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They Called Me a Turnip! With Jeremy Adamson
52 Plays1 month ago
Jeremy Adamson, author of Geeks With Empathy, shares his journey learning the value of human connection in workplace and how it shapes his approach to business strategy.
LINKS
HOSTS
- Andrea Goulet LinkedIn | andreagoulet.com
- Ray Myers LinkedIn | Craft vs Cruft on YouTube
ABOUT EMPATHY IN TECH
Empathy in Tech is on a mission to accelerate the responsible adoption of empathy in the tech industry by:
- Closing the empathy skills gap by treating empathy as a technical skill.
- Teaching technical empathy through accessible, affordable, actionable training.
- Building community and breaking down harmful stereotypes and tropes.
- Promoting technical empathy for ethics, equity, and social justice.
Learn more at empathyintech.com
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Transcript
Passion vs. Work Dissatisfaction
00:00:00
Speaker
people who aren't finding satisfaction in their work. A lot of us, when we were a hobbyist and we like contributing to these open source projects, there's a lot of passion to that. Nine o'clock comes around, you switch to your work computer and, oh, I would do anything but this. What is that difference between it? One is you're contributing to a mission, one is you're answering tickets. and And just finding a way to bridge that gap, I think is so important for our wellbeing, but also for the performance of the companies we serve.
Introduction to Empathy in Tech with Jeremy Adamson
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to Empathy in Tech, where we explore the deeply technical side of empathy. And the critical need for empathy in technology. I'm Andrea Goulet. And I'm Ray Myers. Today, we have Jeremy Adamson, who is a leader in AI and analytics strategy and has a broad range of experience in retail, aviation, energy, financial services, and public administration.
00:00:54
Speaker
Jeremy holds an MBA from University of Calgary and a Master's in Engineering from the University of New Brunswick. In his most recent book,
00:01:14
Speaker
Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I think what you're doing is so important. So I was really happy for the invitation. Oh, yeah. No, I was so glad we were introduced and i I really liked
A Turnip Story: Lessons from Mentorship
00:01:24
Speaker
your book. And I think I especially loved the way you opened your book. It's probably one of the best like first lines. So I'll read this story that just a few lines really quickly. Yeah, you got to tell them you got to tell everyone about the turnip. Yeah. So so you open your book saying he said you were a turnip.
00:01:44
Speaker
A turnip? And this is a conversation between you and your mentor. Yes, a turnip. He said, I wasted 45 minutes of his time by setting up that meeting with you. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He just didn't understand how much better this approach is. I saw your deck. All you did was prove that you are better than math than he is. Was that your goal? Was that you you were hoping to get out of it? If it wasn't, then you're not nearly as smart as you think you are. And so I'm curious. like How did you feel when you got that feedback and how did that conversation end up being so transformative for you? Yeah, that was probably the best thing that ever happened to me in my career, to be honest. it's
00:02:25
Speaker
You know, I had never been called a turnip before or since. It was very interesting. You know, rural Patois, the guy I had that ah delivered that. But I think it was particularly bad because I had just given that presentation to a high ranking government's official that was making a decision of a project that I was doing. and And I was sure that I had nailed it. And I was going in there. I was strutting. And I thought that he was calling me over to promote me, give me his office. and And then when he said it was a turnip, it just completely me threw me for a loop. I wasn't expecting that at all. So, you know, immediate response. I think it'd be the same for anybody. I was mad and i I blamed my mentor. I thought my mentor didn't know what was going on. And ah clearly the guy that called me a turnip was an idiot. He didn't understand my work and and how important it was and how clever I was.
00:03:20
Speaker
But you know my mentor was it was a wonderful guy. He really helped me
Human Interaction in Tech Presentations
00:03:25
Speaker
in my career. and And that was the best thing that could have happened to me. And you know he he let me vent. He let me say all the things I needed to get off my chest. And then you know together, we walked through it. And we we had another kick at the can, fortunately. and you know the The first time that I came away being called a turnip, that was weeks of work and rehearsing. and What it was replaced with was a 15-minute conversation without you know all the complex math. and It was you know just switching my mind to a sales mentality. and It was easier. it was
00:03:57
Speaker
more fluid. It was human to human interaction and not a presentation with generalized linear models and you know database schemas and ah much more impactful. And we we saw the project through, but started off with being called a turnip. It really makes me wonder what sort of vegetable would have been a compliment Like like the existence of the turnip imply like, if it was a really good pitch, that guy's a straight up potato right
Empathy in Technology: Challenges and Learning
00:04:29
Speaker
there. The Great Ace Bud. I just I feel like this person has so many other other words that we're not going to get to know. But regardless, this story really rings for me because I get asked
00:04:40
Speaker
um almost every week, like, how can I sell tech debt? Or how can I sell pair program or whatever? Someone's asking me how they can sell some idea. And they're not giving me any information about who they want to sell it to. And I always tell them ah nowadays, I cannot give you the perfect reasoning that will work without even knowing what the the needs, wants and worries are the person you're you're talking to.
