I decided to be an engineer as opposed to manager because I didn't like people management. Now it looks like I'm forced to manage robots that talk like people. At least I can be the as non-empathetic as I want to be. Unless a startup starts doing HR for AI agents then I'm screwed.
Hypothesis: empathy is the skill most effective at taking vague, poorly specified requests from customers and clients and transforming them into a design with well specified requirements and a high level plan to implement the design. For example, what a customer says they want often isn't what they need. Empathy is how we bridge that gap for them and deliver something truly valuable.
Given empathy is all about feelings, it's not something models and tools will be able to displace in the next few years.
