Original subtitles

My name is Mike, and

I'm a design manager at Google.

Growing up, I always had a computer in the house, and mostly we would play games and

things like that.

But we learned to be comfortable with a PC early on.

When I was in high school, I was in a drafting class,

and we used computers to draw.

I spent a lot of extra time learning from the teacher outside of class hours,

playing on the computer.

So, around that time I moved from the Northeast.

I was just outside of Philadelphia,

in South Jersey, so I moved to the South, in North Carolina.

And there was a lot of culture shock for me, and

also sort of a disconnected parents.

There was a lot of autonomy or sort of freedom in a lot of ways.

So, I ended up dropping out of high school just for a number of those discomforts

and kind of wandered off on a different path for a while.

I did a number of different things.

I worked at car washes.

I worked at restaurants.

I did network cabling.

I put installed network cabling in offices and buildings.

Eventually, I bought a computer a few years later and started tinkering again.

So, I started learning the tools to create a website for my dad's company.

So, now I had a kind of a client. And I just learned.

I just kept learning one thing after the other.

I'd build it, design it, publish it.

And then, I started wanting to make it do more, and

I wanted it to have some functionality.

So, I started learning simple scripting, and

it just kind of continued to evolve from there.

In the beginning, you're learning things so quickly, and there's just like

this excitement that comes with everything that you figure out that works.

And in one day, you could figure out how to do a layout, and manipulate colors and

fonts, and each one of those is like a little win.

It's just like a little boost that keeps you going for the next thing.

And eventually, they get harder and harder, and soon enough,

you're building fairly complex systems.

I definitely struggle with impostor syndrome even to this day,

and I've been in my career for 25 years.

Sometimes, it's just struggling to figure something out, and

then just starting to fall into the pit of thinking,

"I just can't do it."

And then, I just drive myself forward.

Just kind of a work ethic approach.

Persistence was a lot of it.

And also not being afraid to ask others, or to look for other inputs and resources.

You can't do and solve everything by yourself.

Knowing when you're stuck and maybe why you're stuck and

thinking of creative ways to get unstuck.

That really helps with impostor syndrome, and that's true today.

The nature of my work isn't as technical as before.

When I run up against something I haven't dealt with before,

I don't feel like I'm the most informed person in the room.

I listen or ask questions.

I try to find other resources to become more informed.