00:05:05
Speaker
ah So how did you come to realize that empathy was so essential to your work um other than being called a turn up and essential for technologists in general? I fell off the bike many times. I think you have to to really learn those hard lessons with with this guy. um You know, after I had a debrief with my mentor there, I learned a lot about him. I learned He's a ah you know, he's he's got issues with being surrounded by so many people with master's degrees and PhDs and stuff. So he needs to feel like he's the smartest guy in the room. I learned that he's very risk averse. I learned that he always wants to make sure that something is going to work before it gets deployed. So, you know, learning all of those things about him rather than talking about, you know, the statistical models underpinning it.
00:05:58
Speaker
When I presented it to them, you know things that I never thought of as a data scientist, I was saying, this this is going to make the distribution of of work around the province more equitable, so you're going to be able to shore up work to more regional municipalities. ah Things like that that didn't really come up for me. um Evidence that it worked in other places where it was done, ah the expected outcome of it, the cost savings, all of these things that just don't occur.
00:06:24
Speaker
ah just prioritizing based on what's important to him, which sounds self-evident, but it doesn't come to mind first for knowledge workers, I think. We want to show how cool it is. We want to talk about the math and the technology, scalability, all of those things that nobody cares about but us. Yeah. Why do you think the empathy is so often seen as unrelated to technology? And do you think it was always this way? like what
Critiquing Agile and Scrum
00:06:51
Speaker
What's your insight there?
00:06:52
Speaker
I blame Agile and Scrum and the system. Oh, interesting. I make a lot of enemies when I say that, I think. But, you know, when when when I started this path 20 years ago, I would work directly with stakeholders. It was just me. It was them. It was people hammering out an idea. And and now if I look at organizations that I consult with today,
00:07:17
Speaker
You have the business need which gets distilled into a product owner and they'll talk to a scrum master. They're going to shore that out. And we've weve we've turned from a creative practice into short order cooks. you know the The DBA is going to get a ticket on a Monday as part of their sprint planning. And it's going to say, do X, Y, and Z. This is two story points. ah You better get it done because we're checking your velocity type thing. They never know I'm working for Karen and you know marketing on this, and this is part of a bigger project to do this. You don't think about the people. You don't care about the people. You do what you're told. You you close those tickets, move on to the next thing. So it's that that dehumanization, it's pretty hard to come back after five years working in that type of environment and say, now you're going to go meet Karen. You're going to see what's important to her. It's like, well, I got to close these tickets. my you know My boss is going to be on me if I don't.
00:08:14
Speaker
deliver these story points this week. So it's it's a tough sell now. And I think we we got there with the best of intentions. such as you know there's There's consequences to everything.
00:08:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think with Agile, like I came from like not a software background. And so for me, my introduction with Agile was just going to the Agile manifesto website and reading the like four tenants and then the principles and just kind of doing my best. But I do think that the scaled Agile movement that started around 2008, 2009, there's broad consensus that the certification culture and really like the like enforcement of these frameworks. It kind of veered everything away from what the original manifesto intended, which was really about good communications, collaborating directly with stakeholders, things like that.
00:09:08
Speaker
ah Yeah, it's it's really interesting to hear you say that too. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. As as a dyed in the wool Agilista myself, i I can say it's it's ironic, but very true what you're saying that, you know, from the the founding principles, that should have been the last thing.
00:09:27
Speaker
that ever happens as a result of developing of adopting agile is that ah people are given less consideration and are have less understanding across boundaries and so on. But it is an absolutely legitimate criticism ah because this wasn't just a manifesto. It was a movement. It was a process. It happened. So what actually happened? We need to remain accountable for if we're going to fix it.
00:09:53
Speaker
So, Amanda, let's talk about incentives, though.
Empathy vs. Technical Accomplishments in Tech Roles
00:09:57
Speaker
In your book, you made a really interesting observation saying the reward for a technology worker who has shown him or herself capable of interfacing with business stakeholders is a removal from technical duties. The reward is their removal from technical duties.
