Being Compassionate — The missing “value” of Tech teams
Tags: Values, People, Compassion, Technology, Teamwork

Wondering what “compassion” has to do with software engineers or with coding? Here’s how…

What’s the problem?

All along my career in the IT industry, I’ve seen a lot of my friends and team members suffer from stress, burnout, anxiety over the years.

The reason being many of their team members, the so-called programmer ‘jerks’ get agitated when people make mistakes, failing to understand what is simple for them is difficult for others, expecting them to work at their pace, imposing their perspective with the belief that they are always right and exhibit cold behaviour when things don’t work out their way. Things have gone so awful sometimes that it has driven people to leave this industry once and for all.

Are you a programmer jerk?

The one stop solution — Be human. Being human is choosing to be compassionate. Transform yourself into a Mentor instead of being a ‘tor’mentor!

Here’s what you can do to transform yourself into a Mentor…

1. Choose patience over losing your temper:

“Patience, grasshopper,” said Maia. “Good things come to those who wait.”

“I always thought that was ‘Good things come to those who do the wave,’” said Simon. “No wonder I’ve been so confused all my life.”

― Cassandra Clare

You may be the go-to JAVA programmer in your portfolio and you are helping a fresher to install the latest version of JAVA. You realise that your mentee is struggling and you could very well get impatient and say, “What are you trying to do? Can’t you just use the command brew cask install java ?

Hold on! Remember that your mentee is new to JAVA, and he/she may not even be aware of the command line options or Homebrew.

The gravest problem is that when we become experts, we fail to remember what it was like to live without this knowledge when we were freshers. Learning doesn’t happen overnight. Everyone has their own pace and grasping power.

Patience is the first tool that you should add to your mentoring toolkit.

2. Choose engagement over control:

“Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”

― Daniel H. Pink

You are doing a code review and the moment you see the block of code you say,” That’s completely wrong. This is the way to do it. Refer to this repo”. PERIOD. There ends the conversation.

You can be happy that the code was fixed the way you wanted. But it was done out of sheer fear and nothing else. Instead, choose to explain why you thought that the logic was wrong and what were the business reasons behind your solution. Furthermore, you can open up the doors of the conversation by asking, “Do you think there are alternate options to implement this logic?”

Now, you have established the connection, got them engaged, made them curious, triggered their creativity, and improved their understanding as well. Gotcha?

3. Choose humility over ego and arrogance:

“On the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.”

― Michel de Montaigne

Mentoring is not something you do to someone but with someone. It is a learning partnership and superiority or authority has nothing to do with mentorship.

The amount of expertise or the years of experience or the number of grey hairs don’t count. The best trait of a mentor is to be humble and ever ready to learn.

The next time your junior engineer talks about a new library that would help you avoid boiler plate code, get curious instead of arrogantly commenting that you know better.

Humility allows you to see the innate worth in others, which in no way interferes with your ability to see the innate worth in yourself. You can never be compassionate with someone while having a feeling of superiority over them. Crush your E.G.O. Take a step backward so that you allow your mentee to step forward.

4. Choose kindness over rudeness:

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”

― Henry James

Your tone and the language you choose make an ocean of difference. The words that we use to communicate really do matter. An unkind word can break someone’s self-confidence and dignity.

# Always avoid using ‘just’ or ‘even’ or ‘still’— Can’t you just use this command? or “Are you not aware of even this?” or “You still haven’t figured this out?

# Ask “Could I help you solve this deployment issue?” or much better “Shall we work together to solve this?” instead of “Do you need someone’s help to deploy?”. The latter can put them in a spot and make them wonder “Am I not knowledgeable enough to do this?”.

# “This is so damn easy, you didn’t know this?” — How hard it is for us to remember the mid-night lamps we burnt to become proficient in something that it feels easy for us now?

# Never modulate your tone to make any comment sound like mockery

# Avoid sarcasm in any form

# Review the code and not the person

5. Choose to enjoy the journey over reaching the destination:

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”

― Michelle Obama

There are times when you did your best but still your mentee didn’t meet your expectations. They may not be interested or your values don’t match. As simple as that. No worries — Mentoring is giving your best to the fullest capacity possible and is not tied to the measure of outcome produced. Not all mentoring relationships thrive, you gotta be lucky enough!!!

Be ready to replace your expectations with appreciations. Yes — this time you won the crown. The appreciation was for giving your best!!!

“Mentoring concentrates on the needs of the one being mentored, not on the agenda of the mentor.” -David Stoddard

The END of a ‘tor’mentor. The journey begins as a ‘mentor’…

“The attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project.” -Karen Armstrong

Don’t you feel tired and exhausted by trying to prove yourself a ‘jerk’ all these years?

Don’t you feel unhappy, depressed, and desperate when your fellow team members never reach out to you for help despite you being the ‘know-all’ jerk programmer?

Did you ever count the number of self-help books that you purchased / read / re-read?

Get to a cozy corner. Sit down and reflect:

Is developing your technical skills in the latest tech stack and being known as an “awesome” programmer the sole purpose of your life? Is proving your worth as a ‘rockstar’ the only goal to accomplish?

There is much more to life.

Choose your core values. Retrospect on where you stand today. Determine who you want to be. Forgive yourself and apologize whole-heartedly for having fallen short of your values by being egoistic and arrogant to others all these years of your life.

Make small changes to your behaviour every day, every week, every month — you may slip and fall off, return to your old comfortable “jerky” ways — but commit yourself to compassion every single time and believe that today you can be a better person than yesterday and tomorrow better than today!!!

It’s time to take a pause.

It’s time to care about other people’s emotions.

It’s time to rise by lifting others.

It’s time to fill in the missing “value” of your tech team — by Being Compassionate!!!