Being in tech is hard. Being in tech as a POC is even harder. As a person of color, there is a feeling like you don’t belong – the feeling that you are an imposter. You look at your peers, and you see people that don’t look like you…that don’t talk like you…that didn’t grow up like you. Most of us grew up in the “bad” neighborhoods – the under-developed, neglected neighborhoods of our respective cities. And if we were fortunate enough not to, then we still had family members and friends that did – so we still witnessed this imbalance first-hand. We learned from our families and our surroundings. We speak different languages, some of us immigrated from other countries where English is not the first language, and almost all of us speak “slang”.
Now, being in tech, we “made it”. We work with people who don’t share the same knowledge…erhm…struggles as we do. They are blissfully unaware – even if they are allies and know of the imbalance, they have not witnessed it first hand as we have. They did not grow up in this imbalance during the developmental stage of their lives. They also did not face the pressure of an immigrant family pushing you to be successful, so that your life would be better than theirs…and in some cases, because they needed you to be successful – for some, the only hope of leaving an impoverished life, was the success of their children. Throughout our lives we face this alongside racism…judgement from all of those around us – our families, our peers, and those who don’t even know us.
Now that that picture is painted – the life of a person of color (a very shortly abbreviated version of it) – let’s now add the issues we face in tech.
As a developer, we face a lot of pressure. It is easy to feel outdated or dumb, because it seems like every week there is a new tech trend or update or pattern that we should learn, all on top of getting our work done. It’s easy to fall behind. It is easy to feel like you know nothing, especially when you speak to people who put so much time and effort into keeping up, or who have jobs where their responsibility is to keep up *cough* *cough* *DevRels* *cough*. I’ve spoken to other developers – those who are not people of color – and they too have the feeling of being an imposter because of this. It’s hard to keep up and it’s easy to feel dumb – even when you’ve been a dev for 8+ years, delivered enterprise projects, learned multiple coding languages, frameworks, DevOps, etc – when there is one question you can’t answer, or a discussion you don’t understand, that’s when it happens. You feel like you don’t know something you’re supposed to know…and then it spirals. What else don’t I know?
AI. Buzzword. AI is everywhere and everyone needs it – to vibe code their applications, help code new features, write their emails, and even write their articles. But why? We didn’t need it just a few years ago. The argument I hear a lot is that it helps make emails or articles sound more professional. Or it helps us implement features faster. But there is more to it.
AI generated content is the new standard. People look to it like it is the best way to do something. Why have it write your emails or articles? Because it is believed that it will generate the “best” and most “professional” version of that content. The same goes for code, etc. So when people try to create something themselves, and it doesn’t sound like or isn’t up to par with AI generated content – it seems wrong. It feels like you are doing something wrong or at least not doing it as best as you can. Now imagine that you are an immigrant where English isn’t your first language. All of this “mistake free” content can make it feel like your content, no matter how hard you worked on it, feel like it’s wrong. It strengthens the idea that you don’t belong…that you don’t know how to do your job the correct way.
The reality is that AI isn’t being used in the correct way. We are giving it power to determine our voice, our ideas, our intelligence. We should not willingly give these things up. Great ideas, great stories, great work, all come from original ideas that humans thought up and worked on with their own brains. AI just copies those – it copies a standard. But we don’t want to be standard. The irony is that by letting AI do these things for us, we become what we fear – dumber. We lose the ability to problem solve, to think, to write, to be original. And our everyday no longer has excitement. We become those miserable depictions of people at their 9-5s, copying and pasting numbers into excel sheets for hours on end. Our brain isn’t engaged. It’s okay to make mistakes, it’s okay to have your own voice, it’s okay to not sound and look like everyone else.
I encourage everyone who reads this to be themselves. Write that post or email with your own voice, code that new feature using your brain, and continue to be creative! It’s okay to use AI – I mean, it isn’t going anywhere, and it can be a useful too – but use it to learn and to help, not to replace your mind. It is your assistant, your enhancer, not your replacement.
No AI was used in the making of this post
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