00:10:15
Speaker
So that is a big fear for a lot of technologists. They're kind of disincentivized to develop empathy and communication skills because if they do, their path is they might be moved into management or losing their hands on keyboard time. I mean, I struggle with this as a tech lead myself.
00:10:34
Speaker
Can you talk about this challenge and why it's still worth building empathy skills? Yeah, it's I see that all the time and it's quite unfortunate where in in particular for legacy clients that I deal with, you'll have maybe two levels you can go to as an individual contributor. You you can be an analyst, then you can be a senior analyst. If you want to move beyond that, you know some of the more progressive ones might have a specialist role type thing, but If you move over to management, now you can be a manager, director, senior director, VP, EVP, like the the ceiling is much higher there. So if you're you're not working in a digital native company where you have engineer one, two, three, four, or five, six, seven,
00:11:18
Speaker
That's a very early career ceiling that you have. and i've I've seen quite often that the people that get promoted are the best developers, those that answer the most story points, and then you're you're given a completely new set of expectations and tasks. and It's bad because the best individual contributors are are probably the worst managers And then you also lose your best developer. So it is the worst possible outcome. But I think getting back to the original question, you know, is is it still worthwhile? And I think it is, I think.
00:11:53
Speaker
even if nothing else comes from it, even if it doesn't affect your career prospects, if if you're answering tickets and, you know, Friday you go home and, you know, I've i've killed seven story points this week, you know, you're talking with your family. ah How was your week?
Personal Satisfaction Through Empathy and Help
00:12:12
Speaker
You know, I did seven story points. That doesn't feel good. Nobody cares about that. But if you helped another human being with the problem they're having, you made their life more efficient, that over the long term is going to give you a ah deep sense of personal satisfaction and I think
00:12:30
Speaker
A lot of us nowadays don't know that we're missing that so much. We're we're used to technology, we're used to just mindlessly scrolling. We we don't know what we're missing, but I think there's there's a hole in us that, and im I'm getting off topic, I sound like a philosopher now more than anything, but there's there's a hole in us that's looking for that human connection. And it's only once you start to feel that, once you start to help people, once you start to take a service mindset that you realize what was missing from your life,
00:12:57
Speaker
So I think yeah even if it doesn't do anything for your career, even if you don't get a promotion from it, if you can say, I'm not answering a ticket, but I'm helping Jennifer, that that's ah a mental shift that's going to give you a sense of fulfillment that that makes this whole exercise worthwhile.
00:13:12
Speaker
Yeah, that makes me think of, there's a researcher, I've mentioned him before on other episodes, Jamil Zaki, he's out of Stanford, and he developed what he calls the motivation theory of empathy, which is that like there are approach and avoid situations where like we are motivated to empathize or we are motivated to not.
00:13:33
Speaker
um And I think this is a great example of how you're talking about that feeling good, right? Like it helps me at the end of the day feel like a better person. It helps me manage my stress. It helps me breathe a little bit easier.
00:13:49
Speaker
you know I think those are great examples of reasons why you would want to move towards empathy, but I think thinking about that cost and benefit is is an important one and recognizing that there are different ideas around empathy. Can you give some examples too about like how empathy doesn't just happen kind of in the interactions on the reporting level? like If somebody does have their hands on the keyboard, how can you talk about embedding empathy into the software?
Questioning Misaligned Tasks
00:14:20
Speaker
Can you give some examples there of you know kind of individual contributors who are typing away you know that aren't necessarily giving the sales pitch?
00:14:29
Speaker
What are some things that they can do in their everyday development activities that you think really crystallize this bringing empathy and embedding it into the systems that they're creating? ah I would say not to be scared to put your hand up if you see something that doesn't make sense or or something where a stakeholder is they think they're asking for something that they want, but they're not expressing it right.
00:14:55
Speaker
and Quite often, we're we're scared of that ownership. We're scared to stick our head above the parapet. We we might be seen as blockers or an annoyance. and it's It's a lot easier just to do what you're told, you know take your paycheck, go home at 5 o'clock. There's a risk when you take that ownership, when you put your hand up and say, you know they're asking for a churn model and you know they're they're they're actually looking to reduce churn. and I think we can take another angle on this.
