Jesus Medrano  0:00 
I had someone actually tell me this former inter he said, I feel like every second of every day, someone's gonna walk through that door and tell me, we made a mistake. You shouldn't be here, you have to go now, I think that feel. That's how a lot of people feel when they think about imposter syndrome. Someone's gonna catch up and find out that I'm not supposed to be here, and soon they'll ask me to leave.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  0:20 
Welcome to avidly adulting, the podcast where we tackle the wild ride of transitioning into your first career and all of the life lessons in between and beyond when life and career merge into adulting.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  0:37 
Welcome to avidly adulting and today's episode, it's me. I earned my place, overcoming the imposter syndrome. I'm your host. Dr Alber Lozano, Vice President of Alumni Services here at avid as most of you have experienced, finding your confidence, or more exactly, facing fear itself, especially in new situations or environments, can be challenging. Take the encouraging phrase, believe in yourself. How many times have you heard it? Yet doubt crept in, enough that in spite of all of your training and experience, you still questioned your value. Add or have you belonged in that space? Additionally, your inner voice silenced your support system that repeatedly told you believe in yourself. You got this. I know I have, in my early years of my career and even today, and I willing to bet all of us have had that once, twice or too many times to count, our topic for today is tacking the avalanche of doubt and sometimes paralyzing emotions that come with the imposter syndrome to help us explore this topic. I'm joined by Jesus Medrano and avid alumni and senior software engineer at Uber Technologies. Jesus, welcome. It's good to have you.

Jesus Medrano  1:57 
Hi. Thank you for having me here.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  1:58 
So let's start a little bit with Avid. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your AVID journey.

Jesus Medrano  2:04 
So I started avid in my freshman year of high school. I went to school at Southwest High School in southern San Diego. At that time, I wasn't really focused on trying to go to college. It'd be a nice to have, but nothing I was, you know, adamantly focused towards but I always thought I might end up going during that time, though, so was still getting into trouble and not set up with the right classes. Luckily, though, I had a very forceful and great, avid teacher who was very caring and helped establish me along the way. And every year my classes got more challenging, I was able to do more, more than I thought possible. And every year, that expectation of where I was going to go for school, where I could apply to just get the increasing. And towards the end, I was able to take just quite several amount of AP classes, budget those tests, then applied to a lot of schools, and then eventually got to MIT, where I attended, and graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  3:01 
Yeah, talk about expectations. Just for those subscribers that are joining us, A and B Courses are going to be your college prep courses that you take. That's what they reference them here in California, and it's the A through G courses are necessary for you to get into the UC system. So that's quite a thing from it's a nice to have to jump and make it to some of the elite few that are able to make it into a school of MIT. So output. What's your current role in your career?

Jesus Medrano  3:31 
So my current role in my career has been a interesting one is, I'm currently a senior staff software engineer at Uber. I was one of the original Android engineers who helped create the Uber Eats up many years ago. Now, I work with a team that works across a lot of the Uber, many apps that they have and just, you know, maintains and runs other core services from a mobile perspective. But prior to that, I was, you know, before doing mobile engineering, I was a back end engineer at Yahoo, where it was a new thing to go into to go do mobile, because it was a new cool thing to do. And prior to that, I was an aerospace engineer working at North dub Drummond. So changed my careers quite a bit of times, and even at North dub Drummond, when I first started out of college, I was kind of like a data analyst, and I worked analyzing a bunch of data and proposals, and I went from there to becoming an aerospace engineer, so completely changing courses. And then, like I said, I did it again become a software engineer, and moved to the Bay Area, and then did it again to become a mobile engineer. So it's been quite a bit of transition, but it's been fun each step of the way.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  4:36 
Yeah, we're gonna talk about the transition and how in the gaps between fun each step of the way your imposter syndrome set in, help us understand right now. So how is Avid or how does avid continue to impact your throughout your career changes and your role today? What are some avid strategies or philosophies that you still have today that help you manage your day to day and your journey ahead?

