1: Ep. 1 | Imposter Syndrome

Jonathan Tamsut (00:00) Welcome to the overcommitted podcast where we talk about our commits, our commitments and some stuff in between. Hello everyone. I’m your host, Jonathan Tamsut joined by my fellow hosts, Brittany Ellich, Erika Eggemeyer and Bethany Janos. If I mispronounced any of those.

Hopefully I’ll get it right next episode. We’re all software engineers at GitHub and we thank you for joining. Today our topic is imposter syndrome. We’re gonna talk about imposter syndrome. It’s a very common ailment. A lot of software engineers suffer, but it’s rarely discussed. So we’re gonna talk about our feelings and hopefully get in deep. So…

Yeah, so you guys want to go around and just introduce ourselves and give a little background on who we are, why we’re worth listening to? Erika, you want to start?

Eggyhead (00:50) I’m Erika. I am a software engineer on the authorization team at GitHub. I am a career changer. Software engineering is not my first pursuit in life. So for a long time, I’ve chalked up my imposter syndrome to that, but I’ve learned a little bit more about it and know that it is not.

There can be many reasons, many causes, and yeah, there’s also good news, things you can do about it.

Jonathan Tamsut (01:20) Britney do you want to go

Brittany Ellich (01:21) Sure, yeah. Hi, I’m Brittany Ellich. I am an engineer at GitHub on the billing team. And I was also a career changer into tech. I’ve been working in tech for seven years now, I think. And I did something completely different beforehand. And I think that’s probably where my source of imposter syndrome comes from, although it sounds like everybody has it. So maybe it’s not unique to that situation. Yeah.

Bethany?

Bethany (01:46) Yeah, my name is Bethany. I am also a software engineer at GitHub. I work on the Co-Pilot API team. I, in college, majored in biomedical engineering and then through some happy coincidences ended up discovering my love of programming. But definitely always felt imposter syndrome not feeling like I belonged in the tech world. I,

was technical enough to be there. And so it’s been quite the journey getting over that fear and that those perceptions of what people think of me. So excited to dive in.

Jonathan Tamsut (02:21) Yeah, and yeah, I’m, as I said before, I’m, my name is Jonathan, people call me John. Yeah, I’m just maybe generally a neurotic and anxious person. So I think, you know, imposter syndrome has definitely been something I’ve faced. Yeah, I kind of came into the tech industry after, you know, after college, I majored in chemistry.

So yeah, it wasn’t sort your traditional like computer science to tech path. And yeah, I definitely had a lot of imposter syndrome early in my career and even to this day. So I think I’m just someone who’s become a little bit more aware of, you know, those feelings and have tried to sort of grapple with them in a more kind of like honest and open way.

Cool. So thank you everyone. So I guess before we begin,

And you know what’s funny? I’m having imposter syndrome right now. I’m not a podcaster. So I guess before we begin, we did a little background research and it turns out imposter syndrome is sort of something that’s been studied for a while. in 1978, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes,

apologize if I mispronounce those names. They published a paper and it’s widely regarded to be sort of the first use of the term imposter syndrome. And their basic definition of imposter syndrome was a psychological pattern where individuals doubt their accomplishments and fear being exposed as a fraud. And one thing that was interesting is so this

this paper that they published in 1978, they initially studied high achieving women. And what was interesting is, you know, a lot of these women described, and I quote, feeling an internal experience of intellectual phoniness, even though they all had some concrete evidence of success and.

had concrete evidence that they deserved to be there. So kind of other sort of things that came out of the study that I think we all kind of have experience with is people with imposter syndrome tend to attribute to their achievements to external factors like luck or timing or just mistakes rather than their talent or effort. I think that’s something we can all kind of resonate with.

and live with a persistent fear of being exposed as a fraud.

Yeah, so does anyone want to go around and talk about kind of a specific time they felt in posture syndrome and how they dealt with it? I know, you know, in sort of this highly technical field, there’s a lot of like intellectual posturing that happens, whether intentional or unintentional, there’s a lot of, you know, there’s just

Classic trope, know, I think we can all relate to where like people are like, yeah, I started programming when I was 11 on my PDP 11 machine and as you know, this, you you go on Hacker News, you’ll see a bunch of those posts. And I think initially you can kind of buy into that and think, wow, I’m so behind. And I know that’s something I initially felt. What about you guys?

