3 Years at Google: My Most Important Learning

It’s hard to believe I’ve been a Software Engineer at Google for 3 years now. Throughout my tenure, I’ve learned a lot, but one learning stands out amongst the rest.

To explain the importance of this learning, I must first tell you about when I first joined the company. At the time I joined, I struggled a lot with imposter syndrome. While that’s not abnormal for software engineers, mine felt particularly debilitating.

I’d regularly doubt my technical abilities and write-off any “success” or accomplishments as strokes of luck. My inability to internalize that my own effort and skills were what landed me the job of my dreams caused me a lot of stress.

While it feels ridiculous to type now, this stress often manifested itself physically with a constant feeling of a “lump” in my throat as well as the tendency to, quite literally, move faster regardless of the current activity.

In addition to these physical manifestations of stress courtesy of my imposter syndrome, I also would consistently worry about my performance, albeit without warrant.

Growing tired of these feelings, I eventually decided to take a different approach to dealing with my imposter syndrome. Up until this point, I largely volunteered for and attempted tasks I felt I could accomplish and deliver at work in an attempt to keep my imposter syndrome at bay. Instead, I decided, going forward, I would begin leaning into challenges as opposed to shying away from them.

This was actually at the advice of my dad, who encapsulated this lesson with three simple words: “raise your hand”. He explained that the single factor that had the most impact throughout his career, was his willingness to raise his hand and volunteer to take on anything and everything — especially when no one else was willing to.

Embracing this mentality of metaphorically raising my hand has been the most beneficial lesson I’ve learned while at Google, hands down (ha) because you build confidence in your abilities by accomplishing hard things, not avoiding them.

Sometimes you’ll fail and most times you’ll probably succeed, but regardless of the outcome, I can almost guarantee you’ll always learn something of value throughout the process. Do this enough times and your imposter syndrome might just go away, mine did anyway.

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