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You think about becoming a tech influencer is content is Queen
and consistency, quality and value matter.
That's the trifecta of creating content that sticks.
Hey everyone. My name is Henry sura, one.
And you're listening to the tekhelet journal.
The show will be bringing you the greatest technical leaders
practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to
discuss about their Journey ideas and practices that we all
can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team
and to make an impact in your personal work.
So let's dive into our Journal. Hey everyone, welcome to a new
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If you have any great suggestion on how to improve the podcast
for today's episode. I'm very excited to share my
conversation with Stephanie Hwang.
Stephanie is a Google Cloud developer Advocate and you might
have seen her online on YouTube talking about Google Cloud
related Technologies, see her in action presenting at conferences
or even listen to her on the how I launched this a success story.
Stephanie has a personal mission to blend storytelling and
Technologies to create remarkable online developer
contents. Stephanie also holds her own
YouTube channel called staff. You should know where you can
find Korea, tag and productivity tips and advice.
There are a lot of great things that we discussed about in this
episode, ranging from personal brand being attack influencer
public speaking career advice. And also how women can thrive in
technology. I really enjoyed this
conversation. Sensation and I hope you all
enjoy it as well. So let's get started.
Are you a start-up in software development Which is less than
five years old. If yes our sponsor at jetbrains
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link mention in the show notes. Hey, Stephanie, welcome to the
technique, you know, very excited to have you here in this
year. Hey, thank you so much for
having me today. I'm so excited to be here.
So Stephanie, maybe you can tell the audience here about
yourself. What's your role?
And what are you up to now? Sure.
So I am a developer Advocate at Google cloud and I focus on
online scalable content, specifically, and what that
means is that as a DA, I go out into the community and I create
content online, that makes developers want to share tweet
and talk about it. And essentially, the goal is to
advocate for And give feedback back to product, to eventually
improve the product prior to being a DJ.
I was a customer engineer or an industry.
It's also known as a sales engineer.
And an interesting point about me is that I actually didn't
graduate with a CS or computer science or engineering degree.
So, I've had sort of a unconventional path to where I
am today. In my spare time.
I am a big performer, I dance. And I use a lot of that into my
day-to-day work as a public speaker at Google interesting.
You mentioned, you didn't graduate from CS degree.
Can you share a little bit more? What's your journey like from
the University and then the turning points in your career
until you have this a deferral roll?
Yeah, absolutely. So I didn't know what I wanted
to do at University or even out of school while I was at UCLA.
I was very undecided and I ultimately did a communication
studies degree because I thought I wanted to go into
entertainment by the entertainment industry.
I knew that I loved being around production, and So in that
major, I was able to study both interpersonal and public
speaking, and then I did a few internships in the entertainment
industry. I remember working at a YouTube
start up for dance Channel and I also worked at Warner Brothers
records. So I kind of did production
assistant work here and there as well as some sales and I did one
Tech internship as well. Throughout that time.
I knew I had a fascination with technology though.
I didn't know that I wanted to become extremely technical at
the time. I ended up finding a new minor
called digital humanities. Teas where I did research in
analytics and visualization, but it focused primarily on the
study of humanities. So I would study art and
literature and history and we would visualize it and sort of
modernize that practice. So, it was clear.
I had an interest in the intermediary and fusion between
Communications and technology. So when I graduated from
college, I was applying all sorts of places and I ended up
applying to and making it into Oracle as my first job.
I didn't really notice. Too much about Enterprise
technology at the time. And I did it sort of, as a Hail
Mary. And I wanted to give it a shot.
I knew that it was a large stable company with a well-known
name. And I already knew I had an
interest in technology though. I wasn't extremely confident
because I didn't have a computer science background though.
They were hiring for sales Engineers.
So I knew that it would be a great entry point to learn both
business and technical skills. So, when I started there, I was
able to start with a lot of other college grads and I
embraced it. I learned as much as possible
and within In that year, I joined the business intelligence
and analytics team after the first year and a half.
I started to notice that cloud technology in the platform and
infrastructure as a service regions and sections in
technology, were gaining a lot of momentum.
So I decided to Pivot and do post sales implementations for
our customers. For our Cloud.
Technology is on the platform and infrastructure side after
doing that for a year and a half.
I eventually ended up getting reached out to by Google, right?
When you deal with this technology, especially when
technology was not your background, is there any major
challenges that you foresee along your journey, whether to
keep up with the fundamentals about technology, or even to
understand about technology products, are there any major
challenges that you foresee them?
And also how to overcome those? Yeah.
