Imposter
I love indie games. I really enjoyed Papers, Please and Gone Home. I grew up on Pokémon and Kirby and most of what Blizzard released in the 90s. And I’ve beaten Spelunky, widely recognized as one of the more difficult platformers of our time.
Spelunky is pretty respectable, I guess. How about the secret ending?
I’ve beaten the secret ending a few dozen times.
How about a million dollar run?
I have two, actually.
And an eggplant run?
Well, no. I haven’t done that. Almost nobody has done that!
So, you can’t prove that you’re a real gamer.
Comics and graphic novels are such a great storytelling medium. I really like the art and use of light in Frank Miller’s stuff. The Sandman series was just wild and imaginative and gripping. Bryan Lee O’Malley’s art style is great, even if I’m not always sympathetic to his characters. And Persepolis and Maus were such a powerful way to open people up to new perspectives.
Not to mention all the classic superhero stuff. That has always been a great jumping off point for the imagination — Batman, Spiderman, the X-Men…
Who’s your favorite superhero?
I don’t even know. I get a kick out of Batman because on the one hand he’s so brooding and emo and it’s kind of silly. But at the same time he does so much with no superpowers and that’s kind of awesome too.
What, did you watch The Dark Knight and decide you liked Batman?
I didn’t even bother to watch that whole trilogy! I got into Batman as a kid.
Have you even read the comics? Do you even have a favorite run? Can you even name the major artists who’ve drawn Batman over the years?
So what?
Better not talk to anybody who actually cares about comics, then.
I’m really excited about working in technology. People are building amazing things every day, and I get to be a part of that. It’s incredibly cool.
What, as a PM? Everyone knows PMs don’t actually build anything. Do you just ride off the real engineers’ work?
I’m a strategist now, actually. And sure, I don’t get paid to write code but I do know how to make things! I’m even half decent at Javascript these days.
All of that is really beside the point, though. I’m really good at what I do, and it has just as much of an impact on people as if I was coding all the time.
Javascript is all right. Do you use React or Angular? Maybe Ember?
I don’t really work on projects that are big enough to warrant that. I just roll my own js, with a little jQuery to make traversing the DOM simpler…
Those aren’t real projects, though. Come on, you’re using jQuery. That’s hobbyist hacking at best.
I’ve never claimed to be a great programmer. My degree was in Electrical and Computer Engineering. There wasn’t a whole lot of software development what with all the signal processing and robotics and controls classes.
So why aren’t you an electrical engineer, then?
Well, a lot of reasons. I knew that I didn’t want to do a PhD, so I didn’t really think it made sense to pursue all of the theory that I enjoyed in my communications classes. Robotics was a ton of fun, but the industry wasn’t in a place that I felt good about when I was graduating. I didn’t really enjoy embedded controls, and still felt a little shaky on that stuff anyway. Software wasn’t my thing, either. I spent a lot of my energy on higher level systems work — piecing together a solid electrical system using a lot of COTS components was invaluable in the lab, but I wasn’t sure how well it translated to industry.
You weren’t good enough to be an engineer.
I did really well in my engineering classes! I learned quickly and got really good grades in a pretty demanding environment. Sure, not everything was easy and there was always someone who knew more than me because they’d been tinkering since they were little, but I was good at it.
I just chose to go down a different career path. I really like what I do! It challenges me in a lot of different ways and gives me a way to apply a wide variety of skills.
People like you are why there aren’t any women in engineering.
