Episode 38: Impostor Syndrome 2

In this episode: Seven Immigrant Computer Scientists from Season 2 of the podcast talk about how they tackle Impostor Syndrome, Failures, and Rejections. 

Episode Guide

In this Episode: Quick tidbits of advice! Seven accomplished and prominent Computer Scientists, from across academia, industry, and entrepreneurial world, discuss their approaches to handling the dreaded Impostor Syndrome, failures, and rejections in career and life. The Impostor Syndrome is commonly faced by a Computer Scientists when they doubt their internal professional skills and believe–either occasionally or chronically–that they may not be part of their community, and will soon be discovered as a “fraud”. This is a remix episode, featuring snippets of conversations from Season 2 of the podcast. Featuring: Pratima Rao Gluckman, Regina Barzilay, Tal Rabin, Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea, Thamar Solorio, Ricardo Baeza-Yates.

• mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
• 1.18: Introduction to Episode
• 2.02: Act 1 – Pratima Rao Gluckman, Engineering Manager at Meta (Immigrant from India)
  • Telle Whitney (co-founder of Grace Hopper Conference with Anita Borg): “Just show up.”
  • Just imagine a world where you’re only successful. That would be so boring!”
  • Job market is like dating.”
• 7.16: Act 2 – Regina Barzilay, Professor at MIT (Immigrant from Israel)
  • “I am just a vehicle to bring the group (and research) to this point.”
• 10.01: Act 3 – Tal Rabin, Head of Research at Algorand Foundation, and Professor at U. Penn (Immigrant from Israel)
  • “Understanding the magnitude of my father’s work really came with understanding the technical material more.”
  • “I think it’s something very special for a child to understand what their parent does at such a deep level.”
  • “I can tell you – many many times I’ve heard. Oh my God, she’s not like her father.”
• 15.22: Act 4 – Ion Stoica, Professor UC Berkeley and Founder of Databricks, Conviva, Anyscale (Immigrant from Romania)
  • “It has to deal with your own expectations… the difference between reality and expectations.”
  • “If you have very low expectations (of yourself), you’re going to have fewer rejections.”
  • “We are good at solving problems… when you have a failure, look at it as a problem to solve. Puts us in an active mode.”
  • Ion talks about his early fears: “The Fear of Being Wrong”
  • “If you’re right all the time you don’t learn much.”
• 19.35: Act 5 – Rada Mihalcea, Professor U. Michigan (Immigrant from Romania)
  • “Do you want a recipe for success? … It’s quite simple really—double your rate of failure.” – T.J. Watson
  • “Impostor syndrome is an interesting psychological phenomenon, you think everyone is good, and you are not, and you know the others think good of you, but you do not, and you choose to trust yourself that you are not good.”
  • Rada talks about the benefits of being an introvert!
  • “I get myself some high-heeled boots and red nails!”
• 25.24: Act 6 – Thamar Solorio, Professor U. Houston (Immigrant from Mexico)
  • “Acknowledge your negative emotions”, “Don’t stay inside them; Move forward”
  • “If you don’t get rejected, you’re not trying hard enough.”
  • “My support network… I vent out… They are my rock”
• 32.27: Act 7 – Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Professor Northeastern University Silicon Valley, and Head of Yahoo! Labs in 4 continents (Immigrant from Chile)
  • Handling Failures and Rejections: The Story of the Distributed Search Architecture in Yahoo!
  • Handling Impostor Syndrome: The Story of Chess
  • “In many ways you feel you are doing better than you should.”
  • “Just do it.”
  • “Don’t plan too ahead… I’m sure Obama never planned to be President.”

Episodes Like This One 

This is a remix episode from Season 2. If you’re interested in hearing the full interviews with these 7 Computer Scientists, they are available in Episodes 24-36 of our Season 2 (see links below).

If you’re interested in the Impostor Syndrome episode from Season 1, featuring ten prominent Computer Scientists you can find it here: [Episode 16: Impostor Syndrome]

Stay tuned for more remix episodes coming up during summer 2022!

