Before I entered the professional engineering world, I spent my days in the trenches of enterprise and consumer IT support. I was even part of the paid support team for Microsoft Windows 98.
My entry into tech wasn't through algorithms or compilers; it was through the perspective of users. It was about empathizing with their frustration, solving their immediate problems, and making their systems work reliably.
The Art of Blind Visualization
This was an era before ubiquitous screen sharing. When a user called in with a crashed system, I couldn't just "remote in" and fix it. I had to understand and communicate with them blindly through voice.
I had to learn to visualize their experience in my mind—building a mental model of their screen, their mouse movements, and the errors they were seeing—and then walk them through the solution step-by-step.
This forced development of a specific set of skills that I still value to this day:
- Deep Listening: You can't fix a problem if you don't understand the user's reality.
- Translation: You have to explain complex technical concepts in plain English, or the user will fail.
- Patience and Empathy: You learn that the person on the other end isn't "stupid"; they are stressed, and your job is to help them, not judge them.
The Missing Link in Modern Tech
We need these kinds of experiences to truly understand what tech is meant to prove when implemented well. Unfortunately, this background is becoming more and more rare among professionals in the field.
Today, many engineers enter the industry through bootcamps or CS degrees that focus heavily on code syntax and theoretical architecture but rarely touch on the human element of the software. They view users as data points in an analytics dashboard, not as voices on a phone line.
Reclaiming Human Connection
We need social interactions again. We need to remember that technology is a tool to keep us connected and prospering, rather than a mechanism for profit-driven acrobatics.
When we design systems in a vacuum, disconnected from the people who use them, we get products that are exploitative, confusing, or fragile. But when we build with the memory of the user's voice in our heads—when we build with the empathy learned in the support queue—we build solutions that truly serve humanity.
If you are an engineering leader, encourage your teams to get closer to the support line. The technical skills will get the product built, but the human skills are what make it worth building.