The Moth New Year, New Leaf: The Moth Podcast
9 snips
Jan 2, 2026 Laura Gilbert, a writer and former Google engineer, shares her journey from dance to coding while grappling with imposter syndrome in the tech world. She candidly discusses her on-call experiences, including a high-pressure incident at 4 AM that tested her skills and confidence. Meanwhile, Elliot Higgins recounts his skydiving class adventure gone awry, where a quest for an easy A led to an unexpected leap of faith. His tale of overcoming challenges amidst aerial chaos is both hilarious and insightful.
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Coding Restores Control
- Laura Gilbert realizes that reading errors and debugging gave her control when the world felt chaotic.
- She frames software engineering’s privilege as the ability to fix concrete problems amid uncertainty.
First On-Call Panic Into Problem Solving
- Laura describes her first on-call night, panicked but methodical as she traces graphs to find the issue.
- Her anxiety shifts to curiosity and she helps fix the outage over several hours.
Imposter Syndrome Doesn’t Mean Incompetence
- Imposter syndrome coexists with genuine competence and a thirst to stay until the problem is solved.
- Laura suggests that ‘faking it’ can look like persistence and curiosity, not deceit.