Eggyhead (05:19) Yeah, definitely that. then like a lot of the initial like studies and white papers and sort of like industry history of computer science came from a lot of like mathematicians, know, academics, lot of white men. So I think, yeah, there’s there’s sort of this like

history, culture of like a certain stereotypical like software engineer personality or background coming from like a math background.

Yeah, like you said, like having done this since I was five years old or like never wanting to leave my basement. Like those are all kinds of things that like I find myself comparing myself to and being like, I’m not that. So am I really a software engineer?

Brittany Ellich (06:03) Yeah, one thing I think about a lot is I’ve heard this before about doctors, how like originally doctors were, they put a lot of effort into like marketing the term doctors to make it sound like, you know, it didn’t use to sound as important as it does now. And I feel like some of that, maybe there’s a little bit of that in engineering too, especially software engineering, where sometimes it feels like trying to build more than we necessarily are.

Not that we’re not building things that are incredibly important because a lot of the world runs on software now, but yeah.

Bethany (06:32) Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think after recently we read a book called Domain Driven Design and things like that, and I know starting off, the language was such a big thing and is such a big way of making folks feel welcome and accepted. And so whenever I would read something or encounter something I didn’t understand, I immediately would feel like I…

didn’t belong there or that was not a place for me or I was dumb. And I think there was through reading a lot of books and listening to podcasts, I realized, well, that’s not necessarily the case. If somebody’s saying something that you don’t understand, that’s kind of a failing of that language or that code or whatnot that.

people can’t come in and understand it and not necessarily a failing on your part. I mean, of course there’s some things where you have to like learn languages and have questions about how languages work, but I think in all it’s so important to make sure our language that we’re using and day to day is just something that’s welcoming for other people and accessible for folks to understand even if they’re new, if they’ve been in this career for a while.

but just making sure it’s a friendly place for your folks.

Jonathan Tamsut (07:44) Yeah. And I find, know, I, you know, this is something I struggle with, but like this idea of like binary thinking, like you’re either a software engineer or you’re not, but like the reality is like a lot more nuanced and varied, right? People have different expertise. I mean, you could have been programming since you were, you know, five years old, but maybe you don’t know React, right? Which is like, you know, a tool that, you know, you may need to use in your job. So I think, right, like,

There’s also, you know, I think this idea that like there’s a rock star programmer who knows who knows everything is, you know, you could poke a lot of holes in there. mean, at the end of the day, we’re building tools for people to make, you know, hopefully improve their lives. And your pure technical acumen is not the only useful thing, right? Your ability to like empathize with the user, your ability to like work with others, your knowledge of the domain.

You’re you know how much you you care to make a product like accessible and available to but so there’s like all these things that I that that really matter and I think certainly early in my career I kind of glorified these like geniuses who like you know knew the Linux kernel back to front and I think as you as I’ve just grown, know, there’s there’s a bunch of different types of programmers that are useful and good in their own ways and this idea that

you know, some people are real software engineers and others aren’t. It’s just kind of a silly sort of dichotomy that doesn’t really exist.

Brittany Ellich (09:05) Yeah, for sure. think the software engineering industry as a whole, there’s been a lot of talk about 10 X developers or the developers who are just, you know, rock stars and really good at what they do. But I’ve found so much more satisfaction within my own career. I mean, those people are really great to learn from, but when I’m on a team that is able to accomplish a lot of things, that’s just so much more valuable. I feel like then, you know, relying on a single person, if a single person leaves, then that company is, you know,

Jonathan Tamsut (09:11) Mm-hmm.

Brittany Ellich (09:32) that as a load-bearing person that everything will crumble around. Whereas if you have a team that everybody is capable of doing those things, then I think I find that a lot more beneficial to work with too.

Jonathan Tamsut (09:43) Yeah.

Eggyhead (09:45) Yeah, it’s

also, I was gonna say, it’s, like, also important to, like, identify for yourself, like, what your measures of success are. And this is kind of like moving ahead to, like, how do you, like, how do you combat imposter syndrome? And, like, I think one thing that always eats away at me is, like, like, am I doing a good job?