Featured in this Episode

• Pratima Rao Gluckman, Engineering Manager at Meta 
• Regina Barzilay (also Episode 27), Professor at MIT
• Tal Rabin (also Episode 27), Head of Research at Algorand Foundation, and Professor at U. Penn
• Ion Stoica (also Episode 31), Professor UC Berkeley and Founder of Databricks, Conviva, Anyscale.
• Rada Mihalcea (also Episode 31), Professor U. Michigan
• Thamar Solorio, Professor U. Houston
• Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Professor Northeastern University Silicon Valley, and Head of Yahoo! Labs in 4 continents

Useful and Relevant Links

• Impostor Syndrome
• Pratima Rao Gluckman’s book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech” [Amazon] (referenced in Act 1)
• More links available in the individual episodes (See “Featured in this Episode” links above)

Recently on Season 2

Season 2 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

• Remix Episodes: [Comparing oneself to others]
• Anonymous 2 (Finale of Season 2): Featuring multiple anonymous stories and a hate mail response from the host [Episode 36}
• Central America and South America: 2 Episodes
  • Interview with Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Prof. Northeastern (Silicon Valley), Entrepreneur, Yahoo! Labs Worldwide VP and Leader. Immigrant from Chile. [Episode 35]
  • Interview with Thamar Solorio, Prof U. Houston and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. Immigrant from Mexico. [Episode 34]
• Romania Segment: 3 Episodes
  • Interview with Rada Mihalcea, Prof U. Michigan, and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. [Episode 33]
  • Interview with Ion Stoica, Founder/Creator of Apache Spark, Ray, Mesos, and founder of Databricks, Anyscale, Conviva. Prof at UC Berkeley. [Episode 32]
  • From Romania: Episode featuring 2 distinguished Computer Scientists (Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea). [Episode 31]
• Israel Segment: 4 Episodes
  • Interview with Regina Barzilay, Prof MIT, and Cancer Survivor. Double Immigrant from Moldova to Israel, and then Israel to US. [Episode 30]
  • Interview with Moshe Vardi, Prof Rice Univ, and Winner of Gödel Prize and Knuth Prize. [Episode 29]
  • Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof UPenn and Head of Research, Algorand Foundation. [Episode 28]
  • From Israel: Episode featuring 3 distinguished Computer Scientists (Tal Rabin, Moshe Vardi, Regina Barzilay). [Episode 27]
• India Segment: 3 Episodes
  • Interview with Pratima Rao Gluckman, author of book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech”, and immigrant from India, and leader in Silicon Valley. [Episode 26]
  • IIT Madras, Computer Science Batch of 1998: Interview with 7 graduates from that batch (comprising about 25% of the batch). 4 PhDs + 3 Masters. 3 entrepreneurs, 3 industry long-timers, and 1 Professor (host). [Episode 24, Episode 25]

In case you missed it | Season 1 

Season 1 featured 13 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

• Remix Episodes featuring Impostor Syndrome, Balkan Wars, Wars in Lebanon and Egypt, Industry vs. Academia, Computer Science in 1970s and 80s, Diversity and IOI, PhD and Entrepreneurship.
• Several anonymous narrators, from across many continents. (Episode 15).
• Our interview with Danqi Chen, Gold Medal winner at IOI (Informatics Olympiad) in 2008 (only woman Gold medal winner), and student in famous Yao Class at Tsinghua University. (Episode 14).
• Our interview with Jelani Nelson, “immigrant” from US Virgin Islands and creator of AddisCoder program in Ethiopia (Episode 13), especially his last segment on IOI data inequity analysis.
• Our third segment (Episodes 9, 10, 11, 12) on Middle East, featuring entrepreneurs and a famous academic family from Iran, Lebanon, and Egypt, starting with the Middle East Entrepreneurs lead episode.
• Our second segment (Episodes 5, 6, 7, 8) featuring Computer Scientists from Brazil, all of whom spent careers in both academia and industry, going To and Fro between Brazil and US, and to and fro between academia and industry.
• Our first segment (Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4) featuring Computer Scientists from Yugoslavia, A Country That No Longer Exists?
• Check them out!

• Credits
  • Music Credits for Podcast
  • The caption picture at top of page is of stalactites inside the Bridal Cave in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, USA. Pic taken by Indranil Gupta.

 The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!