00:15:22
Speaker
Can we go back to the product owner and re-scope this? It doesn't quite make sense to me. that That's scary. Once you take ownership over something, now you own the outcome. Now, if it doesn't work, there's there's nobody to blame but yourself. And that's a little bit scary. But at the same time, you own the success at the end of it. And you you own the outcome if it's good. And and and that sense of ownership, you you own those relationships. You own the relationship with the company. You start to feel more connected to the company. and you're not a fundable unit of production. You're not a developer level three who's expected to you know do X, Y, and Z in a week, but you're actually making an impact on the organization. And and that can come from any level. um I worked with a guy in a past life who in his past life worked in a call center and we were trying to do performance management dashboards for their contact center.
00:16:18
Speaker
and He said, well they're asking for time on hold. and I don't think they're looking exactly for that. They're looking for time between the IVR and and some other metrics. so um you know know i'm I'm probably misrepresenting what he said. He was he was a lot more eloquent on it than I am. but but he He convinced me to go back to the stakeholder, redefine what metrics exactly they're looking for. and and he was He was 100% right. now ah the The person that was a manager of that team said, you know absolutely, that makes a lot more sense. And you know he he was walking on clouds for about a month after that. he He felt good. He felt like he was making impact. And that's a much better feeling, again, than just going, I know this is wrong, but I'm doing what I'm told. I got to get out of here. I got to you know go to baseball practice type thing. He felt that ownership. He felt connected. And it it just gives you that momentum in your life. and
00:17:10
Speaker
that that Again, that can happen at any level from a junior coder all the way up to a team lead. Yeah. I think it goes the other way too. so you know A lot of my experience is more on the managing the account relationships and selling and things.
Managers' Role in Problem-Solving
00:17:25
Speaker
One of the things that I learned early on from my business partner Scott was that he would complain that Like when people were talking about requirements, they were asking for very specific implementations when what they should be doing is saying, this is the problem I need you to solve because engineers are such great problem solvers. But if you as the business person say, I need you to implement this thing, you're not really realizing the full
00:17:55
Speaker
like, capacity. And like that is the thing that Scott's like, I light up when I say that. So that's something for managers and strategists, I think, to reframe how they're presenting things too. So then that way, it's not just a ticket and you know you get more creative solutions. So Ray, I'm curious about you too. So you get your hands on the keyboard a lot and you're you know in the code base. What's something that you do that you think ah really embeds empathy into the work that you do?
00:18:26
Speaker
I think it's related to what Jeremy was just saying about going to the source, getting a really good signal. I use the word signal and in my head a lot, ah because it's there's so much ambiguity of what what is your source of truth on what is really the valuable thing behind this ask. You develop an intuition that The form that it arrives at my desk has probably gone through so many layers ah of translation. It's a copy of a copy. It's one part of a larger story. I cannot trust that I've been given enough information to actually meet the need. I may have been given enough information to cover myself.
00:19:16
Speaker
And when ultimately the thing we're building together fails, I will be able to say, well, I did the part of it you told me to do, but I have no faith that I actually understand what needs to be achieved. So I will ask why I will have a discipline of I want to code i want to get to working on your your solution. But until I understand what we're actually trying to achieve, I'm not going to. and And if the person asking me isn't in a position to tell me I need to find someone who is and and you end up pulling this thread and it can be kind of frustrating at first, but also very, very rewarding because
00:19:57
Speaker
ah You'll be surprised how often something's been lost in translation and you'll be able to accomplish something really, really great because you found something someone else missed or maybe has been missed for years. Yeah.
00:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, I love that. I have a question, Jeremy. like So I'm working on a book too, and a book is hard, right? What was it that inspired you to put these stories into a book form and really learn about empathy and how it can be applied? And then can you tell us a little bit more about your book? like Who should read it? What you're hoping to you know chat about with that?
Inspiration Behind the Latest Book
00:20:34
Speaker
Yeah, my first book um was very much a framework for building and leading high performance data science teams. and And that one was easy. It just poured out of me. I've been doing this for a long time. It was you know do a capability mapping exercise, interview the stakeholders, find out what they need. Here's the performance management, the KPIs. And that's quite easy. And as I worked with different clients throughout the years, i I didn't realize I was doing it at the time, but a lot of it was understanding their motivations, understanding their their personal fears, their techno-emotional posture and so on. and And that informed a lot of what I was doing. And I tried to put that into a framework. I published that book.
00:21:23
Speaker
did you know quite a bit of speaking afterwards and a lot of the feedback that came to me after that was i I deployed your framework word for word and it didn't work out because of this and this and this so it doesn't work.