So I think because I didn't come from an engineering or computer
science background. A lot of the learning I did at
the time felt like I was presented a problem and I had to
go back and learn the foundation or the fundamentals of a base
design or what a virtual machine was how to virtualize technology
and then microservice architectures had just started
becoming more popular eyes back then as well.
So I really didn't have a huge context about how we're data
centers and on-premise Technologies before and how are
they now? So big challenge was working
backwards in a sense, learning the fundamentals and foundations
of computer science and Enterprise Technologies starting
with the problem. And then going back and trying
to understand the context of why it was a challenge and how they
could solve those challenges using.
Our modernized Technologies today.
One of the ways that I found that worked for me was to just
constantly be hungry to learn and leverage.
A lot of the mentors who had been at the company for a longer
period of time, and not be afraid to ask them for
one-on-one sessions to sit down with me and go to a whiteboard
and begin, to architect out solutions, that involve multiple
products and Integrations between databases and between
message, Brokers, Etc. So, I could truly understand the
big picture as opposed to just all the fine grained details.
At a very low level, thanks for sharing that.
So moving on to your current role as a death row.
I know, it's kind of like trendy these day to see death real
role. You guys are popular in the
YouTube channel linked in any kind of social media.
Maybe you can share, what is a death roll.
Yeah, so developer relations originally began because
companies wanted a way to advocate for developers.
You had sales teams, you had marketing teams who were able to
reach out to customers and clients business,
decision-makers and, of course, Market the products to those
audiences. But when it came to developer
challenges, it was very difficult for a group of people
who had specialized skills in that area to empathize.
And to be able to understand the deeper challenges that came with
developers, especially those who were either leveraging API
products, or we're working on creating customized Solutions on
top of the company's platform. So because of this more
technical approach and audience developer relations became more
popular over the last 10 years. Or so now, the team that I'm on
is New Google Cloud. Relatively speaking.
We are one of the first developer relations teams to
focus more on the online content side.
And the reason is because the person who started that team
notice that creating online content reaches a vast number of
people and audiences online, especially those who do not
typically have access to go to Tech events and see people in
person traditionally before developer relations primarily
focused on offering in-person events meetups and presenting at
conferences all over the world though.
That's still a huge. Focus today, online content has
become even more prevalent in the industry, especially given
covid and the remote working world where online and scalable
content has become extremely effective at still, reaching the
largest number of people and developers as possible.
So that's what my team does is we do podcasts like this.
We do talks online. We do meet ups but YouTube is
such an incredible platform to reach such a vast majority of
people even those that you may not have been targeting because
all of this information has been democratized and made accessible
to anyone make sense. So what are some of the major
attributes that are required to be a good death row?
Yeah. So the interesting thing about
devrel is that we have so many people coming from various
backgrounds. And the one thing I will say is
that in developer. Advocacy specifically, most
people need to have a technical or developer background in the
product that you're representing or the language that you're
representing for client library, for example, so public speaking
is huge as well as domain expertise.
And I would also say Developer empathy.
Be able to understand when a developer has an issue really
work towards solving their issues and listening to them and
then providing feedback back to product in an actionable way
where product can take your suggestions and be able to
create a feature that will prioritize developers
challenges. So I would say as a conclusion
developer empathy, as well as public speaking and domain
expertise. So you mentioned also in the
beginning about you using your performance background and also
probably gel that with Your death row row.
Can you tell me more about it? How do you use your background
in the performance entertainment doing production and to know?
Yeah. So one thing, I didn't mention
yet about my personal story, is how I transitioned from Oracle
as a customer success and implementation engineer over to
Google into developer relations. So, when I was about to leave or
Cole, I wanted to actually go and travel and experience the
world. And I also was trying to decide
what I wanted to do next. What was my next step?
Stone customer engineering was a huge experience and I found
Success Through that. But I was still in this
searching phase where I was trying to figure out what my
true passion was. And I'm sure that you've heard
the term, find your passion and you'll never work a day in your
life, which I took to heart very seriously a little bit too much
because I started to overthink that phrase.
So I decided to look around and see what other people on
LinkedIn were doing what my friends were doing.
And it seemed like everybody at the time was applying to
graduate school because of course, it's a logical step in
your career to get more schooling.
So I decided It to apply to Stanford thinking that I wanted
to go to journalism school and try to do digital journalism,
which was a new field. But as I was taking the test and
writing my personal statement, I realized, while I was writing
it, that I wasn't applying for the right reasons.
I was really doing it because I was falling, others step to
apply to grad school as a logical, next step.
And I wasn't truly passionate about the field like most other
applicants would be. So, I decided to move away from
that approach and really reflect back on.
