Origins of a Compassionate Coder
This is an article I wrote for LinkedIn in 2020 during my software engineering days.
I helped to start up a nonprofit within a month after I honorably discharged from the United States Air Force. The USAF Chaplain Corps had empowered me with leadership and organizational skills, while bringing my ministry exposure face-to-face with servicemembers who sacrifice so much for our country. The transition from military service to nonprofit management had its challenges, but the heart of service, the mind of discipline, and the "make what you're given into more" mentality remained the same.
In one year, the small town nonprofit, Recovery Cafe Longmont, accumulated over 100 clients, and over 100 volunteers. We focused on recovery, without defining what recovery looked like, or the reason to recover. This meant we held small groups, meals, coffee conversations, 12-step meetings, meditation / mindfulness classes, faith talks, yoga, arts and crafts, and holiday parties for people who were recovering from domestic violence, substance abuse, PTSD, sexual assault, and homelessness. We believed everyone was recovering from something, and whatever someone's recovery journey looked like, we were there to provide a warm meal, a hug, and community.
I managed the database, the blog, the social media, the programs, the recruitment and training of volunteers, oversaw training for new hires, managed daily operations for our clients, ghost-wrote several articles for the blog, and spent half my day in administrative work and the other half on the floor listening to heartbreaking and empowering stories of suffering and success. I had purpose, but over time, I also started to take home their nightmares and pain. I was developing what others in the industry called compassion fatigue (to be quite honest, I find that term to be self-righteous, and opted to call it what it is: 'burnout'). In addition, I was working my full-time nonprofit position, nannying children in the evenings, and overnight dog-sitting to meet bills, student loans, and have an emergency fund. The accumulative years of intense emotions from military and citizen clientele, and the low pay coupled with the expensive cost of living in Denver prompted me to look at other career opportunities that would offer financial stability, the capacity to grow my toolbox of skills, and to help others without being in the trenches.
I developed compassion fatigue, or to be quite honest, I find that term to be self-righteous, and opted to call it what it is: 'burnout'.
Our organization had a dev-donated database, and I struggled with operating it efficiently. I regularly considered how I would modify the design and flow, had I had the skillset. So, I started taking free coding classes online as an entry to the tip of the iceberg, and I fell in love with it. Mentally stimulating, problem-solving, control of the outcome. This, this code, was alluring from the very first 'Hello World'. I couldn't control people's recovery, I could only provide support and love. However, I could control the tech product that improves their lives, albeit in a different way. (Which ironically, COVID happened, and the whole world went to Zoom, and now I could theoretically code for Zoom and enable the continuation of recovery meetings via video conference). The algorithms of Facebook pushed coding boot camps and schools, and thus, I found Turing School of Software & Design.
I took their initial opportunity and attended Try Coding. If Turing's Try Coding was a magnet, I was the iron rod, pulled and prepared to be forged into the steel developer Turing staff so confidently promised. I left the all-day event and applied that evening. I was accepted, and chose to start in 4 months so I could pad my savings.
In the meantime, the software for my T1 Diabetic boyfriend crashed nationally. We watched the social media fallout as parents, who had never cared for their diabetic children without a bluetooth glucose monitor and app, panicked on this company's various platforms. While it was a challenge to manage his diabetes that weekend, my boyfriend had grown up without the app and body-appended bluetooth continuous glucose monitor, and got out his old manual supplies with both disgruntlement and relief that he knew how to operate the "archaic tools of 2010".
Then, the software for my Type-1 Diabetic boyfriend crashed nationally.
That weekend was hard for him and others, but as a future coder, my eyes were wide open. Coding was more than just managing a nonprofit database's UX, it took on a new degree of critical necessity. Lines of code matter. Lines of code are medical tools. Lines of code impact children and families. There was a team somewhere who was working overtime to fix that bug. (I have compassion for that team, by the way, that's a ton of pressure, given it was around Thanksgiving weekend and nutritional health was at stake for the users). Not only does code stability impact real health alerts and subsequently prompted actions, but the lack of it leaves an impact, too. Coding is not just critical for livelihood, it's ethical. And each developer has an ethical responsibility to their creation. The app was restored, and the world spins madly on. But now the product had been compromised in the eyes of these users, and that issue of trust plays a role in development moving forward.
Coding is not just critical, it's ethical. And each developer has an ethical responsibility to their creation.
That weekend set a fire in my belly. Not necessarily to dive into medical software (though that is a cool career option), but to dive into the seriousness of this technological art. This isn't just about pretty UX; this code, these languages, these methods of problem-solving, represent stability, security, and safety. Code is cheap, but the outcome better not be.
The dominoes that had fallen before Day 1 were exactly as they laid. And now I had stomached the critical, ethical, functional aspect of what it meant to be a software engineer. Even if my future position wasn't in medical tech, I knew that whatever I wrote, needed to be clean, effective, and god-willing it crashed in production, could be debugged quickly.
I plan to write about my journey as a student at Turing in another article, but for now, my introductory story of becoming a software engineer needed to be told on its own.
Because my story matters. Because the users' stories, matter.
