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by RandallBrown
4868 days ago
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Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook gave a talk about this at the 2011 Grace Hopper conference. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVCSrm65kg In my experience, lots of girls in CS feel this way. I convinced my ex girlfriend to major in computer science. She didn't think she could do it because she had never programmed or anything before college. I told her that it didn't matter, and that she had in fact programmed before. She used to love making myspace layouts. As she neared graduation, she was constantly telling me how she felt like she couldn't do it. That she was faking her way through all of her classes and that if anyone actually hired her she would be a miserable failure. Honestly, a lot of that feeling was probably my fault. I was a few years older and already out of college. The amount of help I gave her on assignments would probably be considered cheating at most universities. I always tried to make sure she understood what was happening though. So she really felt like a fraud. She had an internship writing code though, and even got a few raises while she was working there. I knew her coworkers and they never even hinted that she didn't know what she was doing. I just tried to keep encouraging her and telling her she knew what she was doing (even though I had doubts) So what happened? She's a developer at Amazon now. As far as I know, she's doing quite well. |
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I'm a girl doing a CS degree and also often think that the amount of help I get from my boyfriend (who has graduated by now) borders on cheating which really makes me feel miserable from time to time, and constantly having someone next to you who you know can complete any task you have with so much less effort doesn't help a lot either.
Other times, however, I acknowledge that as long as he isn't plainly handing the solutions over to me (which he never does) but just kind of acts as my rubber duck, all that can really be said is that it's just a fortunate situation where you constantly have someone to bounce ideas off of. It's also a question of not becoming dependent of that person -- at first I felt that he literally always knew the answer to whatever I was struggling with, but by now I've realised that it's simply about the ability to think out loud and make conclusions as you go along, and I know that I have all the potential to do that on my own as well.
I guess it's kind of what the article is saying as well -- if you're used to someone being better than you and kind of like a mentor, it's difficult to adjust to a situation where you might just have caught up with them in terms of skill and expertise.