00:21:40
Speaker
And I said, well, did you take the the time to get to know them? did you Did you talk to people? I said, no, you didn't say that in your book. and And for me, that kind of just went without saying. And then I think over time as I chewed on that and I thought of um like I mentor ah new Canadian engineers and they have a hard time adapting to Canadian business culture. And having been on the East Coast and the West Coast, there's slight cultural differences in how we work there as well.
00:22:08
Speaker
and I just picked on that you know over the years. and As I got older, I started you know working with more senior stakeholders. and I was just seeing more and more how emotion and empathy played into the performance of these technology teams. And it was a much harder book to write. I'm a little bit shy and introverted. I'm not used to telling stories about being called a turnip at the start of my career. So I felt kind of exposed talking about things like that. But when I had these one-on-one conversations with you know new graduates and people that said, you know, I've been doing this 15 years and i'm I'm still a senior developer, how do I become a manager?
00:22:49
Speaker
i I said, well, what have you done so far? And they said, well, I got my Snowflake certification. I got my AWS Cloud Engineer 2 certification. They told me to do an MBA. So I went and I did that. And I'm still just a senior developer. And and it always, always comes down to relationships. like That was without exception where people were falling down in their careers. And without exception, the clients that I was working with, where they were having that that that break with their technology function. and As I get older, maybe I'm getting more sentimental, but i'm I'm just seeing more and more how important the human factors are in in getting technology working in organizations. so I think that was what inspired the book. and you know As to who it's for, i I would say new graduates, I would say people who are hitting that peak in their career, people who
00:23:41
Speaker
you know aren't finding satisfaction in their work. A lot of us when we you know we're we're a hobbyist and we like you know contributing to these open source projects, that there's a lot of passion to that. Nine o'clock comes around, you switch to your work computer and oh i I would do anything but this. and you know What is that difference between it? One is you're contributing to a mission One is you're answering tickets and and just, you know, finding a way to bridge that gap, I think is so important for our well-being, but also for the ah performance of the companies we serve. Now that your latest book, Geeks with Empathy, is filled with practical advice for practitioners to embed empathy in their work. If you had to pick just one thing for our listeners to implement right away, what would that be?
Assuming Positive Intentions for Better Teamwork
00:24:32
Speaker
The main thing for me is positive attribution. And that sounds like a bit of a squishy thing. But for some reason, humans are programmed to just assume the worst about each other. If if I'm late for a meeting, ah the daycare didn't open on time. I hit every red light. you know I have all of these reasons for being five minutes late like I was for this call. My apologies again. But if you guys are late for the call,
00:25:00
Speaker
is is probably your fault. You didn't take this serious enough. You're disrespecting me. It is a personal failing on your fault. But for me, it's because of environmental things beyond my control. And and for some reason, we're we're just programmed that way. And I think if we can get around to the ego that is underpinning all of that. Everything in our lives would be a lot easier and and work is no exception. so If a stakeholder comes to us and and they say, I don't like the work you're doing, I think the project you're working on is is garbage, it's going to make the company worse.
00:25:35
Speaker
our Our first instincts, like mine when I was called to turn up, is this person is probably a bad person. This is ah a personal enemy of mine. They're standing in the way of what I want to do. But if if we try to unpack that and and just make that mental effort to to step into their shoes, we're we're probably in a position on them. we're We're making them lose relevance in the organization.
00:25:58
Speaker
They're not being measured on this, they're not being bonused on this. we We are a massive inconvenience and we are introducing a lot of uncertainty into their day and and we don't stop and think about that nearly enough. So I think if if nothing else, if if we just assume the best about our co-workers, people that honk at us in traffic, are our spouses, everybody, I think the world would be a better place and and work would be you know more satisfying and and we would accelerate in our careers a lot quicker as well. Yeah. yeah What I'm hearing you describe is a huge bias in humans, which is the fundamental attribution bias, which is why you know describing is a positive attribution. When I've given courses and things on this where I include it, what I find interesting and the fundamental attribution bias is when something goes wrong,
00:26:50
Speaker
i can I attribute it to my circumstances. great When something goes wrong with someone else, I attribute it to their character flaws. They're lazy, they don't care, right which is exactly what you're talking about. So I go through an exercise sometimes with, um we just need to balance out that quadrant.
