watching fun fun function today I want
to talk about being nice I want to talk
about how you cannot be a go developer
unless you have good empathy skills my
reasoning for that statement is that in
order to be to be a good developer you
need to be in a good team and in order
for team to be good that team needs to
have a high degree of psychological
safety and in order to fit in such a
team you need to have a functioning
sense of empathy let me give you some
background to why I started thinking
about this this week and also to give
you an idea about what I mean when I say
empathy what is in that bag that’s scary
oh that’s nice it’s just waste
I am very happy that it was not a
severed head so this week I ran across a
thread on Hacker News and this person
let’s call them Aaron they they said
something that was not quite correct so
another person let’s call them Barry
corrected them which is fine it’s and
completely the right way the right thing
to do but Barry did it in its really
condescending way and it was completely
unnecessary to be condescending because
now Aaron is going to be it’s going to
feel bad about it it’s going to feel
like if he’s wrong he’s going to be
berated already killed and he is going
to be hesitant the next time to say
something which means sad he’s less
likely to to learn and that is very very
sad because it has made this this group
that Aaron and Barry are both the part
of is now worse off because you have
made it harder for a member of that
to learn so in this situation berry was
we was concerned with correcting Aaron
but he showed no real empathy about how
Aaron felt and because of that I think
that people like berry are a drain on
the group’s that they are part of they
do kind of try to contribute to the
growing process of the group by
introducing knowledge but they also take
away much more at the same time when you
have people like very in a group it’s
like they they help to pour water into a
bucket but at the same time they are
constantly poking little holes in the in
the bottom of the bucket to me it seems
like there is this group of of berries
out there that they aren’t particularly
good with feelings or people and that
kind of thing
and it does make sense that they have
been drawn to the computer or some
programming because at first glance it
seems like you can escape people and
feelings and that kind of stuff by by
going into computers and going into
programming which is a complete illusion
it doesn’t feel like it in the beginning
of your programming career but once you
start getting into it you start
realizing the great software is not
built by great programmers it’s built by
great teams as humans we have a tendency
to romanticize individual effort a lot
because I guess it’s easier to relate to
humans on an individual level so we have
humans in movies like doing great things
individual creates great impact on
society and so on but in reality great
things are achieved by people
collaborating and software is no
exception
great software is built by teams don’t
get me wrong here there are absolutely
programmers that are a lot better than
other programmers I love to follow
programmers and observe program is like
Jonathan Blow and John Carmack but when
you
you you it’s easy at least for me to
fall into the trap of believing that we
need that these great programmers are
the key to making great software I once
heard somebody make an analogy between
software development and juggling so
there’s a big difference between how
good people are at juggling most people
can juggle with two bolts right bond the
world-record holder can juggle 13 balls
at least for a few seconds but the thing
is nobody can juggle 20 balls and they
can absolutely not juggle 20 balls for a
sustainable time you can if you have
like this access to this super
programmer you can actually depend on
them up to a certain theoretical point
but after after that point your software
has grown past the point where a single
person can handle it and you are going
to need a team and that is why the key
to building great software is knowing
how to build great software development
teams which begs the question what makes
a good team so who will ask themselves
this what is it that makes our best
functioning teams what is it that makes
them tick what is it that sets them
apart and they did a four-year study
which is pretty amazing like Google has
60,000 employees and a lot of teams have
linked to this study and the resources
part of the episode description by the
way and what they found surprised them a
lot because it didn’t seem to matter who
you put in the team so these study
results they are a little bit skewed
because Google has pretty decent hiring
practices so the people working at
Google are going to be decent developers
but a key takeaway for me from the study
is that it really doesn’t matter from a
performance perspective the statistic
Cley if you put good developers or great
developers on your team okay so who you
put in your team that didn’t seem to be
an indicator of whether or not that team
would would perform well so what did and
they looked and they looked and one of
them most liked the strongest indicators
that they have they found of a highly
performing team was that the team
members felt a strong psychological
safety which is and I’m gonna read here
a sense of confidence that the team will
not embarrass reject or punish someone
for speaking up and when you think about
it it makes a ton of sense that a team
that has that performs where very well
because there’s a lot of troubles that
just get fixed
there’s no whenever like there’s nothing
that is gonna be hidden behind surface
bubbling because people will bring it up
because they will feel safe bring it up
and people won’t be afraid of obscene in
dumb and asking dumb questions so they
will learn fast and people won’t be
afraid of making mistakes so they are
willing to take risks and so on and so
on so what this study teaches us is that
in order to have a great software team
you need to have psychological safety so
these are pretty new findings so there
are no there aren’t exactly text books
on how to achieve psychological safety
in your team but
I think that we can safely say that you
cannot have people on your team behaving
like bury dead on Hacker News if you
have people behaving like that those
people yes they have to change or they
have to go because you can’t be lenient
here and keep the berries around because
it just takes a single berry to destroy
the psychological safety it just
requires like somebody in your team to
say something like I I did this mistake
and a single berry to come in and say
something like that makes a person feel
bad about bringing bringing their
mistake up and you’ve completely
evaporated the psychological safety that
you had so are you with me here great
software teams need psychological safety
and people with low empathy berries they
destroy psychological safety so if you
are a person that might not have like
your empathy skills up to par that means
that you will simply not be allowed into
the best software teams you will be
driven out you will not be allowed
because you would destroy them so if you
don’t work on your empathy skills you’re
always going to be stuck building
mediocre software you’re not gonna get
invited in into the best teams and if
you by some miracle are you’re going to
destroy them so if you Jesus the Sun is
so my conclusion is that if you want to
make great software work we’re on the
best software were the best people in
the world on the best teams in the world
rather you need to practice empathy and
and it’s a skill it’s empathy it’s not
genetic or anything like that it’s you
putting yourself in the in the shoes of
another thinking about how they might
feel how your comment that you’re about
the comment that you’re about to make
how that is going to be received
thinking about how to make your
colleagues feel
feel safe to ask dumb questions feel
safe to make mistakes feel safe to grow
at least that is what I’m going to try
to do that’s my theory on it you have
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