And being able to measure that for myself and then also to communicate to others is really important because…

you know, it’s like I can put a lot of like pull requests together. I can do a lot of work, but like, am I doing the right work? Like, am I developing things that people will actually use? Like, am I developing things that won’t break? And yeah, and also like, am I being a supportive teammate? Am I like building relationships with people? So yeah, but like,

to sort of like draw this to like software engineering as a whole. Like I’ve always been a little bit surprised that there’s no like, like there are certifications and stuff like that in software engineering, but like, it’s not like we have to like pass a bar or like, you know, get some kind of like, you can come at software engineering from like any background. And so like as an industry, we’ve kind of come up with these like random, like generic.

success metrics, one of which is like, you know, seemingly this like cultural icon of like, you know, the basement programmer who like never takes, you know, your eyes off a screen or something like that. So yeah, like really distancing myself from that and being like, no, that’s not like I’m rejecting that as you know, what I see as valuable or like good.

Jonathan Tamsut (11:26) Yeah. And I think another thing I’ve struggled with is like, kind of related to what you said, Erika, like disentangling my self-worth, like even as just like an intelligent, competent person from like achieving goals at work. Like I think there’ve been so many times I’ve just have had really harsh negative thoughts about myself because I wrote a bug or, you know, took longer than I wanted to on an issue. And I think, right, like

Yeah, they’re like, and I think I’m still like grappling with this. Like how do I, how do I hold a high bar for myself, but also like, you know, still feel like I have worked when I, when I don’t, you know, sort of achieve what I want or when I make a mistake or, um, and I think, right, like in a competitive environment, you know, I think software engineering, um, you know, I think it’s certain, certain environments can feel competitive. Um, right. It’s.

you’re kind of incentivized to like appear knowledgeable. mean, right? know, no, no one, you know, I think, I think there’s kind of this idea that like, no one wants to show up to work and be like, I don’t actually don’t know what I’m doing. And it’s like, you know, I think the reality is like, to an extent, we all don’t know what we’re doing. And I think, I think it’s important to like create a culture where like people are okay, talking about what they don’t know and talking about their weaknesses and don’t feel like they’re going to be penalized for like needing help.

Bethany (12:39) Totally agree. And I think that was one thing that…

pivoted in my brain when I was really struggling with imposter syndrome at the beginning of my career is kind of accepting that my job as a software engineer isn’t to know everything, but it’s to be able to figure it out and get that help, get that, like read those resources and stuff. And I think once I took the pressure off of myself for being perfect or just being knowledgeable on everything and

was okay saying, you know, I don’t know, but I’m going to figure it out and accepting that that’s an acceptable thing to say. It really changed a lot of my perception on my work and my abilities.

Brittany Ellich (13:20) That’s a really good point. I think that’s the biggest change between when I was just starting out and now is like, I know that if I bang my head against a problem for long enough, I will eventually solve it. Whether that’s by getting more help from somebody or anything, maybe that’s misguided confidence, but I know that I’ll eventually figure it out. And I think that is really helpful for overcoming that. Can’t say that I don’t feel imposter syndrome anymore, but it’s helpful.

Jonathan Tamsut (13:44) Yeah, no, totally. I feel the same way. It’s like, you know, through chat GPT, my friends, internet, I’ll be able to figure stuff out. You know, feel like I have a good enough mental model of most things to be able to like know what the right questions to ask are.

Yeah.

Eggyhead (13:59) curious Jonathan did you happen to see any like more recent studies of like imposter syndrome? Like I’m kind of curious like what we know now versus like what we first knew from like a psychology perspective.

Jonathan Tamsut (14:13) Yeah, so I actually I used them. I think chat GPT deep research to look for studies there. There have been more recent studies I did find. It was funny when you know, I think I mentioned this to you before, but one study was like, you know, and imposter syndrome is also found in men, which I thought was was funny.

Eggyhead (14:30) Yeah.