00:27:07
Speaker
And one of the things I've noticed is that is really hard for people to jump straight to the what was their situation. And you have to look at your own things first. And as soon as you figure that out, then everything else unlocks. So there was, you know, an example would be, you know, if you're working with someone and they're not implementing the details correctly, it's like, oh, they don't care. a But I've seen this where it's like, oh, I actually am Really worried about losing my job so i'm creating all of this documentation in a way that they're not gonna be able to digest because they have ADHD. And i've seen this is soon as we recognize like our own kind of internal character challenges.
00:27:55
Speaker
then everything unlocks and we can get to that positive attribution. And I think when both parties can get to that point, then that's where innovation happens. It's really exciting because then you're feeding off of each other and you're finding new ideas.
00:28:11
Speaker
I like that. Well put. So we have one final question that we ask all of our guests, and I'm really interested about your answer, which is what do you think is the most important thing that should happen at the intersection of empathy and technology?
Ethical Standards in Tech Work
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question. I i like it and I struggle a little bit to land on on one thing. But ah if if I had to say, you know, the empathy aside, just looking at the full picture of of technology workers and their relationship with the world and and the way they work, I think that we need
00:28:50
Speaker
you know, looking at society as as a whole, we as technology workers, as knowledge workers, we we really need to begin to evaluate our work against some grounding philosophy and and and some metric, and not just a reaction to stimulus, like a bug that doesn't have agency in the world, but really a fully participatory acceptance of the consequences of the work that we do. And that's important, not just for our day to day,
00:29:18
Speaker
not just for the output but i think as well for our self-worth and and for me i've i've i've tried to come up with that myself and and the metric that i've come up with is as i'm beginning to work on a project i ask myself does this elevate human dignity and and that used to be a lot easier question.
00:29:38
Speaker
there There was consequence to every step we took in technology. If I think of e-commerce, it lets us shop at home, that's more convenient. The consequence of that though, small business owners shut down, there that there was a lot of negativity. i think if If you look at Etsy, it lets craftspeople share their passions with a bigger audience and that was great. but Consequence of that is um you know it it devalued a lot of the work for artisans. And I think even even social media, if you look at it in the original intentions, like MySpace Days lets us stay in touch with family. But if you look at what it's it's done now, I think it's been overwhelmingly negative. So we we know we know social media companies have a lot of negative impacts on on mental health and and what have you.
00:30:27
Speaker
But if I'm a data scientist and my objective variable is time spent on platform, I would want to be asking myself, can I in good conscience create or contribute to an algorithm that is going to suck people deeper in? It's going to keep them mindlessly scrolling and and killing their soul. and And I don't think that we can. I think we need to take personal accountability for those types of decisions.
00:30:56
Speaker
And you know not not to get on a soapbox, but you know big picture, technology is supposed to serve us. It's supposed to make life easier. But we're moving unquestioningly to serving technology without any sort of question or thought to the consequences of that. And I think that that's but that's a scary proposition. If we fast forward 100 years from now,
00:31:21
Speaker
that type of grounding principle that we're we're only going to follow business metrics and we're going to let the technology take us where it does. that That doesn't take us anywhere good. and A lot of clients I'm working with right now have questions around generative AI. if If we use generative AI for good, if we use it for synthesizing information, helping us make decisions, that that could be a great good for the world. It it it frees people up, it it makes them more objective in their decision making, but if we use it to um
00:31:52
Speaker
you know One of the scariest use cases I've heard is is taking advantage of the lonely and giving them a subscription service, boyfriend or girlfriend. The outcome of that is is great profitability for a company, but destroys families and and leads to social decay. so that That's a far off example, but the decisions we make individually contribute to that. so that That's what I would say is is really, you know in in closing, we need to evaluate what we're doing every day against our own ethical criteria. and And for me, that does this elevate human dignity. um And I would encourage listeners to find that for themselves. like
00:32:32
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If I own what I do, I own the consequences of it. Am I comfortable with that? And if so, what is the grounding framework that I'm going to operate within? Fantastic. Well, this has been a great conversation. How can people get in touch with you and learn more about your work? I'm all over LinkedIn. Feel free to reach out on there. I'd love to connect with listeners and it's ah and I'm very service oriented. So I consider it a personal favor to be able to support any listeners however I can, and I appreciate again the invitation. Great. Thanks so much for coming on the show, Jeremy, and thanks you out there for listening. Empathy in Tech is on a mission to accelerate the responsible adoption of empathy in the tech industry by closing the empathy skills gap, by treating empathy as a technical skill,
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teaching technical empathy through accessible, affordable, and actionable training, building community and breaking down harmful stereotypes and tropes, and finally, promoting technical empathy for
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like that that one