LIVE at ReactJS Girls

I wanna welcome to the stage Emma Wedekind. She is going to be hosting a very special, a very live version of JS Party, the wonderful podcast. Please give it up for Emma!

[03:51] I got started coding. I used to be a project manager. I would work with a lot of developers, they would tell me a lot of things, and I would wanna know if those things were true… [laughter] So I learned to code with a lot of help, from a lot of online resources, and then made the transition into consulting, and then into teaching. That’s kind of how all of that started, and I feel like working as a teacher, creating videos and things like that has been a really vital part of my career… Because I live up in the woods, in Northern California; no one’s gonna find out what I’m doing up there, unless I make some of that stuff for people.

I went to school for photo journalism originally, and it was right when digital cameras came out and newspapers were starting to close, and I sort of saw the writing on the wall that if I wanted to live in a city where I wanted to live, and I wanted to actually be able to afford to live there, that that was probably not gonna work. So I went back to school and focused more on web design and development. So I’m definitely more the creative side, which still comes out from time to time, but I’ve really latched on to coding because I saw it as a lucrative career, just to be honest with you. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that…

I think it’s financial independence for a lot of people, and that was definitely true for me. Eventually, I found accessibility on the job, and I just learned that I cared a lot about it… So I gradually just moved closer and closer to it. I worked on the Angular team for a while, trying to make that more accessible… If you really wanna get me worked up, you can ask me more about that. [laughter]

Eventually, I found my way into React, and I just really love how fast it is… And Gatsby came along, and they offered me of position as the head of learning. And for me, being able to contribute back full-time, and focus on doc writing, and making the learning experience better - it definitely ticked all the boxes for me, so I’m pretty excited.

So I mentioned that I used to do photography and writing, so I think I’ve always enjoyed sharing stories and ideas… So when I was learning to code, I started going to meetups like Codebar, and wanted to start as soon as I felt comfortable, which still hasn’t happened yet, by the way… Start giving back by giving talks at meetups, and stuff. And once I’d done that, I wanted to start trying to apply to conferences and give them there as well… So I think it’s gone okay so far.

Thanks. And I do have a blog on my site. It’s a Gatsby blog, actually. I have very good intentions for writing posts for it. I have a very long list, but haven’t quite got there yet.

Well, I think one that I don’t tell a lot of people is that actually my entire career in coding is because of a failure; my previous job didn’t work out, and I was kind of wondering what to do, and ended up finding Founders and Coders, and did the course, and now I’m enjoying coding so much… I feel like I’ve really found my groove. Had I not had that initial failure, which I think it’s quite a taboo to talk about having lost a job, and stuff… But yeah, I wouldn’t be here today without that having happened.

We’re super-happy you’re here. So thinking about this question you asked me a little bit earlier, and I had to really think – I mean, there’s lots of things that we struggle with on a day-to-day basis; coding is hard. And I’ve had a string of pretty terrible managers that I don’t think really understood the impact that their words would have. I had a manager say in front of me to a client that I was not a hardcore developer, and that just ruined it for me, to be honest, in that job… And there was so much that was going right, but that just took the wind out of my sails.

I’ve since moved and am in a job where I see my perspective as an asset… Because we all have different learning styles, different skill levels, different experience and perspective, and having people on your team writing docs who aren’t necessarily those hardcore developers - going back to Caroline’s talk - I think I see the value in that now. So I took something that was my big insecurity and something that drove me away from a good job, to something that actually helps me on a day-to-day basis.

If something doesn’t make sense to me as a documentation person, chances are other people are struggling with that same idea. So I’m grateful that I was able to turn that insecurity and that struggle into something beneficial.

I think just getting started coding was really tough for me. I quit a lot of times along that way, and I’m always kind of quitting, all the time… Like “This is too hard. I can’t do this. I can’t branch out into this new thing”, and that’s something that I struggle with, because I feel like unless it’s perfect, it’s not gonna be right. So yeah, just being fearful of that, living in a place where there’s not a whole lot of jobs makes it such that it’s like “Hm, I’d better figure that out…” So getting stuck and out of your own way has been really helpful to me.

I’m gonna go back to some advice that I got from a nutritionist in my late twenties… I was really struggling at that time. When you hit 30 - I don’t know about you, but my body started to change… So I went to this nutritionist, and her whole thing was about self-compassion. That was transformative advice for me, because she told me to treat yourself like you would treat a friend. That was huge for me, because I was like “Wow, I’m really beating up on myself.” And it goes so far beyond nutrition, health, mental health, but also learning to code and being supportive to yourself, even when you’re doubting your abilities. It sort of helps to get outside of your own head and think of it like “Treat yourself like you would treat a friend.”

Hm… How to get over impostor syndrome…

I think so, yes.

Yeah, something I’ve really been inspired by lately is Sean [unintelligible 00:14:01.24] sharing his journey of learning in public… I think that’s something I totally did not do at the beginning, because I was like “I don’t know what I’m doing. I shouldn’t be sharing my thoughts about my process of learning, and I never even thought to do that…” And I look at someone like Sean, who’s constantly giving back his resources and time to other people. I think that’s amazing.