Jonathan Tamsut (14:32) I don’t recall exactly what these newer studies, but yeah, that would be interesting to like double click into. mean, yeah, I mean, especially with how the software engineering has evolved, I think it’s become, you know, more diverse, certainly than it was, you But yeah, it’s, I wonder what sort of these like changing dynamics, more diversity, there’s been, you know, I think.

I feel like lot of tech companies have had, I mean, a lot of tech companies have pretty unforgiving culture, it also seems like generally there’s been a shift to be a little more thoughtful about how people interact and unconscious biases and stuff like that. But yeah, good question.

Brittany Ellich (15:14) think it’s probably something that would be really hard to measure too, right? Cause I mean, my own level of imposter syndrome goes up and down during the day, depending on what I’m working on. And if I’ve recently fixed something, so it’s probably like company culture, which is just really difficult to measure. I would think.

Eggyhead (15:14) Yeah.

Jonathan Tamsut (15:22) Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it is sad or, you know, it’s funny slash sad how much like my own self worth is a function of just like, did I just figure something out? It feels so good to figure something out no matter how trivial, but it feels not fun when you’re like, man, I should be able to, you know, do this.

Brittany Ellich (15:42) Mm-hmm.

Eggyhead (15:50) I know we all took that quiz, which I thought was kind of insightful and also like more evidence for this idea that like imposter syndrome is like mostly something that affects women because I found the quiz on like, I don’t know, womenscareerdaly.com or something like that. And it was like a quiz of like different types of imposter syndrome. And yeah, I feel like that helped me kind of look at it.

Jonathan Tamsut (15:53) Mm.

Eggyhead (16:16) Maybe like I said, I used to attribute my imposter syndrome to being a career changer and I kept thinking like, if I had only started when I was five, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. But like this quiz kind of had you self-evaluate on a bunch of different situations of like how you respond. And I think my persona type came back as like.

someone who’s always seeking more knowledge. Like I never feel like I know enough. I was like, actually, I think that that’s true. And like, have felt this my entire life, not only in software engineering, like I’ve felt this in everything that I’ve tried to do. Like I’m always chasing that next, like that next level of expertise.

Jonathan Tamsut (16:58) Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (16:59) Yeah,

and just to speak to that quiz, we’ll share it in the show notes, but I think it was, are five kinds of imposter syndrome, which one is yours? Yeah, I ended up, I took that and I got the Superwoman, which again, I think it’s on everywoman.com. I’m sure that it applies to both, to everybody equally, but.

Yeah, so the superwoman is most likely to show up through a preoccupation with the need to take on multiple roles and excel in all of them, which definitely resonates with me. I think when I feel like I’m not doing well, then I just do more things and see if that fixes it. And it never does, but it makes me feel like I’m doing something. So yeah.

Jonathan Tamsut (17:35) Yeah, yeah, this, I think this quiz was intended for women, but I took it. And I got a perfectionist, which, you know, I don’t know if I fully resonate with that. I know Bethany, you also got perfectionist. I feel like you’re, you know, not to throw you under the bus. I feel like you’re maybe more of a perfectionist than I am. But yeah. Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (17:54) You’re a perfectionist at being a perfectionist.

Bethany (17:56) No, I think I did resonate with that. And actually it was very funny. I saw it was the most common one and I was like, wait, I want to be an uncommon one. I want to be the perfect kind of imposter. It was my first thought, but no, it is absolutely true. could, a lot of times I struggle with that activation energy of doing things just because I know I want to make it as perfect as possible.

Brittany Ellich (18:09) That’s funny.

Bethany (18:21) So sometimes I struggle just so hard with starting because I just, I put so much on what I’m doing that it’s difficult.

Brittany Ellich (18:29) I find it kind of hilarious that John has imposter syndrome about his imposter syndrome.

Bethany (18:33) Haha.

