Reflect
1. What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you?
I've always been a deeply emphathetic person. Almost to a fault, if I'm being honest. I can't imagine myself without my empathy, being able to relate to people, to understand things from their perspectives. It helps me navigate society and form solid bonds with people. It's helped me in more way than I can count. Helped me be a good server, a great customer service rep, and honestly, it helped me sell the shit out of a lot of cars.
It's also helped me forge life long friendships, and reconcile a lot of misgivings I had with my parents and how I was raised. We're friends now. It's nice.
2. How does empathy help you build better software?
Building something that only you are able to use is near pointless, especially whemn it comes to software. You need to be able to think about how other people will approach using what you are building. This is especially true for people with visual impairments. Colour blind folks have a hard time distinguishing between some colours, so make things compliant iwth that. What if a user relies on a program to read out the text on a page? You HAVE to make it reabable by that program. Even something as simple as using a more standard text for easier readability for those who's eyes are tired after staring at a screen for hours on end, or users that don't have access to a laptop or desktop and have to navigate everything via their smartphone. Is what you are building easily viewable on such a small, and often limited, device? Empathy is NEEDED in software development. Full stop.
3. Why is empathy important for working on a team?
It leads to understanding your teammates better. Things only really get done when you're working with a team that understand each other. You might not need to like each other, but proper collaboration requires understanding among partners and teammates. It makes communication more fluid, for understandable, and when you encounter a complex project or problem on a task with your team, you need to be able to communicate properly in order to move past it.
4. Describe a situation in which your ability to emphathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful.
I think back to my serving days for questions like this. My coworkers on the floor were my team, and we all depended on each other. I working with a gal at my last serving job that was STELLAR. She was an ace when it came to handling a million smaller tables at once, I have no idea how she did it. But, when it came to tables of anything over five people, she froze up. I, on the other hand, did my best when I had larger tables. We would get Japanese sports teams that came up to Flagstaff for training pretty often, and whenever they came in, I would handle it solo and let my coworker handle the rest. We worked well together, and it was after understanding each other's strengths and weaknesses that we were able to do so well.
5. When do yoy find it difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios?
So I know this is kind of going to sound like a cop out, but I have literally Never had an issue being empathetic. Ever. My last job, car sales, was the absolute worst one I have ever had with how my coworkers and managers treated me. Hyper masculine work space, high pressure, no forgivness for even slight mistakes, you get the idea. Other salesmen would needle and nag at me with underhanded compliments, snide remarks, and just generally being gross. My managers seemed to openly hold me in contempt, either completely ignoring my presense when asking a question, or staring me down waiting for me to stop talking. It wasn't uncommon to get called into an office and get "What the hell was that" shouted at me right upon entering. Sucked.
Even still, I found myself unconsiously being considerate of each and every one of those people. Adjusting where cars were parked so Jeff could maneuver his own truck into the employee parking area easier, unlocking their offices for them so that was one less thing they had to think about in the morning, prepping paperwork folders so they never had to look for it on days I wasn't there, heck I even made sure my finance manager's favourite SiriusXM station was programmed into every new car I got into. I don't even know why. He was the worst. So uh. Non answer. I can't NOT be considerate. It's a compulsion I have little control over so I guess that's nice???