Looking under the rug: the art of learning from failure

The tech industry has a longtime history of cultivating heroes and epic stories of success. “Look how this tiny startup became an industry giant!”, “Did you hear Joe just got his dream job?”, “Learn how to ship amazing projects to production in no time!”. We’ve all heard stories like these and they are indeed very inspiring, but how come no one is talking about the ugly parts? Why aren’t stories of things that didn’t work out more common in tech? Why aren’t we more transparent about our experiences and what we learned from them?

In this talk, I’ll go through all the lessons I took from failing miserably at a software project, how that made me a much better developer and the importance of failure in the career of a software engineer.

Transcript

1. Looking under the rug The art of learning from failure @silveira_bells
2. What is your worst fear?
4. 67K+ students
5. ~15K employees
6. mysql> SHOW DATABASES; +———————————+ | Database | +———————————+ | information_schema | | mysql | | […] | | sys | | employees | +———————————+ 7 rows in set (0.01 sec)
7. DELETE FROM employees WHERE salary = 0
8. DELETE FROM employees
9. DELETE FROM employees
10. ~15K employee records completely gone
11. Names, bank info, addresses, you name it
12. That definitely felt like doom
14. But it wasn’t
16. Isa Silveira @silveira_bells Mozilla Tech Speaker Software engineer @iZettle *But also a proud Brazilian, math freak and karaoke star
17. Isa Silveira @silveira_bells Mozilla Tech Speaker Software engineer @iZettle *But also a proud Brazilian, math freak and karaoke star
18. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS2HYJKndRc
19. So why do we fear failing?
20. Fear of shame
21. Self-sabotage
22. Impostor syndrome
23. No learning
24. No learning No evolution
25. No learning No evolution No innovation
28. “Even though Traf-O-Data wasn't a roaring success, it was seminal in preparing us to make Microsoft's first product a couple of years later.” — Paul Allen
29. 1. Improves confidence 2. Generates tons of learnings 3. Could lead to "happy accidents" 4. Faster recovery from future mistakes The perks of failing horribly:
30. 1. Improves confidence 2. Generates tons of learnings 3. Could lead to "happy accidents" 4. Faster recovery from future mistakes The perks of failing horribly:
31. 1. Improves confidence 2. Generates tons of learnings 3. Could lead to "happy accidents" 4. Faster recovery from future mistakes The perks of failing horribly:
32. 1. Improves confidence 2. Generates tons of learnings 3. Could lead to "happy accidents" 4. Faster recovery from future mistakes The perks of failing horribly:
33. Be transparent about mistakes you make and accept the mistakes of others
34. Vulnerability is key
36. “[…] getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” — Steve Jobs
37. The beginner’s guide of Fuckup Recovery
38. 1. Breathe 2. Create an action plan 3. Establish preventive measures 4. Revisit goals 5. Repeat cycle
39. 1. Breathe 2. Create an action plan 3. Establish preventive measures 4. Revisit goals 5. Repeat cycle
40. 1. Breathe 2. Create an action plan 3. Establish preventive measures 4. Revisit goals 5. Repeat cycle
41. 1. Breathe 2. Create an action plan 3. Establish preventive measures 4. Revisit goals 5. Repeat cycle
42. 1. Breathe 2. Create an action plan 3. Establish preventive measures 4. Revisit goals 5. Repeat cycle
44. “Why would I feel like a failure? And why would I ever give up? I now know definitely over 9,000 ways an electric lightbulb will not work. Success is almost in my grasp.” — Thomas Edison
45. Generated by CertificateMagic.com Certificate of Achievement Presented to You For being a fuckup expert 27 September 2019
46. Celebrate your failures and what you learned from them
47. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt
48. Köszönöm! ❤ @silveira_bells @silveira_bells