Compassionate Coding's April Wensel

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here with you.

Sure. Yeah. So, I started Compassionate Coding in 2016 after working in tech for about a decade, as you mentioned. I noticed that a lot of the problems we kept running into were not really technical problems per se, but rather human problems like communication breakdown, not really empathizing with the user. Burning out, all these, like, very human issues. And yet, a lot of times, talking about the soft stuff was kind of dismissed in tech. You know, even at conferences, it was like, oh, you know, we want technical talks, not soft talks, as if there's, like, a hierarchy. And so, I was like, okay, but, like, these are the two— these are two things that are happening, and, like, they go together. Like, the reason we have all these problems is because we don't talk enough about the human stuff. So, I was like, clearly, there's a business opportunity here. So, both because of frustration with these problems that I saw and also, like, inspiration to do something about it, that's why I started Compassionate Coding. So, what I do with Compassionate Coding is I teach emotional intelligence skills, but through the lens of software engineering and other, like, technical roles, so that people don't just dismiss it as, like, soft, fuzzy, like, nonsense, but, like, hey, this will actually make me a better developer. You know, even down to like naming variables with empathy and, you know, the architecture decisions we make and how that impacts people and kind of trying to come at that even from a compassionate, empathetic place.

Sure. So, empathy, there's like so many different levels to discuss it because what people in tech don't always realize is like in psychology and this whole other field, like, and social science and everything, people take these terms and rip them apart and get really deep into it in the same way that we do with technical stuff and programming languages and stuff like that. But to not overwhelm people, empathy at a simple formulation is understanding what somebody else is feeling. And so there's some different varieties of it. Sometimes you feel it emotionally. If you see somebody— I'm sure some people have experienced this, where if you see somebody you know, hit their hand or get hurt, like you almost feel the pain a little bit. Like that's kind of one version of it where you're actually feeling it. Or if you're— if you see somebody really sad, sometimes you kind of feel it. Not everyone has a strong degree of that emotional empathy though. Sometimes it's more a cognitive version of empathy, which is kind of more perspective-taking, like being able to look at what somebody's going through and say, I bet they're probably feeling sad because they just went through this tough time, or I bet they're stressed And I can, you know, pick up on that because of their facial expressions or whatever. And so sometimes it's about like applying logic and trying to understand how people feel, and sometimes it's just an intuitive thing. And so different people have different levels of it, but you can learn to get better at both of them through practice. And so I like to especially emphasize that empathy is a skill.

How did you learn? I have to ask, how did you teach yourself or how did you— Yeah.

Yeah. And so did you, so reading articles, is that how you kind of taught yourself or, you know what I mean? Like, or was it, that was enough? Yeah. That's. That's good.

Yeah. Which speaks to the culture of the industry is that a lot of times these aren't valued. What I found is for years and years, companies have done leadership training sort of stuff. And so then it was like, okay, if you're going to be at a certain role, sometimes you'll have access to that. And that's at larger companies with more resources, not necessarily at smaller companies. But that I think these skills are valuable to individual contributors as well, because we still have to negotiate things. We still have to give feedback in code reviews. We still have to write code, like I said, and thinking about, you know, your users and your collaborators and everything helps you there. And so, I think it applies in so many ways, and yet, it's only, like you said, in recent years, I feel like, that it's been really valued. And so, that's also why I saw an opportunity for it, is that there's such a need, and it's not really being being addressed fully.

Totally.