Jonathan Tamsut (18:34) And it’s, you know, I think like one thing that interests me about this and you know, this is, is like, like, you know, we all have different backgrounds, different childhoods and stuff. And it’s just, it’s like, you know, I, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last couple of years, like unpacking how like my childhood, my relationship with my parents, et cetera, kind of like, you know, you know, shapes my, my attitudes and feelings towards work.

and it’s, yeah, it’s like, you know, I think, I think for me, you know, kind of like, like this desire to be special, or this like, and I didn’t think like being remote, working remote, you know, sort of exacerbates that. Like this desire to like, kind of be seen as special in the eyes of others, kind of is related and adds to this. and you know, when you, I think one thing I’ve really struggled with is like,

you know, like I want to be seen as exceptional. And, you know, how do you, how do you sort of, you know, you know, go about your day and, you know, not let that sort of, you know, kind of guide everything you’re doing and just, you know, not make you sort of extra competitive. So I think these are, I feel like these are things I’ve like dealt with more recently in my career is like, kind of these like,

maybe deeper core, like little T traumas. But I think it does kind of tie into imposter syndrome because a lot of it is about like managing perceptions of others. And I think, you know, at some point, just realizing that, realizing that like, you know, most people aren’t judging you as harshly as you’re judging yourself. And a lot of these like drives are just like, totally internal, was kind of an important realization for me.

Bethany (20:05) I completely resonate with like all of that. Like the thriving on praise, I totally do that. For those who aren’t internal to GitHub, have a system called sparkles, where you can sparkle people for doing stuff. It’s like kudos, like kudos to so and so for helping out with this. And I gamified that from the first like minute here. I’m like, I’m going to get the most sparkles.

Jonathan Tamsut (20:10) Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Bethany (20:29) I’m afraid to say I have not gotten the most sparkles, but it’s definitely sparkle-driven development for me. But John, I think that was such a good point on how your childhood, how your life has influenced you and these things. And I think I certainly have talked about this so often in therapy, where I would come and-

And she’s like, how’s your mood? And I’m like, I feel horrible because this person thinks I’m dumb. And she’s like, well, why do you think they think you’re dumb? And you have to explain it that it’s like, okay, they probably don’t think I’m dumb, but I feel dumb for having to say this or ask this or be wrong about this. I think going to therapy has been so helpful for just understanding like those, like when I’m mind reading or when I’m like assuming I

Jonathan Tamsut (21:00) Thank

and

Bethany (21:20) know what people are thinking about me. And it’s really not in my hands. It’s not something I know. I can’t mind read. I think it is so intertwined with your mental health and your mental well-being. And it’s so important to keep check on that as a whole to influence your happiness in your career and make sure you can mitigate those occurrences of imposter syndrome even better.

Jonathan Tamsut (21:43) Yeah. And you know, we work in this like hierarchy of people and you know, people think engineering is this like, you know, objective field where all just there’s right answers to everything, but we all know that’s not true. this is, there’s sort of this like dynamic where people’s personalities collide. And so yeah, I, you know, we’ve all worked with people who are just.

really difficult to work with. And it’s like, well, you know, they’re probably compensating for something or insecure, et cetera. And I really, you you wonder like, if everyone at the company, you know, you know, had to attend therapy or like, people were more open about their emotions, you know, what would that lead to?

Brittany Ellich (22:20) I think if everybody in the world attended therapy, that would be a good starting point for sure, for a lot of things. I think one thing that I realized is when I entered my thirties, I feel like, I don’t know if it’s just like brain development or what, but I feel like I have so much better ability to like step out and like see things from a broader perspective now than I ever had growing up. And I think a lot of that is like, you know, as a teenager and in your twenties and stuff, you’re so focused on yourself that it…

Jonathan Tamsut (22:25) Hmph.

Brittany Ellich (22:48) it’s like blinding to everything else. And I feel like as I’ve gotten older, like I’ve just gotten so much more perspective on things and I’m like, nobody’s paying attention to what I’m doing. Nobody has any idea what I’m doing because I have no idea what everybody else is doing. Cause you know, and I think that has been really helpful too. And unfortunately I feel like that’s something you just get with time or maybe with maybe with mental health, taking care of that. it’s not.

Eggyhead (23:08) Yeah, I mean, definitely like not everyone can attend therapy. Like it’s like, you know, some people like it’s cost prohibitive. It is expensive. But like, yeah, I mean, being able to like share out what we’ve learned and like help others like develop that mental toolbox. And yeah, like I’ve definitely found great success.

with the approach of when a negative thought enters my mind, inspecting it, like stop stopping, taking a breath, inspecting it, like asking myself like, where is this coming from? Is this true? Yeah. And like, if so, why? If not, like I can forget it. I can leave it at the door and like not worry about it anymore.