Jesus Medrano  4:59 
So. So it's funny, because originally, I'm not a very organized person, or wasn't, and so just keeping your binder organized, keeping your notes and what you need to do. I was not someone that ever wanted to really take notes, stop your writing, and wasn't very good, like I said, maintaining things and organizing things. So it was just something I had to do, and it wasn't something that I felt I really needed to at the time. But over time proved valuable in some cases. But as I went to college, it became more valuable then. So you started doing it even more then when you're at work and there's more things you have to juggle around, then you just really live in, you know, your whole day through your calendar, and every day, it's like, all right, what am I doing now? What do I have planned next week, next month? How am I doing these things? What to do now? How to prioritize. So the prioritization, the taking notes, the organization of how you're doing your things became much more valuable over time.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  5:51 
Now, while we're focused on our subscribers, listening to the first part of their careers, our topics are universal, and your advice or your experience are even helping me out. But I do want to come and talk a little bit about preparation and your years at MIT, because in talking to you, we talked a little bit about the imposter syndrome and that when you were on that campus that set in. So first, before we go to your MIT years, tell us who's How do you define imposter syndrome?

Jesus Medrano  6:22 
So I define impostor syndrome as just not having the confidence that you are where you should be, or that you haven't done enough to deserve to be the position you're in. So it might be the classes you're taking in high school, might be the college got accepted to, or even the job you're working at. So in all forms, it's you think, like, Man, I got lucky. I got here. Someday, I had someone actually tell me this, a former intern. He said, I feel like every second of every day, someone's gonna walk through that door and tell me, we made a mistake. You shouldn't be here. You have to go now. I think that feel. That's how a lot of people feel when they think about imposter syndrome, someone's gonna catch up and find out that I'm not supposed to be here, and soon they'll ask me to leave.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  7:05 
I'm right with you. I think someone's gonna walk into this office door and say, Albert, you shouldn't be doing some podcasts, but it's all about you the talent. So I wanna come back again as you defined imposter syndrome. And maybe you're not supposed to be there, where you should be, and you've earned it. Tell me a little bit about what you said before in our in our talks before this, how did you feel in MIT and how imposter syndrome crept in?

Jesus Medrano  7:32 
Yeah. So well, at MIT, it was it like you said, it was an elite school. You get there and you have no idea, should I be here? Was it a potential mistake? There's some people here with perfect grades, perfect T scores, amazing extracurricular activities, things that they've done, that they're pioneering a bunch of areas. And you're like, I haven't done something like this. How did I get to this point? And then you take your first set of classes and you're comparing. We're human. We all compare. We want to see how we are relative to each other and seeing what we're doing. And so at the beginning, everyone kind of feels like imposter. Everyone handles it differently, though. Every some people act overly arrogant or confident just to as a front. Some people just are honest and just are afraid, and tell everyone they shouldn't be there. And some just hide it and don't say anything. But at the end of the day, we're all somewhat feeling the same, just trying to figure out, do we belong? Do we fit in? Are we here for the right reason, or do we get accepted for and you know correctly so,

Dr. Aliber Lozano  8:33 
and knowing you as well, you're a first generation college goer, and how do these pressures also contribute in your preparation at MIT, and you alluded to that, that imposter shouldn't have set in.

Jesus Medrano  8:51 
Yeah, so I some of the peers, when you first get there, you're meeting new people, and they talk about how their parents, I went to MIT, or their professors at other schools, and they did this research, and some of the schools or things they've done in their past, or competitions they've done at an international level, or you hear people whose parents are executives at major companies, and you're just thinking, wow, like, I don't come from something like that at all. Am I going to be equipped to succeed here?

Dr. Aliber Lozano  9:17 
Yeah. And so how do you get back to a place that says it's me and I earned it, I

Jesus Medrano  9:25 
think at that point, when you first get there, is you just have to prove it to yourself and show some accomplishments, if you just you know what got whatever got you there. You just keep repeating that pattern of working hard, trying your best, and following that same path, and eventually you'll get some successes, and slowly you build upon those. When you know you pass that class, you get that good grade, you keep getting successful at what you're doing. Eventually it gets easier, same with school, same with work. And when you first get somewhere new at work, you're new, you feel like, Oh no, maybe I shouldn't be here all these other people have done. So much so then as you start just building and slowly, just keep building up, what you succeed at from the first small task. So then eventually leading projects or teams or whatever you end up doing, it takes those first small steps. But once you those like a little bit of confidence gets instilled each time. And then what I love to tell people, I tell especially new people all the time, as they join a new company or new place, everyone technically is an imposter. Everyone does it. Everyone feels the same way, and everyone else is feeling that they shouldn't be there, and that's okay. I think we're all just faking it to make it sometimes, when we start off so and it's all right, and it's you're not the only one.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  10:37 
I'm glad that we're making the transition into career, because I'm going to ask you some questions about how you've experienced imposter syndrome, but I'm looking at your trajectory, right? You're in this new space of mobile engineering, and this is years ago. So again, a trailblazer, and you talked about small steps, and I'm reminded, again, aerospace engineer, which is one of your trajectory, trajectories of the phrase, of course, landing in the moon. Neil Armstrong saying, you know, it's one small step for man, but a giant leap for mankind. And that's how you kind of have to take it. It may be one step, physical step for you today, but mentally, it may be a giant leap for you tomorrow in your career. So tell us when you entered your various career stages, especially early on, how did you and if you experienced the imposter syndrome? Give us an example or two, and how did you overcome it to where you are today?

