One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
There are buzzwords that annoys me but are very helpful. For example whenever I see some smart ass libertarian macho who has Bitcoin&Blockchain in his bio, I am annoyed but it's helpful because I know I can safely spend my time elsewhere.
The really annoying words are those that people in good faith assuming their meaning are obvious without realizing that others have a very different meaning in mind and are also oblivious that it's not universally accepted.
I'm a software developer who writes about Laravel, JavaScript, Rails, Linux, Docker, WordPress and the tech industry. Follow me on Twitter @tylerlwsmith
While trying to put yourself in the shoes of users is a good thing, boldly proclaiming that you have empathy for users doesn't necessarily mean that you do.
It often feels like when the empathy card is invoked in technical arguments, the subtext is "I care about my users and you don't." It especially feels this way when talking about performance.
There are contexts where page load speed and minimal battery usage is important to users. There are also contexts where the velocity in which you can add features is the only thing that matters. Rather than discussing empathy as a nebulous concept, it may be more fruitful to discuss what our users need from a piece of software, and be mindful that users of other software may need something entirely different.
One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
Sometimes the key thing to understand is that page load speed and battery usage matters a lot as you pointed out. Sometimes it's completely different though.
Empathy is powerful but it is neither good or bad. I have female friends who were in a toxic relationship, and they were fucked up because the dude was good at using empathy to manipulate them.
I think the problem with empathy is that HR-speak in english speaking countries invented this incredibly stupid term of "soft skills" and put it into it. One more thing where you can evaluate people between 1 and 10. I'm being sarcastic.
Empathy is neither soft nor a skill.
It's very hard, and it's not a skill, it's something that you do or it's a personnality trait.
I'm a software developer who writes about Laravel, JavaScript, Rails, Linux, Docker, WordPress and the tech industry. Follow me on Twitter @tylerlwsmith
One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
Nimble. And the phrases "powerful" and "easy to use" put together in the same sentence, very often one after the other. That would very often be an indication the product touted as such (powerful and easy to use) is neither.
Haha, I like that. There's a trend of saying "if you're building stuff you're an engineer and it doesn't matter if you have the degree that goes with it", but as someone who has 10 years of experience but no degree I like the idea of saying "No, I'm not an engineer.".
Top comments (25)
Does "Metaverse" count?
@ben I just saw this while scrolling Google news, right after seeing your comment:
Report: Facebook Begs Staff To Use Own Broken Metaverse
The VR project needs some internal love, according to leaked memos
Quiet quitting, Metaverse, block chain, unprecedented, NFT, etc. Pretty much anything that has been in the mainstream the last couple years.
Then there's overused marketing words that are annoying, like "Blazingly Fast"...
"Blazingly fast" has become a meme of its own lol. Now my head just automatically discards that word from a marketing line in any product
There are buzzwords that annoys me but are very helpful. For example whenever I see some smart ass libertarian macho who has Bitcoin&Blockchain in his bio, I am annoyed but it's helpful because I know I can safely spend my time elsewhere.
The really annoying words are those that people in good faith assuming their meaning are obvious without realizing that others have a very different meaning in mind and are also oblivious that it's not universally accepted.
Examples: "unit test", "startup", "architecture", "technical debt", "agile", ...
Empathy.
While trying to put yourself in the shoes of users is a good thing, boldly proclaiming that you have empathy for users doesn't necessarily mean that you do.
It often feels like when the empathy card is invoked in technical arguments, the subtext is "I care about my users and you don't." It especially feels this way when talking about performance.
There are contexts where page load speed and minimal battery usage is important to users. There are also contexts where the velocity in which you can add features is the only thing that matters. Rather than discussing empathy as a nebulous concept, it may be more fruitful to discuss what our users need from a piece of software, and be mindful that users of other software may need something entirely different.
Empathy really boils down to the principle Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood
Sometimes the key thing to understand is that page load speed and battery usage matters a lot as you pointed out. Sometimes it's completely different though.
Empathy is powerful but it is neither good or bad. I have female friends who were in a toxic relationship, and they were fucked up because the dude was good at using empathy to manipulate them.
I think the problem with empathy is that HR-speak in english speaking countries invented this incredibly stupid term of "soft skills" and put it into it. One more thing where you can evaluate people between 1 and 10. I'm being sarcastic.
Empathy is neither soft nor a skill.
It's very hard, and it's not a skill, it's something that you do or it's a personnality trait.
After reading your comment I'm realizing "empathy" has even more to unpack than I thought. You've got a lot of great points in there.
There are great books on the subject, but as I pointed out in this article, I stumbled on them while learning how to dance
Can beginners make a simple but meaningful contribution? Some unconventional advice #hacktoberfest
Jean-Michel Fayard π«π·π©πͺπ¬π§πͺπΈπ¨π΄ γ» Oct 1 γ» 7 min read
Depends on the context, but I think "web3" and "FAANG" are pretty annoying. Maybe also because the main people using them are grifters?
The grift is pretty strong these days.
Nimble. And the phrases "powerful" and "easy to use" put together in the same sentence, very often one after the other. That would very often be an indication the product touted as such (powerful and easy to use) is neither.
Blockchain, CryptoCurrency, NFT
Haha, I like that. There's a trend of saying "if you're building stuff you're an engineer and it doesn't matter if you have the degree that goes with it", but as someone who has 10 years of experience but no degree I like the idea of saying "No, I'm not an engineer.".
MUST, SHOULD, EVERY, NFT, WEB3
"It depends"