Rub[berDuck]yConf, I :mustache: you a question

by Tara Scherner De La Fuente

In her talk titled "Rub[berDuck]yConf, I :mustache: you a question," Tara Scherner De La Fuente discusses the concept of informal mentoring through the metaphor of a 'rubber duck.' This metaphor stems from programming, where developers explain their code to a rubber duck to debug their thoughts.

Key Points:

Learning Process: Tara shares her personal struggles with learning and how her earlier experiences, particularly with her PhD studies and coding boot camps, shaped her understanding of different learning styles. She emphasizes the importance of understanding how you learn and advocating for your own learning needs.
Rubber Duck Concept: The term 'rubber duck' in the programming context symbolizes a non-judgmental listener or a tool for debugging one’s thoughts by verbalizing them. This idea has expanded to represent any informal mentoring relationship.
Mentorship Experiences: Tara recounts her experiences with informal mentors who supported her learning. For example, she highlights mentors like Sonia and Daryl, who provided crucial guidance, allowing her to grow in her capabilities and confidence.
Creating Trust: The talk underscores the importance of establishing trust in mentoring relationships. Tara illustrates this by discussing her approach to asking questions and the significance of maintaining confidentiality with mentors to foster learning.
Vulnerability and Growth: Tara discusses how sharing her vulnerabilities, such as her struggles with learning and body image, can create a supportive community, allowing others to feel comfortable in their own struggles and fostering an environment for personal and professional growth.

Conclusions:

Tara concludes that everyone has something to learn and can find value in being both a mentor and a mentee. By easing the learning journey for others—acting as a rubber duck—individuals can contribute positively to their community while also enhancing their own understanding and skills. The collaborative process of teaching and learning leads to mutual growth, highlighting the critical role empathy and support play in the tech industry.

00:00:11.450 Okay, so 'Rub[berDuck]yConf, I must ask you a question' is the title of my talk. You know, the problem is I planned this part of the talk where I would say that I was just saying sentences because my voice usually shakes at the beginning of these, but my voice is not shaking, so okay.

00:00:24.539 And we've already gotten the first curse word out of the way. Normally, my body is a big, big betrayer, but I guess it's just not gonna betray me this time, which is kind of a betrayal, right? Okay, so we're gonna start strong.

00:00:37.890 Now, years ago, I failed my PhD exams twice. How's that for starting strong? I really wanted that piece of paper; I worked years to get it. So, I bought a PhD from a diploma mill, from a sort of a semi-accredited university. And so I do have a PhD; it's on my bookshelf at home because I'm not proud of it. I don't even post it on LinkedIn, where I put all of my really important certificates.

00:01:06.240 By the way, in the background is Terra the goat, which it's not a coincidence that she was named after me, and she's awesome. I clearly take LinkedIn very seriously.

00:01:30.470 But back in my PhD years, my first mentor, Jim Schiff, really ramped up his efforts to help me pass the exams after I failed them horribly. He helped shape my understanding of how I learn, how I process information, and how I communicate what I learned. He said to me—this is the first new goat—'Tara, you like to walk around the barn before going inside,' and that really sums up how I learn and how I approach different things.

00:02:19.439 You're all kind of discovering that during the talk as well. We're sort of walking around the barn, but that description has been essential to my understanding of how I process what I'm trying to learn or can't seem to learn.

00:02:29.320 One of the reasons I'm giving this talk is because I struggle with grasping concepts more than the average person. This is a talk about learning at all levels; we're always learning, but at least in terms of how we mentor, or more informally, how we mentor or are mentored and how we learn about ourselves is what I'm going for.

00:02:42.050 My problem with learning was really brought home to me again during coding boot camp. We paired with new people every single day and organized our way around the room. We started with the slow people who wanted to go slow at one end of the room and the people I called the golden children were over at the other end of the room. I was hanging out by the windows as far away as I could get.

00:03:06.680 It turns out, of course, that some of my perceptions about what people knew or didn't know were wrong. But I got a clear impression from all of the different people I was pairing with that how I was learning was very different. I was making progress, but it was very different. I want to emphasize that while there was progress, that knowledge of difference can do a real number on a person. I don't want this to be a talk about things you can't translate into your own experiences, so you're just gonna have to trust me when I say my struggle was real and it was beyond the norm.

