I could discuss this at length because it's a subject that really interests me, and I'm severely biased because I started out in the humanities with my main pursuit being an understanding of the human condition. I've brought those learnings with me into my current software engineering career and it's serving me well.
Simple being able to place yourself in the shoes of an end user, rather than dictating to them what they necessarily have to learn (and even better, when you know they should learn something with improved understanding of how to implement such a feature) saves everybody a lot of time and frustration. Your estimates will improve in accuracy as well. You'll see less scope-creep.
It's especially important in critical-systems work.
Plus I consider it a bit of a boon to someones character if they care about what they're putting into the world. Most people do. Hint: it won't inhibit your technical understanding.
As I understand, you're saying that empathy is vital for assessing requirements. That's precisely why I mentioned management and team-leads as being likely exceptions.
(But each manager or lead usually has more than one report, so there are likely very few managers/leads compared to everyone else. Hence the general sentiment.)
But not every engineer works in environments or on projects with those roles in place. Beyond that not everyone has the resources available to work with UX teams and proper designers. And if one is in the younger class of engineers, chances are more likely one will be exposed to a wider variety of situations where they'll face the need of or benefits of being expose to better understanding human beings (being one of them) -- especially having entered a market where long-term employment is on the downslide, and experience is more project-based or transient.
Have a quick look at new pursuits such as:
http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/magazine/features/empathy...
https://phys.org/news/2015-11-empathy-faculty.html
I could discuss this at length because it's a subject that really interests me, and I'm severely biased because I started out in the humanities with my main pursuit being an understanding of the human condition. I've brought those learnings with me into my current software engineering career and it's serving me well.
Simple being able to place yourself in the shoes of an end user, rather than dictating to them what they necessarily have to learn (and even better, when you know they should learn something with improved understanding of how to implement such a feature) saves everybody a lot of time and frustration. Your estimates will improve in accuracy as well. You'll see less scope-creep.
It's especially important in critical-systems work.
Plus I consider it a bit of a boon to someones character if they care about what they're putting into the world. Most people do. Hint: it won't inhibit your technical understanding.