Empathic Developers?

Amazing! Someone else also recognizes the crying need for “soft”, people skills in the hard, rocket science techie community!

I ran into Ari Krupnik at the Hacker Dojo job fair. I have constantly beaten my head against the wall trying to get other developers to understand that most people are not interested in technology for technology’s sake. Most people outside Silicon Valley has a life that does not revolve around technology but rather uses technology as an expression of “self” (“iPhone gets me the girl”). Non-techie types are anti-RTFM. Developers as a rule don’t understand and think the users are eager to spend hours discovering how wonderful the program is.

Ari apparently does:

I notice that engineers who block specific emotions entrain drama that revolves around the very emotions they block. The drama seems to go away as soon as the engineer is willing to experience the feeling that he blocks. In the tribe, we help each other unblock feelings and experience them fully. The results seem to include better relationships with peers and customers, and improvements in code quality.