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Discussion on: To The Young Female Software Engineer With Her First Job Offer

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Ben Coleman

On #4, yes, if you're confident in your idea, speak it confidently. But don't get in the habit of speaking confidently no matter what the idea is. In the short run, yes, people will respond to your confidence. In the long run, if you have a history of speaking confidently about things that turn out to not be so, or that don't deserve that level of confidence that you gave them, people will lose confidence in you, because they've learned that the confidence with which you speak doesn't actually measure up to the confidence that what you're saying deserves.

This requires learning to objectively evaluate your own ideas for how much confidence they deserve. It's a tough balance to find, and you'll make mistakes at this, but you'll learn. And you'll probably also irritate those who make always speaking confidently part of their own tactics (e.g. some members of Sales and Marketing).