done as quickly as possible, but instead it’s about practicing, being kind to yourself, and actually trying to understand what you’re learning – this takes time. Check out this weekly study template by Simplex Code

I’m reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and came across this great quote:

“We often expect progress to be linear. At the very least, we hope it will come quickly. In reality, the results of our efforts are often delayed. It is not until months or years later that we realize the true value of the previous work we have done. This can result in a “valley of disappointment” where people feel discouraged after putting in weeks or months of hard work without experiencing any results. However, this work was not wasted. It was simply being stored. It is not until much later that the full value of previous efforts is revealed.”

• Understand that you’re not going to get (some) things straight away. Sounds obvious right? But it’s so easy to become impatient when you so eagerly want everything to just click – but this just isn’t always going to be the case! So be patient (and kind to yourself) with how long it takes to learn new concepts, no one becomes an expert developer overnight so it’s totally fine if it takes a while to get your head around certain things.
  
• Switch up what resources you’re using. There are such an abundance of free resources out there – go use them! I found that when I was rushing through the exercises on Codecademy, I decided to watch some YouTube videos on the topic, took some notes and set aside some time to experiment with what I just learnt.
  
• BREATHE. Be mindful of your breath and do your best to clear your head. Okay, definitely easier said than done! As an overthinker (and over-feeler) as Mayuko once said, this is a tricky one but definitely still super important. When you’re overthinking about all the things you need to learn (which is why you’re rushing in the first place), it can lead you to feeling super overwhelmed and not exactly in the right headspace to grasp a challenging new concept. When you find yourself doing this, try and do a short breathing exercise and see how you feel afterwards! Here’s a good one by Wim Hof
  
• If you have a mentor – reach out to them! I’m fortunate enough to be have taken a number of mentorship schemes such as Black Valley, Coding Black Females x The Guardian Mentorship, the Bank of America FinTech Mentoring and even some people I’ve reached out to on LinkedIn!

Thank you to Code First Girls for the feature!