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CAMILLE LAMY: Thank you.
Hi, everyone.
As Elizabeth said, my name is Camille Lamy.
I'm very happy to be here tonight and quite humbled,
to say, to be in front of all of you like that.
And really, this is my first time
doing this kind of talk about my life story.
It even has a fancy title, so that's nice.
And I have no idea of how it's going to go,
but, hey, let's get started.
So to tell you a bit more about myself,
I'm a software engineer here at Google Paris.
I'm what we call a tech lead for a project that's
rewriting how web navigations are handled in Chrome.
So a tech lead at Google manages the technical orientation
of a project, but not the people associated to it.
So my project is not very big.
That means I also do a lot of coding in my day-to-day job
to get the project moving along.
To be frank, I did not want to be a software engineer when
I was six years old.
I did not teach my self how to code when I was 7 or 8,
for that matter.
In fact, the very, very first line
of code I ever wrote in my life was when
I entered [SPEAKING FRENCH].
So I was 18.
And you know what?
You can become a software engineer at Google
even if you did not learn how to code in primary school.
And that's completely fine.
So that's, yeah.
In hindsight, though, I find that the career of software
engineer really, really was a good fit for me.
When I was growing up, I liked all kinds
of creative activities.
So I played a lot with LEGOs.
I drew a lot, badly, but I liked that.
I practiced ceramics as an after-school activity
for 11 years.
And on top of liking to create things,
I really liked computers.
So we got our first computer at home when I was seven.
And I played a lot of video games on it.
It was my secret hobby.
Yeah, I say a secret hobby because, you see,
it didn't actually seem girly enough
of an occupation for my primary school and middle school
classmates.
So I would totally not acknowledge
that I was doing it.
But I was really doing it a lot, or way too much,
according to my parents.
Well, that's their opinion.
But despite all of that on the computer playing video games,
I never thought, hey, maybe I should learn how to code.
And despite both my parents working in IT
and being trained programmers themselves,
they never thought, hey, maybe we could teach her how to code.
No, that did not happen.
In fact, I did my [SPEAKING FRENCH],
so the middle school internship, in a company
that was writing ERPs.
So that's software that run businesses,
if you don't know about it.
But it wasn't really my choice.
It's just that I could not be bothered
to look for an internship, so I took the easy way
out of going to my mother's company.
And the result of that internship at the time
was I never, ever, ever, ever want to be a secretary
and I don't want to work in IT.
I only got 50% right.
I mean, really, apart from that brief foray in the world of IT
when I was 13, the idea of working in computer science
really never entered my mind.
It's not like I would say, no, I don't
want to be a computer software engineer,
it's just I would not even think about it.
So I wanted to be many things in my life when I grew up.
I wanted to be an astronaut at one point.
Terrible idea.
I'm actually afraid of taking planes, so nope.
Then I wanted to be an archaeologist in Egypt.
I'm a red head.
I can stand about 15 minutes in the sun without burning.
So, nope.
I wanted to be a history professor, a nuclear physicist.
And when, finally, I reached second year of engineering
school, I thought, hey, computer science, well, I kind of
like it.
I've got good grades.
Maybe I could try that as a career, you know?
And at same time, I thought yeah,
it's been the case for three years.
You could have asked yourself the question before.
But, well.
So with that new found knowledge of my vocation,
I decided to specialize in computer science
at engineering school.
And then later, I went to Stanford in the US
to do a master in computer science.
And after that, I was hired at Google,
which was completely not the outcome I had in mind
when I left for the US, by the way.
Because, up until my first year of master, what I really,
really wanted to be was a researcher.
So I had wanted to be a researcher for a long time
in various fields.
But the research part, at least, was constant.
And I went to Stanford with a now ex-boyfriend.
And he had to do his master in four quarters
and then come back to France.
So I decided I would do the same,
you know, being the girlfriend.
And, well, so I have found myself over there thinking,
oh, I need to find myself a PhD for when I come back to France.
And well it was not really easy.
First, I had to start in January when normally you
start in September.
And also my ex-boyfriend had decided
he would do his in Toulouse.
And honestly, I could not find a PhD subject
in my specialty in Toulouse that would appeal to me.
And the more I thought about it, the more I
felt like my heart wasn't set on doing it,
so I let the deadlines slip by.
And eventually I found myself in September
knowing that I would be going back in France in three months.
And I had no idea what I would be doing with my life.