So anybody who writes a blog post, makes a video - your perspective is valuable, and I think that people hesitate to share that stuff early, but you should.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think perspective - that’s the operative word for me. Like you mentioned, we’re up here and we have some sense of authority, but something that I think about a lot is that everyone is only ever sharing their own story and experiences, and even the biggest experts, they’re only able to share what they know through their experience. So your experiences are going to be just as valid. There’s rarely ever one single way to do something, so you should share your experiences and share your knowledge as much as anyone else.

[15:46] I think doing things like this, like giving a platform… For example, all of the speakers today were women, or for example there’s also the AfroTech Fest, which is for the BME community in the U.K. So offering platforms for people to share their knowledge and experiences like that is really important. And then I guess trying to find people to mentor, if you have the time and energy to do that… Sorry, I’m gonna keep mentioning Codebar, because it’s wonderful… But that is a meetup for under-represented people in tech. So even just going there and offering your time as a coach to help people out with their projects and their journey in learning is really good.

That’s excellent advice. Yeah, I think the mentoring aspect is really valuable, because if you are a bit more senior in your career, you can help people who need some encouragement. I was gonna add that adding seats at the table for under-represented people, to not only participate, but lead. Give more leadership positions to women of color, in particular… And creating those spaces. Sometimes that means getting out of the way and letting someone else shine, no matter where they are in their experience level or skill level.

I think that’s something I’d like to see more - new, fresh voices, and giving people the space to feel safe and comfortable to actually share their experiences. Because the more I listen to what people are actually saying, the more it’s changed my experience to hear, like “Wow, people are feeling comfortable enough to tell me what their experience was really like.” As long as you’re listening, it’s pretty amazing the doors that unlock when people are safe enough to tell you what they’re experiencing.

I’d say money - giving people money; telling people how much money that you make…

Yeah. And also sharing if you did something that you think was successful; tell other people about it, even if that’s one-on-one. That’s mentorship, obviously… But that really helps people out, to think “Oh, well they negotiated this, getting this role” or “This person was able to…” I don’t know, there’s a lot of hidden bonuses that go on–

There’s also nothing wrong with not totally loving your job. You need to pay your rent, and for a lot of people it’s a job, and that’s okay.

I was gonna add that I met with some women in my town of Bellingham, which is a bit lower wage of a market, and we had this lunch one day where in a small group we felt safe and comfortable to say what we made… And when I told them what I made, they were like “Whoa… I am getting extremely underpaid”, and they both – well, one moved to Seattle, because they were living about an hour-and-a-half away. The other one - she kind of splits her time between, but they both significantly increased their salaries after that, just by knowing that “Whoa… I am undervalued and underpaid.”

I think those conversations are important, and I think there’s kind of a fine line – I personally don’t share a lot about it, because I don’t wanna come off as braggy, but in smaller groups maybe that’s a more comfortable setting where you can actually talk with other people… So go out to lunch, go talk about it. It can change your life.

Another thing that I was surprised to learn - we have a Speakers Guild Slack channel at the FT, and there’s people in there who have been giving talks for years, and it’s amazing to share knowledge… And one of the things that I was surprised to learn was that a lot of people - usually people who have a few years of experience, they’ll propose talks about things they don’t know yet, as a way of learning things… And as a fresh baby dev, I was just like “Whoa, that’s terrifying…”

Yeah. So I think if you’re thinking of getting into speaking, don’t let the – if you don’t have any ideas, but you think “Oh, there’s this thing I wanna learn. It’s really cool, I wanna get into that”, you can write your talk about learning the thing, and then you’ll know it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think of it as is there something that I want the audience to take away from it? Like talking about accessibility - I wanna empower you to make a difference with that, so that motivates me to talk about it. At some point early in my speaking career I was like “Wow, I’m really interested in accessibility, and I wanna make change in the world by talking about it”, but I didn’t wanna be painted as the accessibility girl… Because you kind of worry about being like a one-note, or something like that. But that changed for me when I went to an accessibility conference, and there were a lot of people with disabilities there, and they were my people. I found my tribe, and I knew from that moment on that I could really make a difference

It’s kind of slow sometimes, it can get a little depressing, but some advice that I got about speaking was like “What do you want the audience to take away from it? If there’s something that you think people should know more about…” Maybe there’s lots of questions on Twitter about it; people are confused about it. Documentation is lacking. You can really learn about a topic, and learn while you’re researching for the talk and writing the talk, but you can also become a known person in the community, where people can ask you questions about a topic, and really just give people knowledge, sort of a knowledge transfer.

So yeah, I try to really think about like “What’s in it for them?”, because it’s not the Marcy Show.

Yeah, it’s really about what are you trying to give people to take away? What can they go back to work on Monday and apply? Depending on the topic. Not all topics – some of them are more thinky, where you’re just gonna think on it for a while; those are awesome as well… It’s like, we need to give our brains a rest from hardcore code sometimes. But yeah, focusing on your audience takeaways I think is a good way to go.

Okay, just building some sort of demo, and then trying to make a complex topic accessible to people.

Thank you, Emma.

Thank you, Emma.

Thank you!

Give it up for Emma. [applause]