What I wanted to do in the next two to four years, what skills
would be most important and what did I enjoy doing?
So I knew that I already had an interest and fascination with
production performing but also technology, so I dreamed of
eventually finding something that would allow me to do both,
but I kind of just left it in the back of my mind and said,
okay, I don't really know any roles that would merge those two
things. So, I'll just see what happens.
I'm just going to keep on going with the travel plan, then at
the time, Google happen to reach out.
About a sales engineering position or customer
engineering. And I went through the interview
process and eventually got the role, which I was super excited
about. So as I was starting my journey
at Google, I actually got reached out to, by somebody who
was also a customer engineer and he was working on his own online
content, for Google cloud and he asked me if I was interested in
helping him and I thought, wow, this is interesting.
We're kind of doing this small start-up within Google creating
online content using our webcams and microphones and it wasn't
funded by any means. It was just a Grassroots effort.
To do this, we started running around the lobby is running
around. The office, is trying to find
quiet, space to film demos, and invite other people on our shows
and have guests on our show. And eventually, we started doing
that for about six months and devrel reached out to us to ask
if we wanted to create online content in collaboration with
them, on the Google Cloud YouTube channel, which we were
thrilled to be involved with. So we started doing that.
And through that, my work creating online content started
to Bubble Up and get more attention and I was asked to do
Larger opportunities like present and host the broadcast
of our largest conference Google Cloud next.
So through that. I just kept saying, yes, because
they were challenges, they were exciting and I could do what I
had envisioned and dreamed of doing and it started to become
more real. To me eventually one thing led
to another and now I started on a team of the first online,
scalable developer Advocates. So that's exactly how I ended up
in devrel, which was totally unexpected.
But something that I wanted to do.
One thing I will say though, is that it absolutely, Literally
terrified me to join devrel because I knew it was even more
of a technical role that's part of the tech engineering side of
Google. I didn't really have any plans
on becoming more technical or joining engineering given my
background, but you know I said, hey, this is an exciting yet
challenging opportunity and I've always been told that if an
opportunity doesn't both Challenge and excite you then
reconsider, so I said, you know what?
I'm just going to try it. It's better just be more
technical in the beginning of your career and challenge
yourself because eventually when you You go into management or
higher levels, but you'll start to lose that edge later down
your career. So, I just took a chance and
I've never looked back since, and it's given me so many
opportunities to build my brand and become this Tech influence
there. As you said, it's been a great
experience. Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that. I think I can relate to some of
your sharing as well. Especially when you talk about
the finding of passion and trying to figure out what you
should do next, trying to find out what your strengths are.
And what kind of roles that will excite you.
I think these are very good sharing especially for those
listeners who are also Still trying to find your passion or
what you should do next. So advice from Stephanie here.
Definitely, you should check it out.
So about tech influencer, right? Given your online content and
all that, how you should position yourself, most likely,
as an expert, when you present that.
So what are the basic things that you should know about being
a tech influencer, especially for those people around that
wants to position themselves as a tech influenza in any area
that they want to Market themselves in.
It's a growing field. And as I said, building your
brand is crucial. In today's market with so many
people online competing for that real estate and that are spaced.
So, I would say that in order to become a tech influencer.
It's all about sharing content. And in the beginning, you may
not know. Okay, where do I get started?
What do I share? I don't have the expertise.
I don't have the knowledge. I don't have the authority, but
it doesn't matter. Because everybody online is the
same in the sense that they had to get started somewhere where
people didn't know who they were.
So I would say really Encourage Yourself to think about small
pieces of information that you can You can sharing on LinkedIn
on Twitter, on your social feeds and just start with anything.
You can try to create a framework first.
But if it's too, daunting of a task, just start sharing your
thoughts, your opinions or just pieces of information that you
find interesting in your field. Once you start to do that, then
you can start building a pattern of framework a strategy around
what your Niche will be. It might be helpful to start
with that too. Maybe you just want to focus on
networking content. Perhaps you only want to focus
on machine learning, you can definitely begin with that as
well. One thing that I like to To do,
is I take documentation. I take articles and I break that
down and start to understand the patterns and what my audience
might want to know. What are the narratives that
aren't being told to your audience today.
For example, I begin to learn by understanding common technology
architectures. Let's say, I want to focus on a
broad Architectural Group of topics like streaming analytics
or iot. Maybe you want to focus on how
to scale your architecture. Is it maybe you want to focus on
kubernetes and microservices? In my mind.
It's actually great to become sort of a Generalist in this
sense, even if you are considering yourself a
specialist because you can create a broader narrative and
story flow over. Let's say 20 topics over time.
Once you kind of nailed down. Okay.
