[Applause]
[Music]
so this is how I learned how to stop
worrying and RTFM for the uninitiated
RTFM stands for read the manual so Who
am I
I’ve been something like a software
engineer for about nine years I’ve
worked for startups that have succeeded
and startups that didn’t I have worked
at research labs for computational
linguistics machine learning artificial
intelligence cybersecurity I’ve
developed and built high-performance
distributed systems for what Forbes
magazine calls the number one most
innovative company in the world and
that’s not Google on a little corner of
the internet called Quora I’ve been the
most viewed author for dozens of
categories ranging from programming
languages to systems administration to
algorithms and many others my answers
have been featured on Huffington Post
and Forbes and currently I’m an
architect and the technical lead for
data services at alation media which
those of you in the audience who are
fans of anime might know is the parent
company that owns crunchyroll so when I
was first starting out nine years ago if
you were to tell me that this is what my
future holds I wouldn’t have believed
you I didn’t see myself as the kind of
person who would know the things that I
now know or who would be capable of
doing the things that I’ve by now done
it was because I had this archetype in
mind of a person who who was capable of
these things to whom all of these things
came naturally and because I was already
encountering struggles in learning what
I did know I must have disqualified
myself as that kind of person so the
turning point in my career came during
my internship at the Naval Postgraduate
School the professor that I worked for
asked me to do something that was wildly
spectacularly outside my skillset and I
up I felt helpless I told them but I
think you might have hired the wrong
person I I have no idea how to do that
and I’ll never forgive forgive I’ll ever
forget
the look that he gave me which was he
had the look of someone who had heard
the dumbest thing he had ever heard in
his entire life
and he looked back at me and he said so
learn and walked away so that moment
shattered that disqualification as the
person who could who could achieve
things um I I realized that I had no
idea where I got this this confidence in
my inability to do things um I realized
that the the whole of human knowledge
opened up to me and I realized that I
was the only thing keeping me back from
becoming a subject matter expert in any
field that I chose so for a time after
that I had actually called myself read
the manual man whose superpower was
reading the manual family um and it I
recognized that same attitude that I had
in students in college and I still do
among colleagues in the software
industry and I still myself know when I
catch myself having it um and that this
idea that there is some body of
knowledge that that can’t be learned
somehow that instead it’s it’s
mystically revealed only to this class
of elite people who who are able to hold
that knowledge within their brains um
and that’s not the case so I took it
upon my soul no excuse me
the the one piece of an eight advice
that this talk can give is is roughly
the following leave it to to read the
manual man here if you want to know how
to do something find the manual read it
until you understand it and then you’ll
know how to do it um so I know that you
know this I knew this when I was
starting out um but what is
conspicuously absent from this advice is
the requirement to be superhuman so this
advice applies regardless of who you are
it the the main crippling obstacle to
this is is the delusion that you are
someone who is not capable of following
device that advice so to illustrate this
I for your benefit
I’ve asked a lot of my friends and
colleagues for help so people who are
the the smartest and most capable
software engineers that I have ever met
I asked them questions about their
learning experience these are people
who’ve come from Facebook Google Twitter
eBay Yahoo Salesforce and yeah I’d like
to share some of those answers with you
so first of all talk about books like
this um teach yourself Java in 24 hours
so I have mixed feelings about these
books um I think that their mere
existence it does accurately convey that
learning out a program is a lot more
accessible than people give it credit
for that anyone can learn how to program
but it also is that learning how to
program in the long run particularly
beyond of course what a book like this
would teach you it should be easy and
the problem with the implication that
programming is easy that if you don’t
find it easy that must mean you’re
stupid so this one in particular also if
you notice in the top right corner
advertises that it can teach you how to
be an Android developer in 24 hours did
any of you know that you could be an
Android developer in 24 hours no good
because you can’t right so no one who
has learned how to be a Java developer
or an Android developer has learned this
way maybe they started but actually
there was another slide that in
retrospect I shouldn’t have taken out
but it that question was how do you
believe how well do you believe does a
book like teacher self Java in 24 hours
prepare you for a junior level software
engineering job they were split 50-50
none of them said adequately half of
them said insufficiently and the other
half said not at all so there are better
ways oh there are no easy answers um so
right so nobody nobody learned how to
how to do it this oh it’s not working ok
so how easy is it for I think I went
back too far here we go how easy is it
for top-tier engineers to learn how to
program so none of them had an easy time
with the whole thing it wasn’t a walk in
the park to anyone
nine out of ten there were more than ten
respondents um what he got said that
characterized it as requiring persistent
effort beyond the basics and 10% of them
worked hard to learn every single thing
that they learned even the basics so
nobody acquires this knowledge instantly
it’s it’s not a walk in the park in fact
everyone had at least one topic that
took the multiple attempts to learn half
of them had something that took at least
three attempts and some have you
encountered topics that are just
impenetrable to them thus far so the
next question I asked them was about
skill versus talent so talent is
something you have a natural aptitude
for whereas a skill is practice
experience 100 percent of them said
there is no substitute for practice so
when people see these you know the same
archetype that I saw of someone who was
just naturally talented and who would
excel to to greatness and beyond it
turns out realistically talent doesn’t
actually get you that far a lot of the
respondents for longer form answers had
said that talent is useful for
jump-starting your education but in the
in the long run
practice dominates right and 10% at the
bottom so that attitude can only make up
for an experience so it is a consensus
among experts that if they can learn how
to program then anyone can um it
primarily in that it yeah it doesn’t it
doesn’t require geniuses only one person
I think I know who that is – I’m gonna
get them screwin up my surveys right so
that this is the key takeaway there so
um he is learning how to program hard
yes it very much can be but though I’m
so sorry I skipped the whole section is
this what I think it is yes I’m pressing
the button too many times there it is so
let’s talk about imposter syndrome
imposter syndrome is the delusion that
you have not earned your place among
your peers it’s a very isolating feeling
it feels like you are not qualified to
be in there
and their presence it is very common in
academia it’s very common among
technical professions and the software
industry is no stranger to it either so
of the best software engineers that I
have ever met and worked with 50% of
them more than half of them worry that
their colleagues know more than they
actually do they worry that they don’t
meet their colleagues expectations 3/4
of them and all these numbers include me
by the way have pretended to know things
in conversations with colleagues more
than 1/3 or too embarrassed to ask
questions that they think are
embarrassing there are well within their
skill sets and so they flounder quietly
so this is tragic it really is but the
good news is that if you face self-doubt
you are by no means alone you are in
very good company so this is the thing
that differentiates those who have
succeeded from from those who have not
which is in all cases regardless of
talent and difficulties the people who
have succeeded and gone on to become
top-tier engineers we’re gonna work at
any company they want to they just
didn’t give up it’s a matter of
persistence it’s a matter of building
skill um I don’t know how much more I
have this so um the key takeaway is if
you are having trouble if if learning
how to program is not coming easy to you
that does not mean that you are
incapable of it because it does it
didn’t come easily to anyone even if
you’re struggling you are doing no worse
than someone who has gone on to be among
the best so that’s how they got there
that means you’re doing it right they
don’t have anything in them either or
you know some have natural talent that
help them jumpstart their their
education but there is nothing special
to them there’s no special class of
people to whom programming as possible
and others who cannot you’re already the
kind of person who is capable of
starting and who is capable of
succeeding it’s purely a matter of
persistence and yeah that’s the main
takeaway there is we all have doubts we
all continue to have doubts the next
time that you feel yourself making harsh
conclude
about your capabilities I encourage you
to set aside those worries and just read the manual thank you