Empathy

Silicon Valley’s Empathy Vacuum

In a recent podcast, Adobe Chief Product Officer Scott Belsky said that startups and founders jump into the fray and desire to do the impossible but overlook one small thing — empathy. I have talked about the need for empathy for more than a decade now — in 2013, 2014, 2016, and then in 2017. I am glad Scott is taking up the issue.

“What should have driven you instead is empathy for the customer and their problem. What should have driven you instead is empathy for the customer and their problem. You should’ve gone shoulder to shoulder with them to identify this problem first before crafting your vision. Yes, the cheat code of course is to solve your own problem, like many successful founders do. You’re the customer so you collapse the stack of empathy.”

I believe Scott’s prescription is very narrow. It highlights the bigger problem we have around these parts. We think of products, technologies and their impacts in isolation. 

In my books, empathy goes beyond

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Technology
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Tech needs Emotional Intelligence

I was recording a podcast with Matthew Panzarino, editor of TechCrunch yesterday and the conversation turned to current state of Silicon Valley, and the point I made was that as an industry we have been focused on a limited set of metrics – growth and intelligence, for example.

Sure, like any intellectually intensive industry needs high level of IQ, but as we become more embedded and enmeshed in mainstream socio-economic and cultural fabric, technology industry needs to have an equal and perhaps more focus on values and emotional impact of what we create. Technology is a lot more pervasive and embedded into our lives. It is not something that just impacts that operations of a company, an industry or a small subset of population. The digitization’s influence is far-reaching. I have written about need for empathy and understanding.

But in reality we need to start within our own industry — our

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Musings
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From Tech’s Empathy Vacuum to Zuck’s 2017 Challenge

Late November last year, I wrote a piece about Silicon Valley’s Empathy Vacuum for The New Yorker. It seemed to have struck a chord with a lot of people, especially in our industry. I am glad we started to talk about the issues we don’t normally talk about — the human consequence of disruption and what (if any role) technology industry should be playing during this period of whiplash inducing change.

From a local radio station in Los Angeles to Twit to Marketplace on NPR and the BBC — I was asked: what should we be doing? We can do a lot, and let’s start by having a conversation with those being disrupted. The change is hard, and it is harder for many who don’t live in the bubble of Silicon Valley. How about we #listenbetter and try and visit places we normally don’t go — rest of the country that isn’t Silicon Valley or New York.

Today,

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Musings
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Facebook’s Affordable Housing Efforts: Not Enough

First of all, kudos to Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and team for recognizing the issues around affordable housing in the area of the technology boom. For more context, here is a statement that Mark published on his Facebook page.

Affordable housing is an important problem across the world. Our goal is to connect people everywhere, and that starts with being good neighbors in our local community.

For all the opportunity and jobs the technology industry has created, it has also made the Bay Area a less affordable place to live. We recognize our growth contributes to these challenges, and we’re committed to helping solve them so people can afford to live and work here.

Today we’re announcing a partnership with community groups and the governments of East Palo Alto and Menlo Park to create more affordable housing, help more people stay in their homes, and offer job training. We’re committing $20 million to jump

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Musings
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Empathy isn’t a corporate slogan

“Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty” is an emotional piece by Eric Meyer who lost his daughter earlier in the year and was reminded of his painful loss by what is seemingly a thoughtless Facebook product feature. It was an attempt by Facebook to be more human instead of being a utility, but in the end it inadvertently ended up upsetting Eric and others.

It was a rude and very real reminder that, no matter how well-intentioned, our software-enabled society is far from being empathetic and understanding of human reality. Facebook, which as a company serves 1.25 billion people, wants to be empathetic. And so do others like them. The question is how, and how fast, can we make software take on empathetic qualities, especially as we continue to pray at the altar of “growth at any cost.”

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My Essays
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