These are the top 10 to 20 topics.
I want to talk about overtime. Here's this broad story arc.
Then you can start creating specific episodes or specific
podcast episodes, maybe even it's just a picture that you
want to share or an article or a gif and a quick caption.
Then the next thing you want to think about is creating
frequency around that. You need to make sure that you
Are sharing this content, very consistently to your audiences.
If you don't have consistency, then people will not see that.
You are becoming an influencer in that space.
Once you do that, you want to make sure that the content you
share is valuable. It's perhaps opinionated because
as you know, online people appreciate opinions, and it's
targeted to your audience, it's solving one of their challenges.
It's showing them something they didn't know before.
The think about becoming a tech influencer is content is Queen
and consistency. Quality and value matter.
That's the trifecta of creating content that sticks and two
books. I recommend about creating
valuable content is content, rules, and made to stick.
And I also follow Gary Vee on social media, because he is all
about creating content. So, I recommend checking out his
tips as well. Thanks for sharing that,
especially for those of us who are still thinking about
creating content. So I think just do it.
Find your Niche, find specialty where you are good at obviously
and then Start creating the content and be more frequent and
consistent in terms of your message and in terms of value.
So, specifically about format. I know there are few things that
we can explore things like blog posts, YouTube videos podcasts,
or any specific other content, are there any channels that
basically more effective than the others?
I've had this question before, and it's interesting.
I think that depending on the audience, of course, everybody
has a preference, whether they like to consume information via
YouTube, or articles or perhaps live, Game on Twitch TV.
There's live coding on there. For example, they are all
valuable and you can build an audience through any of those
means, if you follow my three tips around consistency quality
and value of information. I think that there is something
to be said, around YouTube and blog posts being something
that's proven to be effective. I think those are two solid
forms of mediums to use, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't
give live coding or livestreams the chance, because there's
probably Less people on those platforms doing such a thing.
So it could actually carve out a good opportunity for you to go
there and start building your brand there.
The other tip I'll say is, don't just focus on one medium.
The key thing about creating content is sharding, your
content, in other words, create one piece of content and then
replicate it across mediums. And that's how you reach an even
broader audience. So if you're creating an
article, maybe think about doing a podcast, if you think about
doing a podcast, create an article around it, create a
video film yourself, doing the podcast less work on your part.
And you really maximized. Expand your efforts.
Thanks for the tips. I should also follow one of your
tips as well going forward. So I've heard this quote before
public, speaking is actually the number one fear in the world,
even much scarier than being that itself.
What are some of your advice for people, you know, want to do
public speaking? Not necessarily on stage, but
also recording their first YouTube video because I'm sure
that will verify some of us really, really bad.
Including me, first time. I did it taste like, wow, what
am I doing? What am I doing?
Yeah, can you I share some of your tips around that.
So in my past, I had the opportunity to take public
speaking in college. Since I was a communication
studies major, but I also spoke on stage a lot because I had
done pageants. I was a dancer.
I was very used to performing on stage.
And then in my first position at Oracle, I presented many times
and in front of customers, as well, as in front of our
colleagues. Luckily.
I've had someone of a predilection to speak in front
of others and onstage. But by no means, was it a
natural tendency or natural skill for me?
And a lot of people come up to me and say, wow, you're so
Actually, I public speaking, you seem very authentic on camera.
But that is something that I've built over the last seven years,
at least. And it really takes practice.
I think that's the key thing to understand.
I joined an office club called Toastmasters and I think they
have that at many offices. Many companies around the world
and it essentially got you in front of a group of colleagues.
You come up with a topic every week and you present for our two
to five minutes and there's somebody who sort of critiques
you or counts. How many times you use um's
while? I didn't love that method.
It really does help if you Have it available to you.
If you want to give it a try. I personally find it better to
Simply get yourself in front of a camera or in front of a
mirror. If you don't want to film
yourself yet and just speak for 2 minutes on any topic and then
watch yourself. If you did film yourself and
critique yourself, if you're comfortable with it and or send
it to your friends or colleagues who you know, are better.
Public speakers? Because I think when you watch
yourself, you'll start to see that you might be looking off to
the side or you might be using your hands in a weird way, which
I definitely did at the beginning.
I Know what I wanted to do with my hands.
So I kind of kept them. Like I was holding something and
it just looked really awkward. So I had to practice that but
that really helped and then just getting on stage in any form.
Maybe you're a community leader. Maybe you want to stand in front
of your family and give a presentation about your favorite
Netflix show. It doesn't really matter what
the format or the topic is just practice getting in front of
people, like I did with pageantry and just do it as many
times as possible. I also took a course a couple
years ago called speechless that we have available at Google
sometimes and they offer virtual classes as well.