Jesus Medrano  11:35 
Yeah, I mean, getting your first shot, that's the scariest part. You're going in there. You haven't probably been a part of the corporate world, or if your first time you know college graduate, you're probably your no one in your family might have had that experience either. So you're now having to navigate a completely different world that some people might be more comfortable in and you have never seen, from how do you act, the etiquette, how you dress, what you say, what you can and or shouldn't say, to how you know things are assigned, and how you communicate with your boss and your colleagues. So there's just an overwhelming amount at the beginning, because not just the technical aspects of what you're doing for your job, but just how to navigate the corporate world. So that's the first major step. Then part way through, I said I jumped to aerospace. That was huge, because everyone in that space mainly had a aerospace degree, and I didn't, and they had worked in this field, some for several decades. So how do you come in here and, you know, feel like you're qualified when you don't know any a fraction, a tiny fraction, of what everyone else does. So you just have to, you know, like I said, sit there, work hard, succeed on those first few things. But yeah, it happens every time you get a new job too, new place. Everyone has a reputation and is established and has done things and you haven't. You have to prove yourself all over again. And

Dr. Aliber Lozano  12:47 
I'm glad you even talked about being first fill in the blank, right? First generation, first to attain a professional career, first even to be in that career, because your family has been a family of fill in the blank, then you went totally opposite, and you talked about some of those triggers that set in, or that imposter syndrome comes comes into place, and a lot of them being in that first generation. So if you don't have family or friends or that network, what do you recommend as a possibly behavior or something that I should do to mitigate imposter syndrome early on in my career, or today,

Jesus Medrano  13:28 
I guess, a good first step. Luckily, we have the internet. It's a big resource. There's a lot of information. There a lot of it also, you know, luckily, when you go somewhere new, hopefully you're not the only new person there, but if there's anyone else, they're probably going through something similar. So it's good to just make this connect. Those connections early, find those peer groups that you need to, you know, help you along the way, and you know, sometimes even going back to your old peer groups, of your college friends or even high school friends, or people who might have gone that way, or even going back to an old teacher, any, pretty much anyone, mentorship or colleague you've had that might have some experience to that, just to try to figure out, Is this normal? What should I be doing? And just always getting there, just being an observant listener, but also asking lots of questions. I think asking questions is probably the best way to get past a lot of this, because you'll realize, Oh, this isn't something I should have known, this is something that you know is here, and I just kind of had to learn this eventually. But I think a lot of people get a little shy or overwhelmed that they don't they're too anxious to ask any questions, but I think that's really the best way to get over a lot of this.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  14:34 
Listen listen again for culture. Listen again for organizational, culture and management, and you've talked about it several times, and you mentioned it here again. How important is it to get a critical friend at work and or a mentor? You've talked about several people coming new into Uber and into your departments, and some of the tips and some of the advice you give. So talk about mentorship. And how that alleviates I do belong here. I earn my place. Yeah,

Jesus Medrano  15:05 
so it's critical. I think even if you're from an intern to someone very tenured and seasoned, and you come into a new place of work, you need both. You need one, a peer you can talk to, and you also need a mentor to help guide you where you're trying to go. And it's good to if one isn't assigned to you, which ideally they should, but isn't always the case. You go find someone quickly. I always just recommend that to someone, find someone that you see where they're at, and ask them how they got there. Just meet up with them, just to figure out what that path is, and ask them if they are willing to help you out. And then having that peer who you can just be honest with and talk to and ask questions you might be afraid to ask publicly with everyone else. Those are incredibly useful. You just need that other set of people to talk to, at times, just bounce off ideas. It's great to you know, to solicit feedback from others, and having that there from just other people you trust is very valuable,

