Gear Up Pre-work - Turing Culture: Developing Empathetic Programmers
- What role does empathy play in your life and how has it helped you? - Empathy has played a important role in my life through the teaching and parenting of both my parents. Both my mom and dad have been career medical professionals working with sick children. My mom is an oncology nurse who gives cancer treatment to young children and my dad is a childrens physical theraphist who helps them recover. From a young age, I have been able to empthasize and understand that I was born healthy and lived my life not taking that for granted. By understanding that not all people are lucky to be able to learn or live a normal life in the same way due to complications with their heath I have been able to view life more emphatehically when dealt with troubling situations.
- How does empathy help you build better software? - Developing the skill of empathy and applying it in your job as a software engineer can help you build better software by being able to put yourself in other peoples shoes. When someone is able to take a step into someone else's you may be able to better understanding what it is you can really help them with when building something to better their lives. Software is the most helpful and empathetic when it is built from the users point of view.
- Why is empathy important for working on a team? - Empathy in a team setting is important because you also want to be able to put yourself in the shoes of your colleagues. Being able to better understand different backgrounds in education or life experiences makes a team more collaborate and innovative. Empathy also allows you to work on your self-awareness around what you might not know that others can help you with.
- Describe a situation in which your ability to empathize with a colleague or teammate was helpful. - My last boss and I were able to move past a disagreement in a project for staffing a schedule. My boss at the time wanted to staff less people than I had originally proposed. His thought was that we needed to be more efficient and save on labor, while I wanted to staff more people to avoid turnover and people feeling burned out. We came to a compromise with our staffing solution by understanding and whiteboarding the pros and cons of both of our plans. At the end of the day we were able to empathize with one another by openly discussing and understanding eachothers point of view regarding the situation.
- When do you find it most difficult to be empathetic in professional settings? -It is usually the hardest to be empathetic when something is done wrong or there is an issue with the same person over and over again. Because of the repeated nature of the situation, it can become harder and harder to empathize as time goes by. These situations usually lead to other disagreements and uncomfortable working relationships. Though these situations are the most difficult to deal with in a professional setting, they usually lead to the most rewarding outcomes when empathy is achieved.
- How can you improve your skills when faced with these scenarios? I believe the key to improving these skills is to always be open to listening and not over reacting to any one point or comment by the the situation. The reason why there may be a repeated points of failure is due to the notion that you or the colleague did not listen as much as you or your colleague should have. I think it is also important to watch your words within your conversation. Passing blame or accusing anyone for these repeated failures immediately makes your professional setting feel defensive and most likely unwilling to listen going forward. Improving your openness to listen and not react immediately can positively effect my skills in these scenarios.