Cut the Crap: Empathy Is the Hardest Discipline in Engineering

We speak often of excellence. Foundations, velocity, reliability, reuse. These are noble goals. Yet without a core bias towards empathy, they remain hollow. This is not a plea for softness. It is a call for integrity which means consistency between values and action.

Integrity in engineering requires the courage to question, the discipline to hold standards, and the humility to acknowledge when something does not serve its purpose.

Empathy in engineering demands far more than polite stakeholder alignment or user-centric slogans. It requires deliberate action. It shapes what we choose to build, how we structure it, and most importantly, what we reject.

Engineering Means Empathy in Action

Empathy asks difficult questions:

• Do our users truly need this?
• Will this improve their experience, or merely introduce friction wrapped in novelty?
• Who will carry the consequences of this choice next quarter?
• How will this operate in production, and who will carry the pager?

Empathy means standing up to incoherent requirements. It requires pushing back when features serve politics rather than need. It involves speaking truth to influence: “This solution causes more harm than value.”

It includes delivering with pride. Designing systems one would confidently hand over. Writing logs another engineer can understand. Avoiding traps others will fall into.

Administrative Cruelty by Indifference

Consider a passport renewal in France. One fills an online form. Then visits the prefecture to fill another. Biometric photos require printing and scanning. Digital records already exist, yet must be resubmitted. Delays mount. Contradictions multiply. The result is not mere inconvenience. It leads to personal consequences : missed travel, cancelled screenings, anxiety around official commitments. The people steering these processes appear blind to the human impact of their decisions. And they are. It sends the wrong message: that arrogance and ignorance can coexist not only in tone, but in practice. The result is institutional indifference dressed as administrative order.

This is not dysfunction by accident. It is design without empathy. No one upstream paused to ask, “What does this feel like for the citizen?” No one measured the cost of confusion, delay, and helplessness. No one owned the full journey.

It reflects a system optimised for process over people. A people-optimised system, by contrast, would streamline inputs, reduce redundancy, and offer clarity at every step. It would anticipate user confusion and design to eliminate it. It would measure success by the ease, speed, and confidence with which individuals navigate their tasks. We must never emulate systems that prioritise administrative consistency at the expense of human experience.

Craft as a Gesture of Respect

Before we explore how empathy holds under pressure, we must examine how it first appears, in the quality of our daily work.

Attention to detail reflects empathy. Clean design communicates respect. Clear interfaces signal intent. Maintainable code prevents suffering.

Craft is not a luxury. It is a form of care.

Good documentation, predictable behaviours, tested codepaths, these are signals of empathy, not bureaucracy.

Empathy builds trust, not through words, but through design. When a user encounters a form that anticipates their questions, avoids redundant steps, and recovers gracefully from errors, they trust the system was built with their experience in mind. When onboarding flows succeed without confusion, or operational dashboards surface what matters first, users and operators alike feel seen. That is trust born from thoughtful engineering. You show the respect you expect from others, and so lead by example.

Integrity Is Not Fragility

In general, empathy stands in opposition to weakness. It requires strength to challenge assumptions, discipline to say no, and courage to trigger uncomfortable conversations. True empathy does not avoid tension. It uses tension to surface deeper needs and guide better outcomes. For example, when an engineer questions why a requested feature exists and discovers the real problem lies elsewhere, they open the door to a more effective and sustainable solution. That discomfort creates clarity, not conflict.

Consider a team rejecting a last-minute feature request that jeopardises system stability. That is empathy towards users and maintainers. Or engineers insisting on redesigning an onboarding flow because the current one confuses new customers and increases churn. That is empathy through confrontation.

Empathy means telling a client, "This path will not serve you," even if they expect compliance. It involves pausing delivery to clarify intent, refine priorities, and protect long-term value. These actions are not soft. They are principled.

To refuse a harmful shortcut demonstrates strength. To challenge incoherent business logic shows courage. To delay a release until confidence exists protects users and colleagues alike.