I realized that I did not want to stay doing nothing, waiting
for maybe getting another PhD starting in the next September
and doing nothing for eight months.
I also realized that I needed money, honestly.
So I thought, well, I'm going to get a job.
That's well.
But then there was one thing.
I had no professional experience at all.
My plan up until then was to be a researcher in academia.
So I had not thought about the professional experience.
I was in the US looking for a job in France.
And I had no idea on how you look for a job,
like no idea at all.
But I had this friend who had done an internship at Google
over the summer.
And so he came back and he was telling me, oh,
Camille, Google, it's so great.
Like they've got all this free food.
And it's good free food.
And you know you can wear whatever
you want when you go to work, like shorts and t-shirts
and flip-flops.
Well. also, they've got cool projects,
but really, really you should totally apply.
So, I said, OK, well, sounds nice, why not.
I looked it up.
I saw that they had an office here in Paris,
which I didn't know, and I said, OK, I'll try it.
So I sent my resume.
I got through the interview process.
And I was hired.
So it turns out to be a really, really good decision
because now I realize that I actually
like software development a lot more than research.
So I'm very happy about that.
I work with great people.
I really enjoy my job.
In fact, I often tell that it's less
of a job, more of an occupation that I'm being paid to do.
And on top of that, I met my partner at a party hosted
by one of my colleagues.
So that's yeah to Google.
But even though I'm very happy to be where I am,
looking back I have to realize that the way there
was paved with good decisions that I made for bad reasons--
yeah, free food is good, but it's only free food-- and just
luck sometimes.
And just thinking about that, I found
that it's really helped me lighten the burden of making
hard decisions.
Because, you know, so sometimes we
make good decision but for bad reasons,
or we made very, very bad decisions
for perfectly good reason at the time.
And very often, despite all that we were thinking,
we completely miss very important decision factors
in our choices.
So when I realized that even if I put a lot of work,
there was a definite chance that I would not
get the right decision and that it was normal, by the way,
I stopped agonizing over each decision that I had to.
make because instead of focusing,
OK, I need to find the right, perfect decision for this,
I would say, OK, maybe I won't find it.
So, if I mess things up, what happens?
What does it need for me to fix that?
The answer I found most of the time is,
well, there are a few hassles, but seriously it's
not so much of a big deal.
So when I kept that in mind, for me
it was just much easier to say, like this thing that
was occupying all my mind and I would spend so much time
thinking about it, and I could just
let it take less of my mind and be
more at rest, which I found to be a skill that
was useful during my career.
So, for example, at one point, I was asked to lead a project.
So that's the project I'm currently leading.
And I hesitated.
So I took a step back and thought, OK,
if you mess up, what's the worst that can happen?
Well you will just suck at your job.
So two things, either you improve,
well, or if you don't improve, then you probably
should hand the leadership to someone else
and then you go back to handling everything on your own,
which you were fine and doing.
And, well, everybody's fine.
It's no big deal.
So I could say, OK, I will try it.
So again you maybe wonder why I would hesitate
in front of a good career opportunity,
because I mean normally when people give you a career
opportunity, and you don't have to move to another country,
not have to move at all, don't even have to change a team,
I mean normally, you should say yes.
But, see, there's this thing called the imposter syndrome.
So if you don't know about the imposter syndrome,
I suggest you Google it.
Basically, it's a problem that a lot
of people in very intellectual jobs face, especially women.
So basically the idea is that you
attribute your successes to external factors,
or you were lucky.
And you attribute your failures to yourself, oh, you suck.
So you end up thinking that you are a fraud, an imposter.
And so that if you fail, people are going to unmask you.
And they will see how bad you really are.
And in a professional context, maybe they'll fire you.
And I must say that getting hired at Google
was very bad for the imposter syndrome.
So as I said before, I had no professional experience.
What I had done in my studies was one internship,
a military internship in the public relationship
service of the French Navy, the [SPEAKING FRENCH],
the factory worker internship in a puppet theater in Russia,
and a research internship in the public research lab
in France at Inria.
So coming into Google, I had no idea at all
what I should be expecting.
And then I joined the team and-- so
they were all men-- they were more senior than me
and they were more experienced.
I started writing code and all I got was comments such as,
oh, you can't do that.
Oh no, this is the wrong thing to use there.
Ah, you're violating the [INAUDIBLE] this is bad.
By the way, every new engineer at Google gets that.
That's just plain normal, but you know, it's your first time,
it feels a bit weird.