They're based in San Francisco. But the reason why I like them
is that you get one-on-one time with someone who will get you
thinking and on your feet, actually standing up, doing
silly exercises, that feel ridiculous to you, but it's
really just to get you out of your comfort zone.
So you might do a lot of weird vocal exercises, where you're
just doing weird sounds and shapes with your mouth or
perhaps, you need a, make up an improvised story about a
princess or a prince, and they want you to just navigate
storytelling and be Very improvisational about it and
that just helps you to think on your feet.
Be very comfortable taking questions from the audience.
And also learn how to tell a story from an authentic point of
view people, appreciate authenticity.
No matter what field you're in. So just practicing that
authenticity and not feeling so much pressure to be or look like
someone else or sound like someone else is key.
Yeah. So I think the tips of studying
maybe in front of mirror, another tip that I learned
myself as well is that you can even record yourself using your
handphone be like, Vlog Style, 2 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever
length. You are comfortable with and
just watch it for yourself, personally.
Criticize yourself and also think of yourself and does it
sound good, confident, natural authentic, things like that.
And then once you are comfortable, maybe you recall.
It daily. You can share it with you people
and ask for feedback because I'm sure there are exactly but who
can give a good critical feedback for you to improve on.
And as you continue that practice I think over the time
you get more natural, at least that's in my experience.
And also another thing that I found from your share.
As well. Is that, obviously, you will
find some awkward things. Either your sound, either your
arms or your silence and your hands waving for me, especially
doing this podcast. I learned that I talk a lot
like, you know, right. So when I edited the episode
basically, I learned. Oh, okay.
I tell all these things. Maybe I should improve next
time. So I think that's also yeah,
partly. Good learning.
So everyone will have their own story, their own quirks.
You just have to improve over the time.
You mentioned something about storytelling.
Why is it so important? For example, Tech influencer or
your death Rel or even like in general and people just want to
present stops. Why storytelling is very
important. Storytelling is hugely important
because think about the last piece of documentation, you read
for a technical product. Let's say it was for machine
learning products. And this is fine, because when
people write documentation, they're thinking, let me be very
clear about it. Let me write the step by step,
but it's hard for you to read it and to end sometimes or let's
say an entire white paper, unless it has a It's story
unless it draws you in. And usually, in order to draw
your audience in, not only doesn't need to Target the
developer persona, but it needs to really Target his or her
challenge that they're trying to solve.
So in order to tell a good story and needs to be an extremely
solution-oriented storyline. So you want to make sure that
you present that in the beginning of your presentation
or your video. What challenge are we trying to
solve here? Why is it relevant to you?
And then you dive into step-by-step?
Okay. This is how this product solves
it or how this methodology solves it.
And then you can wrap up by kind of reflecting back on what you
said and summarizing or providing any caveats or next
steps. So that's sort of a high level
overview of how you should structure your narratives.
Is there a way for us to improve our storytelling capability.
We all see, for example, TED Talks.
Obviously, they are like one of the best speakers in the world
about storytelling and presenting their message.
Is there any place where we can learn how to do the storytelling
better? You presented a good example
right there. TED Talks are known for great
presenters, and great. Stories instead of just
consuming that information. The next time you watch a TED
talk. Why don't you watch the Ted Talk
and really absorb the structure in which they tell that entire
story and start to take notes. What are they talking about in
the beginning? Why is it captivating?
And then what's the next thing? They start to move into and how
do they conclude the presentation?
What's the takeaway? And why was it so memorable?
And try to really analyze it if you have time.
The other thing I'll say is again, practice practice,
practice, if you can start to change how you do a quick
presentation at work. Why don't you start by?
By presenting The Challenge and then going into the solution and
then a conclusion, that's very clear and direct see if that
actually bodes even better with your audience and encourage
people to actually take action. So both practice and analyzer,
study are two things that I do. I've actually taken a couple
classes on it. I've taken master classes, which
is a startup company, that has some online classes, given by
some very prolific, writers and TV storytellers.
So, I've taken some courses on that even Disney.
I know they have a couple free courses online about how Friend
Disney, tell stories, and I view great resource to follow as
well. So given in this current
situation of people being locked down, working from home.
Are there any difference between presenting on stage and also
virtual? Absolutely.
I mean, I have focused so much on Virtual from the get-go in
terms of doing scalable content, but occasionally, I'll go to
conferences as well. In speaking person.
The largest difference between in person and online is that you
just don't have audience feedback and sometimes it's
really Helpful for some people to not have someone in front of
them and other times, somebody will get into the studio and
they'll start to look at the camera.