00:03:40.340 So I'm just gonna stop for a moment because I'm gonna tell a lot of stories. I figure I may as well make some actual points: you should learn how you learn. It's essential to learn how you learn, and it's helpful if you are trying to help someone else to learn, to help them figure that out.

00:04:03.850 But ideally, learn how you learn so that you can communicate what you need. I wish I could go back to those PhD exams. I feel like I have a better chance of advocating for myself and explaining to my professors what I would need in some different test-taking strategies in order to succeed. But I can't, so I want you to learn how you learn so that you can communicate that with others.

00:04:49.970 Then, learn how you don't learn, fail a whole bunch of times. I am very good at this. You go into code and you fail a whole lot trying to solve different things; it's the same with learning how you learn. What failed for you one time might succeed for you the next, and so you really do have to try a variety of things in order to sort that out.

00:05:23.569 I mention this specifically in this talk because when you work with different people and you're trying to mentor folks, even informally, you really need to learn to look for a variety of different ways that they are learning as well and kind of modify what you're doing when you can. Even though some of your colleagues might attend a talk on being a good mentor, you are really the person vested with the interest in learning.

00:06:06.319 I mean that I'm sure it's quite obvious, but it really doesn't matter if somebody comes and gives you the thing that tells you how you learn; it's your responsibility to take that and communicate it with others and figure out how to make up for your weaknesses in learning.

00:06:30.020 I want to make a distinction between what I experienced with my slow learning and imposter syndrome. I also have imposter syndrome because I fit somewhere in that circle. A key point from my PhD exam failure example is that I'm a real misfit when it comes to learning and communicating what I know.

00:07:01.300 I realized that everyone kind of thinks they're a special snowflake—and I am—but we all think that. I want to make sure that my own failure is really clear. I'm not sure why I want this so badly, but I do. I want to ensure you understand my failure was beyond the norm because prior to me failing my PhD exams, only one other person in the previous decade had failed the exams.

00:07:31.050 He admitted to taking a nap during the timed exams and then filed a grievance. He was allowed to write his dissertation and continue. I'm not bitter, well, maybe a bit, but this was big. I have a large monthly payment that reminds me regularly that I don't learn like other people learn, and how I learned can be expensive.

00:08:02.720 Spoiler alert: the reason I'm sharing this is that it isn't this dire for most folks, and I hope that's encouraging. Even if things are this dire, one can still succeed, and I say that from the stage of the National Conference for my primary programming language while gainfully employed. That's my evidence that you can still succeed.

00:08:22.820 I really like you people. I want to make sure that we have a common understanding of what I mean by the concept of being a rubber duck. By the way, my friend Robin drew this; she also designed the goat user stories stickers, and it's so much better when it's not in VGA. You're just gonna have to trust me that she's really talented.

00:08:55.620 So if you need a graphic designer, the idea of a rubber duck, I believe, originally comes from the book 'The Pragmatic Programmer,' where a programmer is debugging by explaining the code line by line to a literal rubber duck. That meaning has come to mean different things as time has gone on, but it usually involves something inanimate or perhaps someone who doesn't provide technical knowledge to the solution.

00:09:19.950 In many ways, that's used now. You might start an email or a Slack message to somebody and solve it simply by writing it out to the person. In that regard, they're kind of an inanimate helper.

00:09:44.580 Okay, back to it: it gets worse. As I was saying, I have a new job recently, and I am trying to learn a ton faster and not be found out as a learning misfit. I wrap up my day and then I start reading code books, taking online courses, and watching YouTube videos about coding; I'm trying to grok all the things at once. I'm also learning a new programming language, so that's part of it, but my body is a betrayer.

00:10:34.530 I don't know if this is true for everyone, but my body is, and it's like the more I try to keep being a learning misfit a secret, the more my food issues flare up and I gain weight—and I mean a lot of weight. I'm really good at that. It's as if by hiding my misfitness, my body makes me confront not fitting in in a physical way.

00:11:06.000 It really sucks, so now I must ask you the most obvious question: why the heck am I sharing my failures, my learning issues that are outside the norm, and food issues of all things at a tech conference?

00:11:29.620 In small part, I am using you. If my beliefs about psychology and how it's connected to physiology are correct, then by confessing my true fears of being found out as a learning misfit, by putting those out there, I'm hoping that it might solve the problem.

00:11:53.850 I'm actually very good at losing weight when I'm not struggling with these issues, and you're basically all being my rubber ducks right now. I realize you're not inanimate, but just by being part of an audience and not necessarily a dialogue with me, you are my confessor rubber ducks.

