More Empathy Online

Overwhelmingly, empathy is a skill. We have to practice it; it’s a choice.

We need to start feeling empathy for these teams and treating their work as valid — as valid as engineering work. For instance, in the case of Sales, often they’ll have a quota they have to hit, else they literally lose their jobs. It’s an incredibly high-stakes profession. As engineers, we won’t be fired for building fewer features; in fact, we’ll probably be promoted if we manage to simplify the feature-set.

This article is extensive and thorough in covering the various methods of applying empathy for customers, coworkers, and ourselves. Bonus points for the wonderful use of gifs.

I've really been enjoying this podcast interviewing various designers about their work and insights, and this episode with Kim Bost & Cap Watkins is definitely my favorite so far. Their ideals in sharing context in the collaborative design process and applying empathy with co-workers are exactly what I'd like to see more developers embrace. That discussion begins about 30 minutes in but I encourage listening to the entire episode.

It's important to remember what it was like getting started in tech, and this post by Charlotte Spencer is the perfect resource for just that. She has an open mind and contagious curiousity that sets an example of how we should interact with others, whether or not they're in our industry.

I love seeing this message spread as much as possible. Susan Robertson describes some simple steps for applying empathy at work in this A List Apart article. It's a great place to get started and create a culture around empathy.