And yeah, and also kind of like that toolbox of like, okay, are there patterns that like feed into, you know, what makes me feel this way? And yeah, I mean, for me, it’s like, always thinking that I’m not going to know something and thinking that like, oh, if I don’t know something, everyone thinks I’m I’m like learning how to like track my own knowledge.

for myself and like proving to myself that no, I do know these things or like if I don’t then like this is how I can find it out. And like I’ve learned a ton from all of you of like toolboxes, like mental modeling, mental mapping and stuff like that. So yeah, I’ve been very lucky to learn from you all on how to track my knowledge too. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean the point of like, even like get rid of imposter syndrome? in my mind, it’s not to become like a better worker bee, you know? It’s like, because it like reduces my mental toil. Like when I come to work every day, because I’m, you know, unless I quit my job, like I’m gonna keep coming to work. And like, yeah, am I gonna be happy throughout my day or am I gonna be like upset and like sad?

And I feel like this is one of those things where like, when you kind of learn how to deal with it a little bit better, your mental toil, like at least like the emotional side of work is a little bit lighter. Because you’re not so worried about, yeah, like am I a fraud?

Jonathan Tamsut (25:23) Yeah. And I think like, you know, hopefully there’s like one aspect of, or more of this job we all like, you know, whether it’s the social. And I think for me, like one thing that’s helped me is like, you know, I like solving puzzles. I like problems. and so focusing on that and being less like evaluative of myself and just like kind of

immersing myself in the enjoyment of like, hey, this, actually like this job and, you know, there is like inherently struggle because we’re solving problems that are like unknown. And so I think that’s I also, I also think, you know, it’s funny, like, you know, kind of taking a step back, I, for me at least, like having emotions, you know, or like,

not having emotions, we all have emotions, acknowledging my emotions and being consciously aware of them is actually a relatively new phenomenon to me. think growing up, having emotions were bad. I was like, why are you sad? Or stop being so emotional. And I think just the simple realization that every human being is guided by emotions.

access your conscious emotions. I also sort of believe in the subconscious and sort of that background processing, which is less accessible, but like you can at least access your conscious emotions and like, you know, kind of reason through them and understand them, which I think is helpful.

Bethany (26:42) to that point, I…

actually discovered a app recently called How We Feel. I’m not sure if any of you have heard of this, but it is actually one of the most beautiful apps I’ve seen ever. It’s just gorgeous and so intuitive, but it’s, I’ve only done it for a couple of days now, but it’s really nice to, it notifies you and you’re like, okay, I’m going to pause and try to name what I’m feeling right now. And there’s like, it starts with four categories and then they can go like more broad from there. And I think it’s really cool to just like pause, be like,

like, okay, what am I feeling right now? What is happening? What’s going on? And go from there. But anyways, it was a great app. figure since we’re talking tech, was, it’s just a good example of good technology. It doesn’t make you sign in or anything, which is really cool. Right? Yes.

Brittany Ellich (27:26) Amazing. That’s the best part.

Jonathan Tamsut (27:27) Thank

Brittany Ellich (27:29) Nice. Yeah, I think if I were to boil down like what has really fixed my imposter syndrome too, I think sort of like John was saying is like accepting that there are things that I’m good at and reminding myself like, I know that I’m good at these things and trying to focus on those when I realize like there are things that I’m just not good at. And I also accept that there are things that I’m not good at and there are things that I don’t really care to get better at. You know, like they’re

I would rather go to somebody who is an expert in this thing than actually learn it myself. And I feel like that’s actually pretty valuable than compared to, you know, trying to get through a book that I don’t care about or, you know, try to force myself to learn more things because it’s impossible to learn everything. So I think accepting sort of what I’m good at and what I’m not good at has been really helpful.

Jonathan Tamsut (28:14) I also think one other thing I I think I’ve seen like all of us do this, not to acute, but like kind of downplaying your accomplishments, right? Like you do something, you’re like, oh, that was easy. But it wasn’t, like you spent a lot of time developing skill, context on the problem and solving it. And I do this so much where I’m like, yeah, but this thing I did, that was easy. It’s not that impressive. And I think…

That’s something I still do to this day and probably should do less of.