And on top of that, my team at the time
was made with made up of absolutely die-hard Linux
fanatics.
So they would have these lunch conversations
about what is the best Linux library to use
for these super arcane kind of things
to do like compressing these song in this weird format
or whatever.
And honestly, I knew nothing about Linux libraries--
I still don't by the way, so.
So really, I arrived there and I felt like I knew nothing.
And sometimes I wondered, hey, why did they
hire me because I knew nothing?
Happy for me, I was quite competitive
and I like challenges.
So I said, OK, well you know what?
I'm going to try.
I'm going to try to learn what I need to do my job.
And hopefully, I learn it fast enough that they still keep me,
because it looks like a nice place to work.
So I would like to stay here.
And with leading the project, it was the same.
I say, OK, it's a challenge.
I'm not sure about it.
But you know, I will try it and we'll see what happens.
In truth, I'm not really sure, it was really a challenge.
But I'm very sure that my mind was making it so.
And it's been my experience that our mind creates
those perceived challenges, those barriers,
and very often that keeps us from accepting
really good opportunities.
So maybe we are afraid because we
are afraid of novelty, of change,
of failure, of going against our own biases.
And acknowledging that you create
those barriers for yourself, that's
one good step in overcoming them so
that you can do all the cool things that
are presented to you.
For myself, I found that it's just not enough.
Because even if I recognize, rationally,
that my mind is simply freaking out,
it's not enough to make the fear go away.
I mean it's still there.
So for example, when I was asked about making this presentation,
what I am thinking is like, oh, but the people
with 10 years of experience in this room,
they will think that what I'm saying is useless to them
because I'm so young.
And then I recognize that if I had 10 years of experience,
I would be worrying about the people
with 20 years of experience thinking
that I'm saying useless stuff.
So at one point, I have to say, OK, I'm afraid, fine.
But you know what?
I'm still going to try it.
And I found that it become just easier and easier
when you try it.
And I think that's how you build self-confidence if you
don't have it from the start.
At first you fake it, and you say, yeah, sure, I will do it.
It's OK.
I'm scared, but it's fine.
I will do it.
And then maybe you succeed.
And so you'll feel more confident about yourself.
I mean you succeeded in doing the big, scary thing that you
set out to do.
So that's pretty cool.
Or maybe you fail.
That's a possibility.
And very often, I think you find that the failure is not as bad
as you imagined it to be.
And then, afterwards, you struggle less
to accept the scary opportunity because you're
less afraid of failure.
So really, really, when you see that scary, big opportunity,
take it.
First it's going to be interesting.
It's probably going to be good for you.
And it will make taking those in the future easier.
And another thing to remember-- to make it easier
to stretch yourself, in my opinion--
is that we, as people, are not static beings.
We change.
We learn new things.
We grow.
And I think if all of you look back 10 years ago,
would you have imagined becoming who you are right now?
I imagine a lot of you did not.
And I know for myself that I did not.
So I have two sisters, they are much, much younger than me.
And I have a father who has this dreadful, dreadful habit
of comparing our school results.
Side note, if you're a parent, don't do that.
Just don't do it.
It sucks.
OK?
And so one day, one of my sister comes to me
and say, ah, Camille, you're too hard to have as a big sister.
If we listen to dad, you're this like half goddess.
And you've got limitless understanding of everything.
And I'm like, well, first he's exaggerating.
I can assure you I'm 100% human.
And there are many things that I don't understand
and that I suck at.
And second, even you're saying no, it's too hard, et cetera,
you are comparing yourself to me right now.
You are not comparing yourself to me at your age.
And really, me 10 years ago would not
like to be compared to me right now,
even though I'm the same person, sort of.
So it's been the same, at least for me,
in my professional career.
So when I joined Google, I did not
have the skills to do the job I do now.
But I learned them over the time,
like step by step, by taking bigger and bigger challenges,
and finding what I needed to overcome them.
So really, again, we change, we grow, we evolve,
and I think that's really awesome.
So for me, this has been one of the thing that
kept me going and saying, oh, I will try that.
I will try that new challenge, because I wanted
to see if I could succeed.
I wanted to see if I could become the kind of person that
does that thing.
And so I'm really looking forward to what I can do.
And I'm pretty sure that a lot of you
will grow and will do amazing thing,
and that there are many, many, many good things that
are coming for you.
And so, with that, I'm very happy to be here tonight.
And I wish you all a very, very good evening.
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