Empathy-as-a-Service

I gave this talk at PyTennessee 2016 on February 7th, 2016. In it I discuss how we as developers can use empathy to improve the relationships with our coworkers and other developers.

Video (courtesy of Brian Dailey) can be found at https://youtu.be/k9nWUGP1hus

Transcript

1. Empathy-as-a-Service Scott Burns PyTennessee 2016
2. Hi Nashvillian with wife & two children Developer at Stratasan @scottsburns on Twitter @sburns on GitHub
3. Story Time
4. Story Time
5. Story Time
6. http://itzgeek.na1452962743.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CentOS-7-Nginx-Default-Page.jpg
7. Story Time
8. Developing Software is Emotional
9. Time to Argue! Vim—Emacs OS X—Linux—Windows Tabs—Spaces
10. Input ↓ Decision ↓ Action
11. Serving Coworkers
12. Engineering is not the most important team
14. ❄
16. In a world without Engineering→ Marketing→ Support→ Sales→
17. Successful organizations solve the puzzle
18. What should engineering provide?
19. Sales What does it (not) do? What sets us apart us from competition?
20. Marketing What value does the product provide? What pain does it alleviate?
21. Support Why does the product do X in a particular way? When does the product not conform to expectations?
22. Management When will Feature X be done? Is your work delivering value?
23. Serving Developers
24. Empathetic Code Test-Driven Development High test coverage Correct, succinct documentation
25. Open Source Be kind when raising issues Be kind when responding Be kind
26. Code reviews Review the code, not the person Why did they do something in a particular way Pair-review FTW!
27. Many paths 4-year CS degree Some other degree Software schools Self-taught
28. Its all a blur Beginners Junior (???) ✨Senior✨
29. Get out of your head
30. Your context is but one possibility
31. Fix problems
32. Increase happiness ❤
33. Thank you!