Dr. Aliber Lozano  15:59 
all right. And I want to talk a little bit more of that, especially having a sounding board if you have a critical friend at work and say, you know, these, these, these are the thoughts that I'm I'm having. These are the concerns. Because the other thing I want to touch upon is the imposter syndrome could add more stress and anxiety. And while we're not going to focus on mental health or mental fitness in this I do want to say, when you're coming through the imposter syndrome, and it could be very anxiety driven or stress to reach out to your HR or people operations to seek help, it's okay to ask those questions, as Jesus has been saying, but and let's talk about organizational culture, especially for those of us who are first generation, fill in the blank, who are in that particular career, how important it is to learn about organizational culture so that I do feel like I belong and I can take up some space that I've earned. Tell me a little bit more about I like that you said learning etiquette, because growing up and as a first generation, we do not learn the etiquette, or we don't know the cultural norms, especially corporate. Talk more about etiquette and corporate and how you, as a learner and ask questions become more astute, so that you feel more belonged and can blend in or stand out from a crowd in a positive way. Yeah. So

Jesus Medrano  17:26 
I guess the first is, when you first get there, you know, most companies rely heavily on email, and there's a way to write a professional email, how you correspond with other people, how you ask, how you even know who to cc on an email, versus BCC, versus sending in the two. So such little things that you just have to pick up, and how you sign things and how you address others that you just, you know, eventually, hopefully you just read enough that you can learn. But it's not something you do growing up. It's not a natural thing. It's not something you do with your peers or family ever. So you get to the corporate world, this is the first time you might be seeing this, and so you have to be very good at mimicking that, you know, communication style very quickly. On top of that too, it's also when you're meeting with someone professionally, how do you also communicate the same not the same way, but in a manner that is both professional, trying to get your point across and trying to be very concise? I think a lot of people sometimes don't know how to get what they're wanting said in a quick manner, and then they just go on maybe too long or don't provide enough information. So it's just understanding how to communicate with the right sense of information you need. So there's a lot of those little, small things, or even just the way you dress. There's a lot of that too. First time you might not have the clothes, you have to quickly pick up. What should I be wearing for this type of role? Every role might have a different attire, and you kind of have to figure out what that is.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  18:41 
And I know that you you might you model the I in individual determination or ID and avid advancement view on individual determination. And you and I talked a little about books and people that inspire you. One of the people you mentioned was Angela Duckworth. Tell me a little bit about what you've taken and how that still applies to you from Avid into your work.

Jesus Medrano  19:03 
Yeah, so angel took worth wrote this great book called Grit, which is, you know, about hard work, and just a lot of great research on people who work hard, and while they're successful, and it's, you know, it doesn't matter what abilities you have, it just it's much more important how what your work ethic is to determine your success. So that's a great motivator, too, because it you don't have to be the smartest person or the best person at work. It actually encountered this over many years. Sometimes the smartest people don't move up in their career. It's either because of, either it could be work ethic or just could be the not understanding how to, you know, communicate with others, and, you know, having that the right amount of EQ or the right amount of way to to give get their ideas across, so it's important to know how to do all those things and how to be, how to influence others. And I realized that that's what was very important for successful career. So reading that book was just so useful to just. Reasserting that, hey, you just work hard. You able to overcome a lot of these things, and this is more important than anything else. So that was what really just impressed me.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  20:07 
Yeah, I know we've talked about which she talked that talent isn't luck. You know, as we talked about your preparation that led you to MIT, that led you into the various career trajectories, it wasn't luck, it was your talent. You you put the work in, you put the 10,000 hours necessary for you to get to that position. And talent times effort equals skill. And even when you were in the aerospace engineering space, you had a skill set. And the skill set is learn. Learn very quickly. It may not have been the content, but you had those durable skills that 10 transferred over. And I like again as we talked that you talked about, you know, then skills, times, effort is going to equal achievement, and you have achieved quite a lot in one generation for your family, and continue to be an inspiration for those that look just like you most unlike you and everybody in between, because the guiding message to overcome the I don't belong, or that imposter syndrome is put your head down and work hard, and when the opportunity is that you put your head up and own that light and own that space. So I appreciate the conversations we've had. I've learned a lot from from you. So as we in this conversation about the imposter syndrome, what are three pieces of advice you have for our subscribers that they can do today if they're struggling with imposter syndrome?