00:12:28.580 I'm Jewish, by the way, which is why it's a rabbinic duck and not a priest. So you all are being my rubber ducks right now. The theory for me is that once this is out there, once I am explaining the problem to you, the solution will be okay. Like I have confessed this thing that is really difficult for me, and hopefully that will free me after I have a problem.

00:12:54.660 And I want to be freed from my sugar issues. That's all I want.

00:13:24.250 Another reason for sharing my personal experiences with you is that we are all vulnerable meat sacks. We might have come to this room or this talk for different reasons, but a key reason that I'm up here is so that you have knowledge rather than just information.

00:13:42.470 Knowledge is important, and I want you to understand how smoothing the way for somebody else can help someone who is dealing with outside the norm struggles or even inside the norm struggles. Again, we are all vulnerable meat sacks.

00:14:08.610 Beyond career-related practical reasons, that might be a good reason for being a good mentor. I'm hoping to appeal to that level. You might not put on 50 pounds every time you're under a lot of stress and trying to hide your learning misfitness because you might not have any, but we all need folks to support our efforts.

00:14:37.270 I'm hoping that you will do this because I am why this stuff matters; you are why this stuff matters. We are, to borrow the name of one of my favorite podcasts, greater than code.

00:14:51.210 Within your own boundaries, I want to suggest that you facilitate other people's learning and growing in their careers. I'm not saying you have to go in and fix people's food issues, but if you can ease the way in your career with your colleagues, that can help them deal with the other challenges they've got going on.

00:15:08.250 I started with this to give you examples beyond your own, especially if you don't have any, about how easing the code-building process can ease up other areas.

00:15:32.020 Now, you may be asking why would anybody hire slow-learning Tara, and that is an excellent question. But first of all, I hope that I'm a nice person and that people like being around me.

00:15:59.370 So, as you can see, I'm a frickin' delight! But really, I mean people who experience the world differently see possibilities instead of obstacles, and that is a great trait to have when you're dealing with code.

00:16:31.520 My whole life, in terms of food issues and learning, has been full of obstacles. I'm so used to failure that I just keep going; I go back around the barn if it didn't work the first time.

00:16:58.210 I am a good person; I'm half-round. I'm gonna dig in there and help you build your feature and debug your problems. It'll be fine.

00:17:20.480 Now, I'm getting to the practical stuff. We have circled the barn. Sonia, my first engineering mentor, she was my official engineering mentor. She paid attention to how I learned, and when we paired one-on-one, she would ask me specific questions about the code we were working on in that context.

00:17:52.690 She would say things like, 'Do you understand what object.method is doing here?' Those weren't their names; they had better names. But do you understand what object.method is doing here? Do you know why we changed that thing to do this other thing? The specific in-context check-ins helped me know that she cared about my progress.

00:18:20.950 This is where the more traditional imposter syndrome comes in. I still don't know whether she purposely asked me things that I would know to instill confidence in me or if I just knew more than I thought I knew. It's probably a bit of both, but we just never know.

00:18:47.370 But I got to be Sonia's rubber duck because I brought very little technical knowledge to the table, fresh out of boot camp. She asked questions of me that were really questions she was asking for herself—not these object.method questions—but asking what she should do next.

00:19:13.210 Should she be concerned about this or that? This taught me what questions a senior engineer would be asking about their code. It was a mentoring process; even though I was in that mostly silent role of a kind of rubber duck for her, I learned a whole heck of a lot.

00:19:44.440 One of the takeaways I want to give is that people can learn from both seasoned individuals and those who are less experienced in the field. There can be any pairing scenario, and honestly, there is an opportunity to teach and learn in those pairing sessions. I hope folks take advantage of that, especially if you're helping someone level up a bit.

00:20:08.050 I want to talk about a different sort of mentor that I had. I had a variety of colleagues who were all very good at helping me answer some of the questions I had, but I had questions that I considered stupid questions.

00:20:37.280 You can talk to me later about whether I should ever say that again, but I call them stupid questions. They were the kinds of questions that I knew a junior engineer, a newbie, would ask. I asked these across the team, but I saved my stupid questions for Daryl.

00:21:08.730 Daryl was there on the right; he taught me how to rebase first of all, which was very exciting. He walked me through my first three rebases and celebrated with me when I did one successfully by myself. He was not there when I nearly passed out after doing something horrible during a rebase. I was literally pale and clammy, texting Kerry Miller from the floor of my apartment.

