9 min read · 1,679 words
The Empathy Gap
I love taking a peek behind the curtain and giving you an insight into why and how I came up with my ideas and today, I’m not only going to give you insight into this post, but also the last post lol. I was struggling to figure out last week what this weeks topics would be and so I took to the best electronic friend I have, Claude, and we talked about topics I could come up with. And after a few iterations, I really dug the idea of an “empathy tax” and so wrote it all up.
But then, yesterday, after the post went up, I was talking with my buddy Josh and he said something that I felt was just incredibly true and profound, that the empathy tax is high because of the empathy gap.
It’s one of those things that I hear and instantly it rings true. And when you look at our society you can see it everywhere. But we’re here talking about empathy in the context of engineering, so let’s dive into what the empathy gap is, and how it’s affecting the quality of engineering outcomes, and then how it impacts the empathy tax and makes it ask for more and more of the people willing to pay it.
Let’s start with what the empathy gap is, because I think it’s important to define our terms. Funny enough, Josh and I didn’t need to define it in our conversation because we’ve talked about tangential topics (and this topic just without the great name for it lol) basically since we met.
And I’ll be honest with you again, Josh and I are both of the hippy dippy west coast sect and as a result have really similar values around work, how we treat people, how we see the world, etc, so there’s a recognition that just because these concepts seem right and natural to us doesn’t mean they are to everyone.
So what do I mean when I say “Empathy Gap”?
In all walks of life, you’re seeing people narrowing their focus on what and who they need to care about. We see it in stark ways like people cheering on the extrajudicial killing of suspected drug runners, to people aligning more tightly to their identity groups, or even things as minor as not picking up after their dogs on walks.
Essentially, the empathy gap is where we abandon the rules of society in favor of doing things that we see as benefiting ourselves or our identify group over other people.
And this isn’t a thing that I’m pointing out as being “new” or “something we’ve never seen” or any nonsense like that — we all have been a part of the empathy gap problem. No one is immune. I’ve had times where I forgot to bring dog bags, and just shrugged when I needed to walk away after my dog went to the bathroom. I feel bad enough about it to write it down here, but also not SO bad that I feel like I can’t write it down here lol.
Now, the thing is, the level of deviation from how a society needs to function is relative to the level of empathy gap.
So now that we’ve defined it, what’s the big deal and how does that affect engineering outcomes specifically?
It all comes back to something anyone who works with me has heard me say a hundred times… it’s all about what we incentivize. You are your incentives.
Thinking about it from a website perspective, you build a website because you have a great idea, or a product to sell. You focus the website on being as user friendly as possible and simple to get people to use or buy your product. As your user base grows, you need to expand. Now you’re not just serving your customers, you’re also serving your employees, and your focus splinters. Then you decide to expand to other business opportunities, and again split your focus. Then you have an IPO, and you now also have shareholders you’re answering to, and again your focus is split.
And that’s the SIMPLE version. There’s regulations, there’s lawsuits, there’s your social media presence, there’s an infinite number of things that can distract from your original intent — to make something great for your consumers.
And all of a sudden, you are making a worse experience for your customers ON PURPOSE to serve a different purpose!
You’re not being malicious. You’re not being “bad”. Hell, you’re not even lacking in empathy! There’s just not enough to go around.
Sure adding in a chat bubble in your mobile application to make it so that your users can talk to an AI chat bot shows your investors and your board that you’re engaged with AI and that you’re trying to take advantage of an opportunity. But your user is annoyed because that bubble is hovering right over the tab that they want to use. Sure they could move the bubble around and make it better but why are we creating the added layer of friction for the user?
Again, it’s not a lack of empathy, but it’s the gap that’s being created because as companies and ambitions grow, there’s more empathy needed to keep the products grounded in user need. You have to think not just “the board needs this” but “the board needs this, but the clients don’t, how do we bridge the gap in a thoughtful and meaningful way”. And it’s SO much easier to just say “the board said so, let’s just do it” especially when you’re not incentivized to JUST create customer value.
Hopefully I’ve painted the picture well enough for you to go, “Oh shit, no wonder the empathy tax is beating the shit out of me lately”.
Because it’s so hard to figure out what the right place to put your empathy is! And as a result we’re constantly needing to make value judgements that are beyond the scope of our jobs, but include all sorts of considerations like, is this good for the world? Is this good for the people I’m building it for? Is it good for my bosses? Hell, the question of is this doing what I need to do to grow in my career or exhibit my personal values is often completely neglected for all the other things that you are needing to consider!
SPOILER WARNING FOR THE GOOD PLACE EVEN THOUGH IT ENDED YEARS AGO.
This is really well explored in The Good Place, when they are talking about what contributes to your score that decides if you go to the Good Place or to the Bad Place. It used to be much simpler to be a human because we were connected to our local communities, but we weren’t so globally connected. And now, there’s a potential downside in almost everything we do.
In The Good Place, Doug Forcett figures out 92% of the algorithm that decides where you end up. But even having that level of knowledge didn’t allow him to do enough good to end up in the Good Place! And he tried everything he could! It was to the point of moving to the woods and growing his own food so he wasn’t taking part in the food industrial complex we’ve created where buying a carrot carries a carbon footprint.
Now think of that in the context of your poor engineers. They might be building things they fundamentally disagree with, or think are bad for society, or just don’t align with their own values… but it’s that or you’re out on the street. Our society has become very unforgiving.
As an example (that I might have already told… but as my wife will tell you, I will repeat my stories even if you’ve heard them because I just like to repeat myself lol), back in the day I had a scrum team that was being scrutinized by my leadership because we didn’t have work for them to do. They were literally on the chopping block. And then another team came in looking for someone to do work for them building a solution.
The solution was a crypto trading platform that could be used by small/mid tier banking users seamlessly in their existing mobile app.
Now on the one hand, as a boss, I felt it was my duty to do the best possible thing for my employees, which was to get them working so that they weren’t in danger of losing their jobs.
On the other hand, I thought the solution was absolutely horrible for society. It’s been shown that crypto tends to make the rich richer, while normal people investing in it tend to be used as pawns, essentially transferring the wealth that they are investing directly to the rich proprietors of crypto currencies.
But I made the decision that whether I went along with it or not they were going to build the damn app, so I might as well make it so my team could keep working.
And almost every day I think about whether it was the right decision, and I gotta tell you, it’s been a long time since then (I deleted the comma I put here just to give my mom a win) and I still have no idea if it was right.
I’ll never know if I was right. And that’s why the empathy tax keeps growing. Because the empathy gap isn’t about people NOT having empathy. It’s about the fact that empathy is becoming too complicated. There’s no one way to do things correctly AND there are infinite ways we can make things worse. How do you know whether what you’re doing will make the world better or worse?!
The simple answer? Do your best. Live your values. It’s hard as shit. And you’ll fuck it up. But that’s ok. Just keep going. Learn, figure out how to better exhibit your empathy and values. Because a thing I know won’t work? Giving up.