And they might have a teleprompter and they just
completely freeze because it's a new environment.
You don't have people nodding and smiling at you, and giving
you non behavioral cues, which if you didn't know, account for
70% of how people understand communication, so that's the
biggest challenge, right? Is being comfortable by yourself
in your own skin and presenting the information without
necessarily receiving any feedback from your audience in
order to overcome that, Then it's just I would say to fold
doing it a bunch of times in front of a camera without anyone
there. And then the second is being
very comfortable in the material that you are presenting.
You don't want to just show up on the day of and wing, it
unless you're good at that. But the way that you're good at
that is usually because, you know, the material very well and
you know, the story, you know what you're about to present.
So, just go into your meetings and create content, having
practiced a few times knowing what you're about to say, the
same goes for on stage presenting as well.
Right? So I still remember the first
time I did like a live webinar as well.
You're right. Right.
It feels we're having nobody. You just saw the cameraman
giving you feedback and cute. Yeah, I felt weird to me and I
think the key here again is just to try it out experiment and see
which format that you like, but obviously these days we are
forced to do virtual. So I guess we just need to get
used to it. So I think from your website I
saw as well that you are trying to be more prominent in terms of
helping people about their career.
For example, CV writing. What makes you interested in
doing this. Yeah, so I decided to start my
own. I've stayed because I wanted to
create a brand online and I think that's crucial these days
is to build a brand around yourself.
I wanted to diversify my brand, be on Google as well.
I wanted to be known as Stephanie Hwang, and not
necessarily stuffy Wong from Google Cloud all the time
because I think it's key, you want to make sure you always
have opportunities in all places, right?
No matter what happens in the world.
So that's one way of creating sort of like high availability
for yourself. In terms of creating your brand
outside of just one thing, not putting all your Your eggs in
one basket that Tech joke right there.
So yeah, I did that. It's called stuff are Wang.com
and you're right. I do provide Professional
Services and coaching and CV or resume reviews and edits.
And the reason why I started that is because I started
helping my friends and family years ago, doing this and they
said, well, you're actually pretty good at this and it's
really helpful. You should eventually do it.
And as, you know, with covid and the quarantine people have more
time on their hands and it was a great side project for me to get
that up and running and start. Offer it to people.
I'm hoping to build out additional offerings in the
future and then on top of that, I'm actually launching my
YouTube channel called stuff. You should know.
And that's also another effort to create an online brand for
myself and really build an audience.
When I say build an audience. It means you are becoming that
influencer. And if you don't like that
title, you are just becoming a content creator and forming an
audience that follows you for your brand and what you offer
them. So, on that channel, I'll be
Reading content around career lifestyle productivity,
technology, trying to keep it targeted as much as possible.
But so far, it's primarily around things.
Like what we just talked about today.
I like your joke about how you availability for us.
Obviously having brand online. I think it's also something that
all of us should think about what kind of brand you should
have online. Either, maybe even in your
social media. What do you want people to know
you about? And I think, yeah, we have
talked about so many channels and opportunities where you can
do that. So in terms of, CV writing if
you can share maybe some high General tips.
Some of the key things that we should think about when we write
us EV. Yeah.
So I think that your resume should tell a story and that's
very on brand, with what I've been talking about today because
I've been talking about storytelling a lot today, but
really everything does follow that framework.
You should tell your own story. You should make sure that your
resume represents your story. Well, and one of the things that
you can do is not just put everything on your resume, but
take a look at the positions that you You are aiming for or
positions that you eventually want to reach later down the
road. What in your resume will tell
that story and gear you towards that direction.
Make sure that you are putting yourself in a good position to
get there. So the other thing I'll say is I
really encourage people to unapologetically take ownership
in their greatest achievements. So instead of just simply
describing your job function and what you do at that company, you
should really be describing your biggest impact and how you were
integral to making that happen. And one way to do that.
Effectively is to replace all your duties with measurable
impact. So include some quantifiable
metric for perhaps because it's easier for people to wrap their
heads around that you want to be very specific about why how you
did that and what the measurable outcome was in summary duties.
Tell accomplishments so nice. So for those of you who would
like to have the coaching in terms of CV writing definitely
contact Stephanie and then you probably get more useful tips
and even practical examples on how to To improve your CV.
So, another thing that I want to talk about with you is about
women in technology. Obviously, we have still this
challenge in terms of number of women that is doing technology.
So what are some of your message in terms of empowering women, to
give it a try, to be more in technology?
Me being a woman in Tech has been a very exciting Journey for
me. I didn't even think that I would
be in technology when I was in school.