00:21:39.470 Daryl was there for most of my stupid questions. Here’s what happened: he established trust with me through his rebase instruction, and then I asked him one of those stupid questions that would reveal that I should not have been hired. I asked him not to tell anyone that I asked that question, and he did not.

00:21:59.690 So from then on, I decided this is perfect: I'm gonna limit my exposure and ask Daryl all of my stupid questions, and only he will know that they never should have hired me. That is a fantastic technique I want to suggest to you. Most of you probably already have mentors at your first job, so establish trust with some of your less seasoned partners.

00:22:22.130 Or heck, even same-level colleagues. Establish trust with them and develop a secret pact, if you have to. It's crucial to have those special moments with people who can mean so much to you and level up your career.

00:22:44.950 It’s important to first establish trust in order to get to that place. So here’s some easy career boosting mentoring and rubber ducking advice: once I felt more confident that I had reached at least the average spectrum of junior developers, I confessed the pact to our boss.

00:23:03.210 Daryl was not my mentor, but he mentored me, and he got promoted. I don't think it was because I told, but it couldn't have hurt. Daryl was very talented, and I'm sure that's why he got promoted. But it didn't hurt that he mentored a junior developer while he was there.

00:23:29.100 I made sure that his boss knew about it, as it was career building for me, and I wanted to make sure it was career building for him. So the takeaway here, I hope probably obviously, is to show gratitude to those folks who take the time to care about your learning and keep your secrets.

00:23:52.530 You really need to be that secret pact provider; it's essential. This happened recently, and I don't know if you can tell, but the VGA makes it difficult to see. I got a response from Brian Hall, 'You can name me as long as it’s either good or you’re calling me an ass.' This is in Slack.

00:24:24.840 If you do not recognize, Brian was a different kind of mentor. Daryl had been promoted and moved on to a different team, so I picked the right time to tell my secrets. No one was left on the team who knew I should never have been hired.

00:24:56.290 I had solid footing in coding. I didn't pair much with Brian while he worked with me at LivingSocial, but we did some SQL and jQuery together. We didn't have a lot of time as the dark days of the LivingSocial layoffs came, and we went our separate ways.

00:25:21.570 Fortunately, we continued maintaining communication with other LivingSocial employees. When I started my new job, I still had coding questions, and I didn't want them to know how little I knew in those early days when I was trying to learn everything, and I was stressed out because I don't learn very well, anyway.

00:25:58.610 I would contact Brian via Slack, and without sharing proprietary information, we would discuss the things I was working on in code. Soon enough, he started helping me, which was great, but we reached a milestone where I was asking fewer questions.

00:26:27.460 That became an important recognition for me. So if you find yourself in a similar position where someone is asking you questions that they start to dwindle, that’s a great thing to point out.

00:26:53.610 Like, 'I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re reaching out to me less. You’re still welcome to do so, but that’s probably a cool sign that you’re feeling more confident.' And I was.

00:27:16.940 Then what happened with Brian was that he stopped being able to answer my questions because I was working on projects that were far enough along and asking more technical questions. I could no longer just ask him a question without us being in the same codebase.

00:27:44.260 That was an important milestone, and it was great he recognized it; it helped me acknowledge it too. So as I’ve worked with developers newer than me, I’ve gotten to try out these questions, which I think is fun.

00:28:04.440 I literally pinged Slack bot to do this slide, but this is what I sent to folks: and you can tell I was up late. This message is a pretty good icebreaker. I mean, it's hard not to smile when you get a mustache and an inquiry.

00:28:33.940 It’s hard to turn down somebody who sends this, and I know that because people I have done that with have sent it back to me. It just makes me laugh, and I just know this is a person I'll have a good rapport with.

00:29:03.220 So we’re going to do some mentoring. I never think that part, but that’s what’s happening right now. Okay, we’ve only got three more slides, and we're coming down to it, I promise.

00:29:30.000 I’ve tried to suggest that caring about the vulnerable meat sacks around you might be a motivator for asking good questions and being a trustworthy mentor, but also, becoming a better version of yourself is a good motivator for being a good mentor or a good rubber duck.

00:29:50.430 Everyone can learn from good questions, including the person asking them, and mentoring can be as easy as answering stupid questions and keeping them secret.