Jesus Medrano  21:37 
So three pieces of advice would be, there's just so much I would want to do, so sure if I was going down to just three. So first is, like your accomplishments are going to be your evidence. Look back at what you've done, there's probably more than you've done that you've come to realize. Maybe just like outline it, summarize what you've done in the past few months, a year, whatever would be your job, whatever you're you're looking towards, there's gonna be more there than you thought. And you could be impressed by like, oh yeah, I can't believe I did all these things. So actually, you do encourage people just keep a constant writing some document, keep track of everything they've accomplished, mainly for work. It is actually useful for various reasons just to go back and realize, Oh yeah, I did these things in the past. That's good. It's good for other purposes, but it would be good just for your understanding at the end of the year, how you know, giving you that help overcome that imposter syndrome and say, look, here's all my accomplishments. Here's all my evidence to prove that I should be here the next I would say, be very careful and be very specific on how you define what success is. You want to make sure that success is something very attainable. Achievable. Maybe you want to do something that's a little bit challenging and challenging, but you can't be perfect at everything. Success shouldn't be. I have to be perfect at all these things, everything at once and better than everyone. That's not something that anyone be able to do. So you want to make sure, like, what is something you're wanting to do at the end? What is that goal to say, this will be, if I can get these ABC things done, I'll be successful, or at least again, most of these done will be good for the end of the year. And then also that leads to what I would say, the thing, the third thing is, sometimes it's not perfection. It's like, what is good enough? My first job, I learned that I was so used to, you know, you go to you have a problem in engineering or math problem, and there is a not right answer. Is usually just one right answer, and you have to do it that way, and it has to be perfect in every way. And when you're at work, sometimes, well, that often won't exist. Sometimes there's multiple answers to a single problem. You have to learn how to weigh off the pros and cons all the trade offs, and then you have to decide, what am I going to do? And it's, this is good enough. And sometimes you determine that with communicating with others and explaining why maybe it's more optimal to do this, because this may be faster, and we can spend more time doing something else, or maybe want to do spend the more time to make that very thorough. So it's understanding those things like look at what you've done, make sure you know what success looks like for you. And it's, again, not about perfecting everything. And then what is that good enough scenario for those specific things you're trying to succeed at. Because success doesn't mean it's perfect, that everyone agrees, and you know, it has to look the Certain Way. It could be a maglimation of things. It could be so very different from when you first started to just understanding that those things happening have to be flexible. Yeah,

Dr. Aliber Lozano  24:16 
I agree with you. You know, the imposter syndrome at any moment, as you said, you have anxiety. You have stress that any moment you're going to be unmasked and taking down and talking about what you've accomplished to get to that particular space really gives you the scaffolding to not worry that if someone is going to open the door and question you, then we go back to the way what you said, if somebody questions you, then lead back with a question, and try to come back with a common understanding so that you don't feel like imposter and you don't have to be perfect. One of my colleagues says, Don't let good get in the way of perfection. So good. Good enough, and that's usually, though, how I sign out when we end our podcast, and you're going to hear it a little bit. But I do want to thank you, Jesus for your vulnerability. This is this is a challenging topic, and we know it's pervasive. Many of us feel it every day in the first parts of our career, and even in our careers today, because at any moment, we take self doubt and not taking a list and and going into our coffers, and look at what, how much we've accomplished up to this point. As you you've said, we know that as as we think about it, is a muscle you have to train, and you can't give up on it because or else, it'll get weak, and again, that voice will come in that even though people are saying, believe in yourself, you can do this. If you don't practice taking an inventory of the things that you've invested in yourself to be where you are today, then imposter syndrome is going to creep in. So I appreciate you taking us through your journey, talking about the imposter syndrome and giving us some skills and reminders of who we are and how we got here. So I'd like to end with this to our subscribers. Dr Seuss said today, you are you that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is your than you. Remember you're in that room because you earned it. Don't let self doubt steal the opportunity to show yourself first and then the world what you're capable of be good today. That's enough, and together, let's strive to be great tomorrow.

Dr. Aliber Lozano  26:39 
Avidly adulting is powered by our avid alumni and is brought to you by avid to learn more about Avid, visit our website@avid.org if you are an avid alumni, join our network@avid.org forward slash alumni. Thanks for listening to avidly adulting. Join us the first and third Mondays of every month as we feature guests and topics to help you navigate your first career with laughter, insights and life lessons, because adulting isn't just a job, it's an adventure.