I spent a good part of the day working on my résumé (sorry for the rhyme; should I add it as an endorsable skill on LinkedIn?). As I tried to cobble together the metrics and stats that would make me a more attractive candidate for a future employer, I realized a couple of things. The first is that gathering that information after the sudden and unexpected revocation of access to all of your previous role’s accomplishments is incredibly difficult. And, second, this process reminded me of an off-handed thought I added to a proposed talk about labels and naming that I pitched to a conference last year. With your indulgence, I’d like to dig a little deeper into it tonight.
For some background, the talk I initially came up with was about how important naming can be when thinking about how people will interact with your product or feature. It’s more than just a branding exercise, especially if you’re going to need them to use a search function to get anything meaningful out of it, or even find it in the first place. The inspiration for the talk came after I read Lulu Miller’s book, Why Fish Don’t Exist. There’s a lot more going on in it than just the classification of spices, but I was intrigued by the idea that every item in our known universe has a name because someone thought to attach one to it. And these names came from — and with — all that makes humans both fantastic and fallible. Creative, yes, but also classist. Pictorial, but prejudiced. Explanatory, but exclusionary. The talk went on to present some ideas to think about when coming up with a name for your thing, but there was a part I added about identity that I wanted to focus on tonight.
See, as the résumé rebuilding was going on in my head, I thought back to how much of my own identity has been tied up with some of my jobs. My self worth, too. Never was this more apparent than my time at Twitter. And, as I know now, it wasn’t healthy. By the time I got to Google, I had learned my lesson. The hard way. Now, it’s not that I wasn’t proud to be a Googler — I was incredibly proud (Remind me to tell you the story about the first job I applied to when we moved here in 2006 … Hint: It was for Google.org). I’ll be proud of finally landing a Google gig for the rest of my days. But I didn’t let the work, or the company, define me. Instead, I would use it as a way to help define my priorities. And as a constant reminder of the privilege I had at my fingertips. Thankfully, that job let me live a life I defined. But it didn’t define my life for me.
Which leads me to the point of all these sentences. Despite working for Google and Twitter, or any of the other accomplishments I’ve achieved in my life, I still experience imposter syndrome. A lot. And the off-handed thought I added to my talk was This: Even as you look at people who are giving talks or posting insights on LinkedIn or climbing up their ideal career ladder as aspirational or something you don’t think you’ll ever be able to do yourself, their are people looking at you and admiring all that you’ve done.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been blown away by speakers at conferences and then just wanted to show up my hands and say, “I’ll never be that good, I quit!” But the whole point of going to meet-ups and training sessions and conferences is so you can learn new ideas. And then make them your own. And, hopefully, build on them so that maybe one day you can be the one on stage. But even if you’re not the one presenting, more likely than not, there’s someone in that same room with you thinking of you and your accomplishments with the same envy and admiration that you have for those onstage.
This is all a long way of saying, essentially, “You’re doing great!” Sure, you may have unmet goals and more on your to-do list. But that ambition is what’s going to keep making you the inspiration for someone else. So, keep working on what you think is important. You may not realize it now, but what you’re doing now may not define you, but it adds to the totality of you. And that’s an inspiration. At least to me it is.
Room a Thousand Years Wide
30 January 2023
A matter of life and Darth.
I spent a good part of the day working on my résumé (sorry for the rhyme; should I add it as an endorsable skill on LinkedIn?). As I tried to cobble together the metrics and stats that would make me a more attractive candidate for a future employer, I realized a couple of things. The first is that gathering that information after the sudden and unexpected revocation of access to all of your previous role’s accomplishments is incredibly difficult. And, second, this process reminded me of an off-handed thought I added to a proposed talk about labels and naming that I pitched to a conference last year. With your indulgence, I’d like to dig a little deeper into it tonight.
For some background, the talk I initially came up with was about how important naming can be when thinking about how people will interact with your product or feature. It’s more than just a branding exercise, especially if you’re going to need them to use a search function to get anything meaningful out of it, or even find it in the first place. The inspiration for the talk came after I read Lulu Miller’s book, Why Fish Don’t Exist. There’s a lot more going on in it than just the classification of spices, but I was intrigued by the idea that every item in our known universe has a name because someone thought to attach one to it. And these names came from — and with — all that makes humans both fantastic and fallible. Creative, yes, but also classist. Pictorial, but prejudiced. Explanatory, but exclusionary. The talk went on to present some ideas to think about when coming up with a name for your thing, but there was a part I added about identity that I wanted to focus on tonight.
See, as the résumé rebuilding was going on in my head, I thought back to how much of my own identity has been tied up with some of my jobs. My self worth, too. Never was this more apparent than my time at Twitter. And, as I know now, it wasn’t healthy. By the time I got to Google, I had learned my lesson. The hard way. Now, it’s not that I wasn’t proud to be a Googler — I was incredibly proud (Remind me to tell you the story about the first job I applied to when we moved here in 2006 … Hint: It was for Google.org). I’ll be proud of finally landing a Google gig for the rest of my days. But I didn’t let the work, or the company, define me. Instead, I would use it as a way to help define my priorities. And as a constant reminder of the privilege I had at my fingertips. Thankfully, that job let me live a life I defined. But it didn’t define my life for me.
Which leads me to the point of all these sentences. Despite working for Google and Twitter, or any of the other accomplishments I’ve achieved in my life, I still experience imposter syndrome. A lot. And the off-handed thought I added to my talk was This: Even as you look at people who are giving talks or posting insights on LinkedIn or climbing up their ideal career ladder as aspirational or something you don’t think you’ll ever be able to do yourself, their are people looking at you and admiring all that you’ve done.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been blown away by speakers at conferences and then just wanted to show up my hands and say, “I’ll never be that good, I quit!” But the whole point of going to meet-ups and training sessions and conferences is so you can learn new ideas. And then make them your own. And, hopefully, build on them so that maybe one day you can be the one on stage. But even if you’re not the one presenting, more likely than not, there’s someone in that same room with you thinking of you and your accomplishments with the same envy and admiration that you have for those onstage.
This is all a long way of saying, essentially, “You’re doing great!” Sure, you may have unmet goals and more on your to-do list. But that ambition is what’s going to keep making you the inspiration for someone else. So, keep working on what you think is important. You may not realize it now, but what you’re doing now may not define you, but it adds to the totality of you. And that’s an inspiration. At least to me it is.
See you tomorrow?