[laumars]

> And the brain mode for 'developer' is VERY different from the brain mode for 'support agent'.

They can be different but I don't think they necessarily need to be. Thankfully Im seldom customer facing these days but when I am and when I used to be I would "debug" human patterns with the same analytical approach as software development. Even ones that turned out not to be technical queries in the end.

[jrochkind1]

Agreed. I don't think they are actually that different mindsets at all. Debugging isn't the only thing a developer/engineer does, but I agree support (for software) is much like debugging, that's a good observation. Debugging is debugging.

Yes, you've got to actually be compassionate and considerate when working with humans, and you don't with code. That's not a 'brain mode', it's just a skill or capacity. Some of us have more of it than others, but we all can improve it or get better at it. Most (maybe not all but most) developers are working with other developers (whether teammates or open source maintainers/collaborators), so it's an important skill to develop even for exclusively developers.