00:30:04.360 If none of that human stuff motivates you, remember that Daryl didn’t get a promotion, so that’s good. Okay, one more circle around the barn. Back in the PhD days, oh my god, you couldn't even see that owl; trust me.

00:30:30.890 This is a really great slide. Back in the PhD days, I took a few feminist theory classes, and they bored me to tears. I still don't really know what was going on in those classes, but the significance was totally lost on me.

00:30:59.370 I didn't know why it was important. It made no sense to me. This was maybe why I failed the PhD exam. No, though actually, Women's Studies was not one of my areas of concentration, so it was fine.

00:31:29.470 But I never could have imagined that joining the tech industry would teach me so much about feminist theory. Lest you think I'm going somewhere else with this: it's this community, especially the Ruby community, from what I can tell from the various conferences I've attended, and people I've talked to.

00:31:54.200 It’s this community that's taught me to see commonalities alongside differences, to learn better communication in the presence of difference, and to appreciate difference.

00:32:23.250 A series of mentors, both formal and informal, have helped me level up to a place where I get to learn more about my betrayer body and then reveal it to a large crowd of folks in this setting.

00:32:43.400 Most of all, I’ve learned to appreciate that being able to appreciate difference is so important to me, and you have all inspired me to share what I've gained.

00:32:56.510 So I want to return it back to you. I’m sharing this because I want you all to keep this up, and in a more conscious way than you have already, and expand on it and grow.

00:33:10.270 It has been life-changing for me, and I’m eternally grateful for it. You give me hope that we can all treat one another in a way that honors our differences rather than hiding them, and I’m extremely grateful for that.

00:33:43.420 I've shared some stories and offered some specific questions to ask both of others and of yourselves, and I hope that you give your best for yourselves and for those around you. I am again deeply thankful that you have all been my rubber ducks, at least for a half hour or so.

00:34:06.746 Thank you very much. I have no idea if I have time for questions, and I don’t really have to, but I do have stickers if anybody is interested.

00:34:17.670 I do have a question if nobody else has a question. By the way, I'm totally blind up here so you'll have to say something if you have a question. Oh, I have ten minutes? Okay, I'm gonna start because I’ve already got the mic.

00:34:36.740 Yay! I do have a question because I thought of this far too late. Some of my slides don’t translate well for visually impaired folks, but I went to SlideShare and I couldn't add captions to my slides. If anybody knows a tool where I can post my slides but add captions so people who can't see my awesome pictures, like no one could see the owl, that would be great.

00:35:00.820 My Twitter handle is @ExcellentMedia. Thank you, Jennifer. That was my question!

00:35:43.030 Are there any others?

00:35:55.850 That is a really good question, especially considering. I think most people have heard about mansplaining before, and nobody should go there.

00:36:24.830 I think one of the best things to do is to put the action and the power for that action in the other person. Even just asking a question. I’m a big fan of questions, just so you know. I do have a bit of knowledge about something like ember.js components.

00:36:55.370 Would you like to talk about that? I’m more than happy to hear from other folks in the audience who have ideas, but for me, asking a question like that is a great place to start. Certainly, do not start with, 'Well, actually.' I don't care who’s involved in the situation; don't start that way.

00:37:36.750 I was trying to recap it, but I lost track. I noticed you flailing, but I was going to summarize that and for the video presentation. But we were asked how you know when to step in. One suggestion was to ask what the person is working on and how they're doing.

00:38:05.110 They can explain what they're working on in a neutral way, and they might just get to the part where they’re struggling, right? You don’t actually have to explicitly state that.

00:38:37.750 The basic suggestion is that you’re asking how they’re doing and what they’re working on, and you might just end up being a rubber duck. They might figure out what’s going wrong for themselves.

00:39:06.350 Conversely, where they might be struggling might be due to how they're understanding what's going on. By explaining it to you in the way they understand, you could gain insight into what they need help with.

00:39:23.150 Thank you! I really enjoy having Sam in a meeting.

00:39:34.920 The recommendation I’m repeating for the sake of audio is that if you have an opportunity to see someone struggling in a particular way, you can ask them the question you think they want to ask but might be a little nervous about.

00:39:47.530 That also builds trust, even if they don't know for sure that you did that on their behalf. They know you’re a person who has similar questions, and that in itself can build that bond.

00:40:00.050 How much time do I have left? Does anybody know? There’s a huge sign. Okay, I’m done.