Did you know I was a big softie? It's true.
I wouldn't have considered myself up to be a "highly sensitive person" until I cracked open "The Highly Sensitive Person" but it hit me like a ton of bricks once I started reading it.
I am one of those people who can sense the energy in the room when I enter - and it clings to me as I leave.
I am a big proponent of crying. I've cried at museums, at concerts, at dinner, in bed... at work. Crying is a bit of an imperative for me, as the activity actually clears my head and heart. My therapist actually instructed me to schedule times to cry. On a calendar.
I guess it's possible if you're reading this - my first post - you may not know much about me at all.
Well - I'm Margaret. Hi! I have a computer science degree from Northern Arizona University, which I got after 6 years full of struggle and self-doubt that has persisted for the years since.
I got a job at an automotive company as a full-stack software developer immediately out of college, and worked there for about 5 years until I was laid off as part of a major downsizing. After about a month or so, I got a job as a devops engineer working on back-end systems at a global ticketing company. I was the first new hire in an attempt to grow out this team working with cool new technologies like Kafka streams.
I worked there as an engineer for about a year, before a contractor showed up to be the scrum master for my devops team. This was not a role I had really heard of before, and had certainly never worked with someone with that role. The contractor was here for all of three weeks before moving onto a full-time opportunity, but my interest was piqued.
After speaking with my manager, and a program manager to whom that scrum master contractor had reported, I decided to make a change and try my hand at being a scrum master.
All of a sudden, I had this cool job where I could work with engineering teams to help them achieve their goals - and I was able to take a break from coding (more on that... another day).
While there are a lot of reasons why I wanted to become a scrum master - least of all that I just gravitated towards facilitating discussions among my team - the biggest one is that I felt I could do more good helping others build software than just building software myself. That said, I don't plan to hold myself to that forever.
But this post isn't an "about me" - you can read my "about me" to learn more if you would like. This post is about being highly sensitive, specifically a highly sensitive engineer.
My favorite agilists all think about and discuss building software in humane ways - I believe a big component of humane working is just about being kind and being gentle to each other. Some people may require a little extra kindness and gentleness, for a variety of reasons. The workplace - especially in the western world - is not often a space with much gentleness.
One part in "The Highly Sensitive Person" that really stood out to me was, during a self-evaluation on high sensitivity, deciding whether the following was true:
"When I must compete or be observed while performing a task, I become so nervous or shaky that I do much worse than I would otherwise"
All I could think of when reading this was "yes! every time I've had to do a technical task with someone I don't know or trust!"
Being an engineer is hard. Every technical concept is mind-bending. Engineers are constantly facing unknowns - unknown difficulties in solving a problem, unknown pitfalls along the way, unknown changes or pivots that no one can expect. Unknowns are a challenge for everyone, especially someone who may be extra-sensitive to the subtleties of communication or change. I'm glad that there is discourse out there about how to increase compassion among software folks and about psychological safety at work but we also need to consider the processes for individuals to grow their sensitivity to each other and their selves, what they can do for themselves to build their own psychological safety.
Just like we can use systems thinking to zoom out and look at where your team fits in with the greater organization, we can use systems thinking to zoom in and think about where we as individuals fit within a team.
Next on the reading list: Making Work Work for the Highly Sensitive Person