For five long years from 2015 to 2020, I woke up every morning wondering if I could ever proudly identify as a software engineer. Coding was difficult for me, and despite selfless mentor after mentor investing time into me, I would look at successful women on stage at events and think, “That is not me; I just need to get good enough to keep my job.” It’s hard to describe how baffled I still am every day that I think I’m one of those women now.
In 2020, Datadog hired me after seeing my personal project which blossomed into Project Reclass. They provided me headspace to fully be myself and encouraged me to express systems the way they exist in my mind: a rigorous spatial expanse where shapes and colors have meaning and words are an afterthought. I finally fell in love with my career.
It’s not easy to publicly discuss imposter syndrome precisely because after all these years, there is still a voice in my head asking if I’m a “stereotypical diversity hire”. Would people think I have nothing technical to share that I spend a whole spotlight talking about not fitting in? But this story would have helped me back then – the tears, the vulnerable and uncomfortable conversations that paid off, the number of teams I went through to find my niche, and the people who kept me going. Which leads me to my final statement:
Mentorship matters. Mentorship works. Tech is a tough field to break into, and each of us can help.
Tay Nishimura 