Brittany Ellich (28:43) Yeah, you don’t see all of the work that was underlying to build up to that skill. It’s like, think I see this often when people are complaining about how much people charge for being a photographer or something like that. And it’s like, well, you don’t see all of the work that they put in to get to this point. Yeah, they might only be spending an hour with you and a few hours editing afterwards, but all of the work that they put in to learn this skill is also really important. And that’s also what you’re paying for.

Jonathan Tamsut (29:09) I also kind of one note I had in the research or the prep for this was, know, we live in, you I think the technology field is like, there’s a lot of hype and new technology and there is kind of this pressure I felt to like spend extra hours like learning weekends, you know. And I think that kind of ties into like the sort of the competitive nature.

of all this. And like, there are times where I’ve, you know, really felt like I needed to kind of work on the weekends to learn a new technology. I think, you know, sure, like that’s helped and that’s been nice. And there’s been times I’ve done that and I’ve enjoyed it. But I think now I definitely value like work-life balance. And, you know, I think there’s sort of like limited utility to that. I also just like, I need rest.

Like I’m so much more productive when I’ve, you know, had it kind of, you know, gotten away from the work.

Brittany Ellich (30:03) Absolutely. In the interest of time, we should probably, I think we could probably talk about this for forever. But is there anything, any remaining last things that anybody wanted to bring up related to?

Jonathan Tamsut (30:11) Mm-hmm.

I feel like you know this is

you know, if like we were just having a conversation on like there’s this like weird added pressure when you know it’s being recorded for a podcast.

Brittany Ellich (30:26) Yeah.

Well, I feel like this is one thing that, you know, we’ve been meeting since we all started here, basically. And we’ve had these discussions, which is why, you know, I think we all felt like, this would be good to share with other people potentially. Because I think we have, you know, maybe this is cocky or whatever, but like, I think we have like pretty insightful, interesting discussions that I learned a lot from all of you. So it is definitely a lot more pressure, when we just got to pretend it’s not for time. We’re just on Zoom.

Jonathan Tamsut (30:30) Yeah.

Eggyhead (30:50) Yeah, I feel like the only thing I’ve filtered is like, I’ve made sure to mute myself when there’s noise in the background, which I can’t guarantee if my dogs freak out about something. And then like making sure that I don’t talk over people because I definitely do do that. But

Brittany Ellich (31:00) That’s fine.

Do we wanna talk about, okay, I’ll let John, since you’re commanding this episode, I’ll let you.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:12) So we’re gonna do the guess the commit.

Brittany Ellich (31:14) Yeah, we just need to like tail off of the imposter syndrome and move on to guess the commit.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:19) I don’t have a… So it’s gonna be, you’re gonna show us a commit, we’re gonna have to guess what it’s about or…

Eggyhead (31:26) all I’m going to give you is the commit message.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:28) Okay. And then, and then what do we, what’s the game? What do have to do?

Eggyhead (31:31) guess what was actually committed.

Brittany Ellich (31:34) Okay, guess the changes were based on the commit message.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:36) Okay,

Eggyhead (31:36) Yeah.

Jonathan Tamsut (31:36) awesome. Okay. Okay, well, that was a great topic or conversation on imposter syndrome. I appreciate you all for sharing. We’re gonna now move into our sort of canned or our reoccurring segment called Guess the Commit, where we are shown a commit message and have to…

guess what sort of the code was about that corresponds to the commit message. So, Erika, do you want to?

Eggyhead (32:04) All right, so was

telling my co-hosts a little bit before that this was my idea. I thought it would be fun. And then I started looking for commit messages in the GitHub repository and a lot of them are like merging the master branch. So it took me a while to find something that was even mildly entertaining and I will continue to search for.

other repositories that might have spicier commit histories. But the one that I have chosen to bring to this segment today, the commit message is OMG, it actually works. What do you think was committed with this message?

Bethany (32:43) ⁓

I feel like I know who made this one actually.

Eggyhead (32:47) What?

Jonathan Tamsut (32:48) Wait, and this was in the GitHub repository? Okay.

