Come listen to me, I’m a fraud; a story on impostor syndrome
2019-05-05, 10:00–10:50, Room A

A story on success, impostor syndrome and self-inflicted, perpetually non-existent comfort zone.

Do you recognize the fear of being exposed as a fraud? I do. And I’ve had success because of the syndrome. I’ve learned to harness it, figuring out how to come to terms with it and use it for good. I now live in a self-inflicted, perpetually non-existing comfort zone, and I want you to, too!


Come listen to my story and learn to harness your self-doubt. I’m here to show the little things I did differently every day:
- How being kind to yourself is key. Forgive, don’t judge. Accept who you are.
- Learn about your internal convictions and expose these to the world authentically and honestly.
- How complimenting yourself and others goes a long way
- Build a case for yourself by keep notes of people saying nice things about you
- Self-doubt is a powerful tool as a leader, if used consciously
- Focus on (professional) relationships, not on technical merit
- Harness feedback, even it’s scary

With these small, incremental improvements, I now live in a self-inflicted, perpetually non-existing comfort zone. I’m constantly in the imposter zone, because I’m constantly doing new things, learning new skills, meeting new people. And I love it! It has brought me many smaller and larger victories, a career that’s led me to new and unexpected ventures and most importantly, a network of friends and relationships I otherwise would never have had.

See also: None

Once a virtualization and storage consultant, he built IaaS-platforms, created an army of Community Managers, built, led and developed a team of technical architects.
Most recently, Joep is building the Jumbo Tech Campus. Jumbo is the second biggest supermarket in the Netherlands and the fastest growing online supermarket of the Netherlands.

As the Technical Pathfinder, Joep is responsible for the DevOps way-of-work, tooling, cloud and open source strategy of the Tech Campus, the e-commerce software development house of Jumbo.

He runs his own blog, VirtualLifestyle.nl, speaks at industry events, occasional guest on theCube and he's a frequent delegate for TechFieldDay events.