New Compassionate Software Engineering Values
Compassion is a skill, we can all practise it! In how we publish new features, hiring process(hire for attitude and mindset), adopting new tools, code reviews, api documentation
Compassion is a skill, we can all practise it! In how we publish new features, hiring process(hire for attitude and mindset), adopting new tools, code reviews, api documentation.
Ok...look,
Technology is about people - about making people's lives better. And that's what compassion is all about. Show compassion for example in how you write code. This includes how you name variables, comment you code and even document it. When you do this, you're making it easier for your future reference and people who would look at your code. This shows how caring you are. And that's compassion.
When reviewing other people's code, do it with compassion. You get an error or a bad writing pattern, help compassionately. Appreciate their little effort and help them grow. If you are building a software product that for example involes collecting data from your users, you need to do that the right way. You have to respect people's privacy and not exploit it. You have to care.
1. Humility, Ego
You need to relate well with others, ready to listen and care about them as you build stuff. Whether a senior or a junior developer, you need to appreciate each other's efforts to grow and always be ready to share what you know or ask help and guide on what you don't know. Be ready to help and get helped.
2. Inclusion, Elitism
Let's care about everyone. Experience level for example, should never be a barrier to us relating well with each other or how we work in an engineering team but a learning path; and always appreciate all those inputs, however little they might be; from everyone.
3. Cooperation, Competition
Instead of trying to prove how cool or smart each one of us is, let's team up! That makes more sense than trying to prove how best we can do things than person a,b..Z
4. Learning, Being "Smart"
We are all learning daily in everything we do. So that means as much as you may look or is a "smart" engineer, focus on getting better each day.
April Wensel - "Instead of being smart, let's focus on learning… "
5. Being A Mentor, Being A Rockstar
Use your skills to help others. And this value cuts across all the rest and everything I just discussed above. Be it open source, speaking at conferences teaching others to how code and much more.
Do not forget about your well being
To wrap up, you actually also need to be compassionate about yourself and love what you do. Enjoy it.
Yours,
Maye Edwin
Got any question? You wanna have a chat? Hit my inbox on twitter asap đŸ˜‰