It’s time to introduce emotional guidance in engineering onboarding
It should not be only about a company’s tech stack, architecture or business documents. Onboarding should include emotional support and guidance. Most engineers can figure out the tech part of the process, however, at the speed the process happens, ultimately falls to more than tech skills: are new engineers encouraged or afraid of making mistakes? Is the primary feeling of engineers that of an impostor or empowered? If you don’t know is time to find out, but you won’t know unless there is a culture of safety and it’s replicated by others. If a new engineer watches an old-time obliterate another in a meeting, tech is not the primary focus the engineer will have, or at least not for tech's sake, but out of fear of being the subject of the obliteration. It’s time we stop pretending we are not emotionally filled individuals and start incorporating emotional language in onboarding for engineers.
What are the challenges?
Tech is easier to talk about. Data-driven, rational, smart, decision-making are all principles tech companies live and swear by, and that engineers sweat by. It’s common to find blog posts and comments from engineers that are very well compensated about being totally burned out or sucked out of life. Or about their escape plan when they leave tech. I’ve realized some of the more challenging engineers to work with have strong exit strategies out of tech. They treat you poorly, but they are as miserable as they are making you feel. I think the fact that tech is a dream for some people wanting to break in, and a dream for the ones in to leave is in part because of the insistence of companies that engineers only should care about products and the technical details of programming languages. Part of it is the companies attitude of we just don’t care about anything but your technical output here. And people are realizing how much that is just not enough anymore. Surely one of the consequences of the pandemie.
Even most bias training is abstract, logical, these words affect these people, don’t say them. But how, why, what does it make them feel? What do they think about when they talk to their friends or spouses about the words? That’s dealing in the emotional. If emotional is too strong a word, as someone said once to never involve emotions into their work, then you can use soft skills. Communication skills, job satisfaction. And that’s not the camp of most companies. One of the consequences of the great resignation I can clearly foresee is companies shifting to caring more about these subjects. If people are looking for safety, meaning and better mental health, then at some point, inevitably, emotional agility consultants will be brought into tech companies. I truly believe the result of the technical work can be greatly improved the more safety, commitment and motivation engineers have personally.
Before you leave, a disclosure, all opinions are my own and only directly reflect my own views. Any predictions are based on my own beliefs.