Eggyhead (32:53) ⁓ huh. And I think

I searched for the last six months. I think that was like…

Brittany Ellich (32:58) That’s good, good context.

Bethany (32:58) I’m gonna say co-pilot.

Eggyhead (33:00) Okay yeah, committed

five days ago.

Bethany (33:02) Co-pilot policies. That’s my guess.

Eggyhead (33:04) Okay, any other guesses?

Jonathan Tamsut (33:06) I mean, this sounds, sorry, gone. I mean, this sounds like most of my commit messages, which.

Brittany Ellich (33:06) This could.

Jonathan Tamsut (33:11) I don’t know. Something, yeah, something, I mean, really could be anything. I’m gonna guess copilot policies.

Bethany (33:18) Hey.

Eggyhead (33:18) Our original love you

Brittany Ellich (33:19) I, yeah, this could be anything. It’s probably something that is somebody surprised that it actually worked. And yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know.

Jonathan Tamsut (33:27) You

Brittany Ellich (33:30) You can, tell me.

Eggyhead (33:31) All right, so this change modifies the deployment button logic and cleans up unnecessary code in the header component.

Jonathan Tamsut (33:40) Mmm… U-I.

Bethany (33:40) Wow.

Eggyhead (33:41) Yeah.

You are. Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (33:43) Hmm. Yeah,

that’s a good one. I’m going to start thinking harder about what all my commit messages are now to try to make them funnier.

Jonathan Tamsut (33:49) Yeah.

Bethany (33:50) I’m gonna try to

encode a song or something in the string of them.

Eggyhead (33:55) Excellent. I figured this is another, sorry. I figured this is another way to maybe search some other repositories that are kind of fun, like some open source repositories that are fun and interesting, because yeah, I’m always curious about other repositories outside of GitHub. Yeah.

Jonathan Tamsut (33:57) I, I still play it. I don’t even know how to.

Brittany Ellich (34:13) Open source ones would probably be good.

Bethany (34:15) Yeah,

I was gonna actually, maybe like, this is maybe a cut thing. Is it okay to actually talk about like the GitHub repository in a public format? Is my question, but.

Jonathan Tamsut (34:23) Hmm.

Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t.

Eggyhead (34:27) Yeah, I was also wondering, I was like, if the person who committed this listens to this podcast, they

Jonathan Tamsut (34:28) Is that a security?

Yeah,

Brittany Ellich (34:33) no!

Bethany (34:33) Yeah,

Jonathan Tamsut (34:34) because

Bethany (34:34) yeah.

Jonathan Tamsut (34:34) that is kind of an embarrassing commit. But yeah, maybe it should be open source projects. I think that’s actually a good call.

Eggyhead (34:36) Yeah. I don’t know.

Brittany Ellich (34:37) ⁓

Eggyhead (34:42) Okay.

Brittany Ellich (34:42) Yeah,

we can start that with the next one too, that’s fine.

Eggyhead (34:45) Sounds good.

Bethany (34:45) Okay,

cool. That was fun though. I liked playing that. Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (34:47) Mm-hmm. I like the idea.

Jonathan Tamsut (34:47) Yeah.

Eggyhead (34:49) Okay, yay!

Not a total dead.

Jonathan Tamsut (34:53) I can prepare a script, you know, intro-ing the segment so it’s not me just like stumbling over.

I will say, sometimes I like when I’m feeling really silly. I sometimes like posting or having a funny commit message in hopes that someone reads it and chucks.

Eggyhead (35:05) Wow, maybe that’ll be my, yeah.

Brittany Ellich (35:06) Erika Reidson.

Jonathan Tamsut (35:07) Eric reads the…

Bethany (35:09) And then you squash and merge. Nobody will ever see it.

Jonathan Tamsut (35:12) Thanks for tuning in to Overcommitted. We hope today’s episode provided some insight into imposter syndrome and reminded you that you’re not alone in these feelings. For more discussions on the real world experiences of software engineers, make sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

I’m Jonathan Tamsut, and along with Brittany, Erika, and Bethany, we’re signing off. Keep committed and see you next time. Bye bye.

Eggyhead (35:36) Bye.

Bethany (35:37) Yay!