So for anyone that's even thinking about it as a
possibility or you want to Pivot your Into technology or perhaps
you're even in Tech and you just want to grow and continue to
push yourself or maybe you're thinking of leaving Tech.
I would really ask you to think about the impact that you can
make in this male-dominated industry.
And just understand that where I came from was very different
than most people in technology. So don't use your background or
your existing skill sets to, determine whether or not you are
qualified for a position in Tech, use your drive, your
mentality, your work ethic, and how much you've grown in the
past couple years to push you to where you need to get in the
future. I suffer still from imposter
syndrome and I specially experience that when I first
joined Google, but I now today use that as motivation rather
than reasons to be self-conscious or lose
self-esteem. Now, I funnel that into
motivation to grow and the other thing is that if you surround
yourself by people who are achieving something inspiring or
a role model that you look up to use that, as additional drive to
continue to push yourself in this field, because we really do
need Need more women in, not just Tech, but in leadership
roles in Tech and I believe that we need both men and women to
continue to support one. Another as others have supported
my work. If you see another woman's work,
who should be noticed, send a tweet.
Share. It, send an email.
Give positive feedback and recognition.
I've talked a lot today about how to promote yourself online
and it's very important that we do that for other women in Tech
because you wouldn't believe the power of social networking.
Whether that's internal at a company or externally, that's
how we make progress and get with women in leadership
positions. The second thing I'll say is
that I think managers and other Executives have to show visible
commitment to ensuring that there's Equity diversity and
inclusion of women and people of color in their team's I'm
grateful. I've had incredible managers who
make it a point to hire many women on my teams from all
different backgrounds. Even myself who came from a very
different background. They gave me a chance, and I was
able to succeed in this field when I didn't have the
confidence to in the beginning compared to where I am now, so I
really do think opportunity and recognition for women need to
come. All levels in technology.
Thanks for sharing that. So regarding imposter syndrome.
I think this keyword is definitely mentioned a lot of
times in a tech industry. First of all, for those of us
who are not familiar with this term.
Maybe you can explain what is imposter syndrome.
How do you know if you have it and like you gave some tips
already, but is there anything else that we can do to improve
not being too much influenced by this imposter syndrome?
So imposter syndrome is this mentality or belief in which you
doubt your accomplishments? For your talent because you have
this internalized fear of being exposed as an impostor or a
fraud. You know, you think to yourself.
How did I get here? I'm not as smart as the people
around me. I'm not as talented as some.
I don't belong here. I absolutely felt that when I
first joined Google and at different points in my career,
when I switch teams, for example, so I'm sure many people
face that it's probably has to do with both self-confidence and
just being in a very challenging or highly productive
environment, and maybe you have a lot of great, talented people
around you and that's fine, but just think to yourself.
Okay, I see them as highly talented and they bring a lot to
the table in that skill or that expertise may be there.
A machine learning expert for example, but what do you bring
to the table? I had to get used to telling
myself that I am different from the engineers around me.
I'm different from the developers.
I don't have that background. But what do I bring to the
table? Okay.
Well, let me think I bring storytelling.
I bring public speaking and enthusiasm around that and it
took a long time for me to get used to believing that in
myself. And it took a long time for, I
think other people to believe that in.
Me. But time is everything just
trust that in six months after you join a team that doubt will
turn into experience and it will then turn into confidence.
It just takes time and practice to get used to any change and
adapt to a new skill or environment.
Yeah, so I think for me as well, I definitely have impostor
syndrome just like what you mentioned everyone has it.
So I think the key for me at least is that you have to be
self-aware first about that. The next key action is actually
to acknowledge that and also obviously To think about other
things that you're good at just like what Stephanie mentioned,
right? If you focus on what you're good
at, and maybe you would not have that kind of fear and try to
bring that to the table. You that your work is at your
school or wherever you are, try to focus on that and maybe
expand a little bit. If let's say you want to have
other skills that you want to excel as well.
So over the time probably this impostor syndrome won't be, is
such a massive things that you should worry about.
But having said that we all have it from time to time, but you
won't just disappear unless you really train yourself to be very
confident and motivated and driven.
So regarding women in technology.
Why do you think there are some of these challenges since a long
time ago? Even up till?
Now? Why are these women are not
prominent? What are some of the barriers
actually? Yeah.