None of this signals fragility. It reflects ownership. Integrity. Empathy.

Every Choice Creates Weight

The absence of empathy does not always look like chaos. It often wears the costume of confidence.

Consider Boeing’s MCAS system, rushed under competitive pressure. Engineers built a critical flight control logic that assumed too much, warned too little, and failed too silently. Two crashes, hundreds dead, reputations destroyed. The issue was not code, but decisions made far from the cockpit, detached from operator reality. Empathy might have asked: what if the pilot gets confused? What if the sensor fails? What does it feel like, up there, with seconds to act and no answers?

Or look at Knight Capital in 2012. A small code deployment error, uncontrolled, unreviewed, triggered over 400 million dollars in trading losses in under an hour. The root issue? A deployment path with no guardrails, no rollback, no operational empathy. Someone assumed the system would behave. No one asked what happens if it does not. Empathy might have asked: what does failure look like in real time? Who will catch it? How fast can we respond?

Engineers hold power. Each decision imposes weight on someone: a user, an operator, a future team.

Big power implies big responsibility. One does not need to wear a cape to understand this. Seamless onboarding for a bank account opening can protect someone's financial stability. Smooth access to a healthcare application can support timely care or even save lives. The quality of our engineering decisions shapes real human outcomes.

• Who inherits the risks we introduce?
• Who absorbs the failure modes we accept?
• Who interprets our intent when the system misbehaves?

Empathy recognises these costs. It makes them visible. It reminds us that someone’s future, well-being, and peace of mind depend on our work done right.

And when empathy is present, it changes everything. Consider Estonia’s digital identity system. It enables citizens to vote, pay taxes, and access medical services with speed and trust. It works because designers asked the right questions. What do people need? How do we protect them? How do we make every step obvious, safe, and resilient? Empathy, in that case, scaled with infrastructure. It became the default, not the afterthought. It pushes us to choose well, and live with those choices honestly.

Making It Real

Empathy must move beyond intention. It requires structures, rituals, and behaviours that embed it into daily work.

• Begin every project with a conversation about impact. Who benefits? Who carries the cost?
• Establish review checklists that include user experience, operational clarity, and maintainability. Ensure everything gets measured and weighed. Objectives must be formulated in terms of the behaviours they intend to trigger from the customer perspective. Teams should identify what meaningful change looks like for the user, such as increased activation, fewer support calls, or successful task completion. Teams must define measurable signals to track those shifts over time. Behavioural metrics, not output metrics, must guide delivery and iteration. This must be reflected in how goals are written, including in structured frameworks like OKRs.
• Empower engineers to challenge incoherent requests, even when they come from authority. Because how consistent is it to deprioritise quality, long-running effort, and sustained momentum in favour of ad-hoc, short-term money? True empathy demands we prioritise what endures and serves the user over what pleases in the moment.
• Prioritise shadowing, user feedback, and live-support reviews as inputs to design. We have witnessed engineers closing their laptops at 18:00 while low-paid workers labour in fulfilment centres. Let them spend two weeks lifting, carrying, and sweating alongside those whose experience they so often design from a distance. True empathy demands proximity. It demands effort. It begins with understanding the reality we affect.
• Create environments where speaking up for the right reason is rewarded, not punished. This is not about performance or identity politics. It is about raising concerns, protecting users, and challenging misguided choices when needed. Speaking up must serve purpose, not posture.

Leaders must model this. Teams must protect it. Organisations must systematise it.

Conclusion

Ask your team today:

• Who do we inconvenience with this decision?
• Are we solving the right problem, or the visible one?
• What happens to this code six months from now?

Then act accordingly.

Empathy does not weaken engineering. It defines it. Without empathy, we create polished dysfunctions. With it, we deliver systems that respect time, reduce friction, and support those who rely on them.

Cut the crap. Design with empathy. Deliver with care. Speak with integrity. That is what engineering requires.