Our Path to Development: Creating an Organizational Safety Net to Tackle Imposter Syndrome Among Developers
Many library organizations lack clearly defined paths to enable staff to become developers. Even when already working in library technology departments, this lack of transparent process makes it particularly difficult for new librarians/staff to feel confident in risk-taking during their learning journey, resulting in discomfort when reaching out to more seasoned colleagues for help. Our talk will discuss how our organization has tackled this problem by creating a safety net – including mentors, learning opportunities, and processes – that helps nurture new developers and combat the imposter syndrome that they can often face. As one concrete example of our learning path, we will discuss the Command Line Curriculum we use to onboard new staff towards Linux/Unix system administration and use. In addition, we will talk about the hands-on documentation to build library applications the “hard way” and a follow-up tutorial on how to automate these more challenging steps. Finally, we will look at some of our pairing and ensemble practices that allow us to feel comfortable amongst the more established developers, creating an open culture of knowledge sharing, collaboration, and confidence!
