Let's Stop Making People Feel Stupid

Doors open - 18:30
Clare Sudbery - 19:00 - 20:00
QA until close at 20:30

We are excited to announce that Clare Sudbery, a lead consultant developer with ThoughtWorks, will deliver a sneak preview for her talk for Agile Manchester.

“I know nothing.”
“I know less than nothing.”
“I am an impostor.”

Have you ever had these thoughts? Have you wondered why? Would you like to reduce the frequency of those thoughts for yourself, your colleagues and people who are yet to even consider joining your profession?

Have you ever heard people say things like this:

“Wow, I just discovered my colleague doesn’t understand Y. I’m shocked.”
“Can you believe, I just interviewed this dev, and they didn’t even know what a Z was?”

Over my 18-year software career, those last two have been said to me countless times. They are said derisively, scornfully, impatiently. And every time those words are said, we lose both existing and potential members of our profession. We lose them because they feel stupid; because they believe they can’t keep up; because they’re terrified that people are saying the same things about them.

If somebody already feels like they don't fit in, then this kind of pressure and insecurity can be the final shove that persuades them to leave the profession or not try and join in the first place. Women and non-binary people, people of colour, older people, LGBT people and many other under-represented groups are strongly impacted by intellectual elitism. Indeed ALL software professionals are impacted.

Instead of knowledge, let’s focus on aptitude. Instead of judging people on what they don’t know, let’s help them to feel excited about all the new things they’re going to discover. We want to build strong, capable, diverse, multi-functional teams that can happily embrace any challenge. To do this, we need to nurture our teams by building confidence and eradicating insecurity.

Instead of saying, “For God’s sake, do you really not know about X?” let’s say “Fantastic, you don’t know about X! Lucky you. That means you get to learn it. What can I do to help?”

Looking forward to seeing you there.