I mean, I think that there is a long history of systemic issues
that exist that create this sort of glass ceiling for women in
technology, as you know, computer science and technology
has primarily been male-dominated because the
developer community and Communities have been usually
focused on male programmers, engineers and computer science
from the beginning. But also even outside of
Technology seeing male CEOs and c-level, Executives has always
been prevalent and that's something that most Industries
face. So that coupled with technology
being male dominated from the engineering perspective, create
a more difficult path for women to become higher-ups in the
company. I also believe that at times as
I said earlier women, Men need to recognize women's work and
really give them more opportunities to take stretch
goals. I think that women often times
do face impostor syndrome. They don't apply for the
positions that they deserve because they usually apply to
ones that they know they're qualified for.
Whereas. I think I've seen a stat that
men more times apply to positions that they might be
under qualified for, but they're willing to take the chance
they're willing to take that risk.
So I also think it's important for women.
You really understand that they can go for those stretch goals.
They can really go for those positions.
Even if you don't think you're qualified just yet.
If you think, I still need another year before I should go
for that promotion, you know, maybe I don't have as much
experience as that guy and on my team who's going for that
leadership position on my team or project manager for this new
project that we're focusing on really push yourself to do that
because I think it's the responsibility of everybody else
to support women in technology. But I also think there's a
mentality shift that needs to happen in order for women to
push themselves and continue to persevere.
Fear through these glass ceilings.
Thanks for sharing that. So before we wrap up, I would
like to ask you. Is there any great experience
that you have found so far when you are doing your death roll,
roll, any things that stand out, interesting unique, weird or
whatever that is. Yeah, so I had such an
incredible experience recently when I was able to start and
land a project where I got to visit a Google cloud data
center, and create a video around it and I'm very grateful.
Full for that experience because less than 1% of googlers gets,
you visit a Data Center and see its interior and it all started
because I have incredible team of supporters at Google that
were able to give me an opportunity to reach out to the
right people and create a story that had never been told about
how we handle security at Google.
We actually have six layers of Defense at Google and a lot of
people are like, oh, this is like Ocean's, Eleven trying to
break into somewhere. And, you know, it's like very
Mission Impossible style. So it was really cool, being
able to go in and see, See, get my eyes skin.
Do biometric scanning, go through a circle lock, see what
the data, center floor looked like, and sounded like and see a
lot of hard drives getting shredded.
So that was just an incredible experience.
And then on top of that, I was able to work with an amazing
camera crew with drones very high production.
So, you know, that was it. Perfect example of me, being
able to get that dream experience of working, both in
production at that level and then also really cool technology
and the physicality of Technology.
Everything in the cloud isn't really in the cloud.
It leads back to a Data Center. And so Hope is to one day,
create more videos around the physicality of the internet and
where your data resides and how it actually moves around the
world. Nice.
Yeah, so I saw that video as well.
You being in the Google data center.
I think for those listeners who are interested to find out, do
check out on the YouTube and you'll find Stephanie exploring
Google cloud data center going through all these six layers of
security. Lastly.
I would ask you this question in which I always ask my guests in
the episode. So Stephanie, can you share with
us? What are your three technical?
Leadership wisdom that you want to share with the audience.
Sure. So, the first one that I will
leave with everyone is luck, is where preparation meets
opportunity. As I've told through my stories.
I had a very convoluted route to where I am today, but a lot of
people are like, wow, how did you do that?
It seems like you've had a lot of luck and I say that to myself
all the time, like, I've had luck to get to the position.
I'm in, but I really do think that preparation needs to meet
opportunity in order to give you that.
Look remain, curious. Let your intuition.
Tell you, when opportunity doesn't feel right and when you
think you should learn more in a certain skill and just say yes
to challenges that allow you to get out of your comfort zone,
and challenge you continue to say yes, to those opportunities
to speak, at the next largest conference.
For example, just get yourself out there.
The second one is that for public speaking practice makes
perfect. Public, speaking doesn't come
natural to most people. It's a crucial skill in today's
market. And in order to build your
brand, definitely focus on practicing public speaking.
And then lastly, as I've mentioned before content is
Queen. It's similar to the Ray's
location location, location. In this sense.
It's content content. Content, expand your brand, this
way and doors will open for you. If I've learned anything as a
content creator over the last couple years.
It's that consistency quality and value matter.
That's the trifecta. Thank you for your wisdom.
Definitely, those of us who want to build online personal brand,
for example, or also producing content.
Stephanie. Thank you again, for being part
of the show today. There's so many things that I
personally also learn myself trying to build my personal
brand. Stephanie, thanks so much, and
hope to see you again one day. Thank you so much Henry.
It was great talking to you today.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode,
share it with your friends and colleagues who would benefit
from listening to this episode. And if you liking this podcast,
I would love if you subscribe and leave me your valuable
review and feedback. It really helps me a lot.
Stay tuned for the next technology, you know, episode.
And until then. Goodbye.