Merge pull request #958 from yaahc/imposter-syndrome

Add inside rust blog post on imposter syndrome

Author: yaahc

posts/inside-rust/2022-04-19-imposter-syndrome.md

@@ -0,0 +1,125 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Imposter Syndrome"
+author: Jane Lusby, Project Director of Collaboration
+team: Rust Foundation Project Directors <https://foundation.rust-lang.org/about/>
+---
+
+*Preface: This is in response to some feedback the project directors received
+from the Rust Foundation staff. Some of the contributors they'd talked to said
+they didn't feel justified in applying for Foundation grants even though they'd
+love the opportunity, because they don't feel qualified or deserving of them
+compared to the other amazing contributors they look up to within the Rust
+project. This was a little bit heart breaking to me, because I know exactly
+what that feeling is like[^1], and I also know just how wrong they are.*
+
+Imposter syndrome is an insidious problem within software communities. Many of
+us, especially members of marginalized communities, struggle to shake the
+feeling that we aren't as qualified as our peers. This makes us feel
+unqualified and undeserving compared to those around us. It can make us
+hesitate to join communities in the first place and, for those already
+involved, it can create a sense of impending doom where you constantly feel
+like you're going to get found out and expelled from the community. Overall
+it's just not great for mental health, 0/10, would not recommend.
+
+The thing is though, imposter syndrome is a logical fallacy[^2]. Imposter
+syndrome occurs when we discount what we know and inflate what we think other
+people know, and this effect is often then reinforced by systemic bias for
+those of us who don't get the assumption of competence.
+
+![picture of imposter syndrome, left side shows a large circle saying "What I think others know" and a small circle inside of it saying "What I know", right side shows the same small circle saying "What I know" surrounded by many other equally sized small circles labeled "What others know"](/static/images/2022-04-19-imposter-syndrome/imposter_syndrome.jpg)
+
+In reality, we're all specialists within the Rust project. We all have areas
+where we have deep expertise and other large areas where we only have the
+vaguest idea of how things work. [Niko](https://github.com/nikomatsakis), one
+of the lang team co-leads, former compiler team lead and core team alumni,
+still comes to me to ask questions about error handling. I frequently need to
+tell my fellow contributors that I have no idea what the acronyms they're using
+mean[^3]. But this doesn't mean we don't deserve our positions within the
+project. We don't expect every contributor know everything, to be perfect, or
+to make no mistakes. The only thing we expect from our contributors is the
+ability to collaborate effectively with others and a willingness to learn and
+grow over time.
+
+The thing that makes the Rust project as good as it is isn't a couple of
+prolific contributors lifting mountains by themselves, it's everyone working
+together that brought us to where we are today. We all make mistakes. The
+project has layer[^4] after layer[^5] of safeguards to make sure we have a
+chance to catch and fix them before they affect our users. These incidents are
+unavoidable, expected, and honestly fine! This is the most fundamental
+philosophy of both the Rust language and the Rust project: we don't think it's
+sufficient to build robust systems by only including people who don't make
+mistakes; we think it's better to provide tooling and process to catch and
+prevent mistakes. It isn't an accident that our motto is "A language empowering
+everyone to build reliable and efficient software." We want people to feel
+empowered to make changes they're not 100% confident in, to make mistakes, to
+learn, and to grow within the Rust project. This is how all of us got to where
+we are today!
+
+So, if you look up to people within the Rust project, if the work we do here
+interests you, if you have always wanted to contribute, and _especially_ if you
+already have contributed, I want you to know that you're one of the people we
+want to apply for [Rust Foundation grants and
+fellowships](https://foundation.rust-lang.org/grants/). You're one of the
+people we want to eventually see join teams. If you're already on a team, I
+want you to know that you're there for a good reason, and we value your
+judgement. You're not an imposter, and I want you to know that I really look
+forward to seeing you around the project.
+
+---
+
+*To help reinforce and normalize this, I've gathered a list of times when
+current or past project members have struggled with imposter syndrome, have
+made mistakes, have had to ask "basic" questions, and similar experiences that
+will hopefully help set more reasonable expectations for new and old
+contributors across the project.*
+
+* [Jane Lusby](https://github.com/yaahc/): "I frequently struggle with imposter
+  syndrome and feeling like I don't get as much done as my peers. When I do all
+  of my work based off of notifications I completely lose track of what I've
+  done and end up starving the tasks I wanted to work on. I'm learning to set
+  reasonable expectations for myself, getting better at managing distractions,
+  and being intentional about when I respond to github/zulip notifications
+  which helps me with keeping track of what I've done and making steady
+  progress on my priorities."
+* [Josh Triplett](https://github.com/joshtriplett/): "I didn't fully understand
+  `Pin` until I read fasterthanlime's ["Pin and
+  suffering"](https://fasterthanli.me/articles/pin-and-suffering) blog post and
+  I gave a talk in 2016 where my [most important
+  point](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8Gl3RTXf88#t=24m40s) was that people
+  erroneously believe that you have to be an expert to write an RFC or change
+  Rust, but that I wasn't, and you don't need to be one either."
+* [Ralf Jung](https://github.com/ralfjung): "I am still surprised anyone is
+  taking Miri and Stacked Borrows seriously."
+* [Forest Anderson](https://github.com/angelonfira/): "As someone who just
+  learned last week what `dyn` does, it still amazes me that I have something to
+  give as a team lead. I was immersed in Rust communities by writing weekly
+  blogs about Veloren (I took this on because I didn't know enough to contribute
+  code), which lead to helping with the Rust Gamedev newsletter, which led me to
+  helping to run the Cross Team Collaboration Fun Times meetup!"
+* [Felix S Klock II](https://github.com/pnkfelix): "Back in 2015, while I was
+  presenting a tutorial on Rust, and explaining `&T`, I had someone from the
+  audience, a Rust expert, say "ah ah ah! but what about interior mutability";
+  and in my mind I thought "... oh no; what is that?", followed by "... what am
+  I doing, I'm not qualified to be up here...". All of us "imposters" must
+  strive to prevent such moments from becoming barriers to our own
+  participation. I've learned a lot about Rust (and group dynamics, and
+  organizational behavior) since then, but I'm still learning every day;
+  re-learning, in some cases."
+
+[^1]: Quote from https://yaah.dev/getting-involved: "What happened at the
+  Google meetup you ask? Manish, our wonderful meetup organizer, walked up to
+  me, unprompted, and asked “Hey, you’re Jane right?”. I was shocked, how the
+  heck did Manish know who I was? It didn’t feel as though I’d done anything
+  worthy of notice, and yet here he was asking for me by name."
+[^2]: https://twitter.com/ithinkwellHugh/status/1175900121097220096
+[^3]: https://github.com/rust-lang/project-error-handling/issues/34#issuecomment-1092269566
+[^4]: Any irreversible changes such as stabilizations require almost everyone
+  on the relevant team to approve the change and zero people on the team to
+  raise concerns.
+[^5]: We double check all changes with
+  [crater](https://github.com/rust-lang/crater) before they ever land on stable
+  and are careful to [quickly](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/88967)
+  [revert](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/90904)
+  [changes](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/82913) that cause problems
+  on crater or nightly.