Well, and so 2 things on that. One is I think that especially for people new in the field, These quote unquote soft skills are more kind of, I see them as almost meta skills, because if you learn these skills, it helps you learn all those other technical skills. You know what I mean? So like if you're able to manage your own learning process, if you know how your mind works and the ways that like work for learning, if you know how to ask questions in an empathetic way, like that takes into consideration the time of the person you're speaking to, then you're gonna learn better. So these are actually skills that, like have very practical applications for even newcomers and also for people in the field. And then the other thing I'll say about this 50/50 is I also kind of don't think there is an easy way to draw a line between the soft and technical sort of thing. Like I try to, I'm also kind of trying to challenge that with my work because, you know, with compassionate coding, I just mash them together. So, but I really think that, you know, when people are, even when they're giving a quote unquote technical talk, like about how their team, you know, introduced this new technology and how it like changed, you know, how they started using microservices, how they, whatever it is. And then a lot of it comes down to how did they communicate this to the team? How did they get buy-in from the stakeholders? You know what I mean? And so those are all quote unquote soft things. And so I think sometimes too in tech, we see things in black and white binary, you know, I mean, it works in the code, not so great with humans. And so I think that being able to, to see the gray areas and how a lot of this stuff is connected, And so, like, even in my talks, like, sometimes I do show code samples and say, like, here's, you know, this is this compassionate code or whatever, you know what I mean? And so, I think that mixing that a bit too, I think, is kind of where the industry's headed. And I say this from witnessing this. I've been doing this for, like, 8 years now with my company and coming up on 8 years in May. And I've seen a shift. Like, I used to have to very much, like, convince conferences of the value or, you know, that sort of thing. I don't so much have to do that anymore. Like, now conferences are like, oh no, this is super important and we need this and please come speak about this. And you don't have to talk about code. Like, we just need to talk about the human. And I'm like, okay. Like, you know, so I think I do see a shift happening. And I think it's because, like how you pointed out, like awareness is building and people are like, hey, this stuff is important.

Yeah. And they were being great about that. And I was even looking through some previous years and I saw there were talks about like courage and things like that. Just things that were more human-oriented, um, with still, you know, technical information, but very much human-oriented, which I definitely appreciate. And I've been seeing that at recent conferences as well, um, that the soft, the soft human stuff that, you know, is, is, is also a part of life. It's hard to avoid.

Yeah. So, you know, I always talk about compassion, but I like to approach it from different angles. And so one thing I've been thinking about a lot, especially in the pandemic years, is just how much change we all kind of went through and are continuing to go through. And whether it's from, you know, hybrid work or, you know, remote work or AI coming in and new AI tools and people, some fears around that. And just, you know, there've been a lot of layoffs in the industry and it just, there's a lot going on and there's a lot of change. And so compassion really helps with all of this because we need self-compassion. We need compassion for other people as they're going through these changes, especially, you know, difficult changes. And so What I'm gonna be speaking about is how to embrace change rather than fearing it in hopes that it will help people avoid burning out because I see a lot of, or deal with it if they are already burning out, because I think all this change, you know, is a lot to deal with. And people, I look around and a lot of people are very tired and like, you can see it in Zoom meetings. You can see it, you know, just all around, like people are just kind of tired. And I think part of it is, it's just, it's a lot for a human being to deal with the level of change that we've been having to deal with. And so, yeah. Yes, I'm going to try to do what I can to show people how to do that. And so I think it'll have applications for people on an individual level in their career in terms of how they look at change and how they handle change. And also if they're leaders in their company, like how they lead their teams through change, because again, that requires a lot of compassion. And I'm also going to be talking about curiosity and creativity and how they fit in as well. So it's going to be 4 C's, I guess, there: change, curiosity, creativity, compassion. I like alliteration, as you can tell from my company name, Compassionate Change. passionate coding. So yeah, it should be fun and should be exciting.

Aw, thank you.

Yeah, that's one angle. And it's also like how we look at the change, you know what I mean? So creative angles of interpreting the change so that, you know, because when you're a little more flexible in terms of how versus being rigid in terms of how you deal with change, especially like unexpected change, can help you navigate, right? So I think creativity is an important piece for charting the path forward as you have like all this uncertainty happening. And so it fits in in that way too. But yeah, definitely what you said as well, creative outlet very much helps. And I think, you know, that's something too that like people in tech may say in the same way they may say, I'm not a people person. I work, you know, work with computers, right? People often say, oh, I'm not creative. I just do, you know, computer stuff. But like the work we do is immensely creative. You know what I mean? I mean, whether it comes down to like, you know, getting the constraints from our stakeholders and then trying to figure out a creative solution that like helps, That's creativity as well. And so, I think also I'm going to kind of try to help broaden people's view of what creativity is and how it does apply to the work that we do as engineers.

Oh, thank you.

Sure. So, if people want to stay in touch, I'd recommend they subscribe to my newsletter. So, they can find it at compassionatecoding.com. And there's a signup link there. And I'm not— I send one out about every 2 weeks, but, you know, and so it's not like gonna spam anybody. And it's just, you know, thoughts on these issues about the human side of tech and with little, you know, nuggets on things that they can apply to their day-to-day. And that's a good way to stay in touch, I feel.

Yay! Thank you. Great speaking with you.