--- title: Empathy in the Workplace for Software Companies | daily.dev description: Empathy in software companies goes beyond a soft skill — it's a practical discipline for replacing internal assumptions with real user understanding. The post... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/empathy-in-the-workplace-for-software-companies-srkn43g7r twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Empathy in the Workplace for Software Companies | daily.dev og:description: Empathy in software companies goes beyond a soft skill — it's a practical discipline for replacing internal assumptions with real user understanding. The post... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/empathy-in-the-workplace-for-software-companies-srkn43g7r og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/sRkN43g7r.png og:image:alt: Empathy in the Workplace for Software Companies og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Empathy in the Workplace for Software Companies **[We Are .NET](https://daily.dev/sources/wearedotnet)** · 7 min read · 1 upvotes · 1 comments ## Summary Empathy in software companies goes beyond a soft skill — it's a practical discipline for replacing internal assumptions with real user understanding. The post covers affective vs. cognitive empathy, how each team role (developers, designers, product managers, sales, marketing, support, leaders) should apply empathy differently, and maps the concept to the ISO 9241-210 standard for human-centered design. A six-step empathy loop is outlined, covering user research methods, translating needs into testable requirements, prototyping, and iterative testing. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is the difference between affective and cognitive empathy in a software team context? Affective empathy means experiencing the same emotions as another person, while cognitive empathy is the ability to understand another person's perspective, intentions, needs, desires, concerns and constraints. Cognitive empathy is generally more useful when teams review a feature, workflow, message, onboarding process, or pricing decision, because it focuses on what a specific user would understand rather than personal feelings. _Teams weighing UX decisions can find similar frameworks and discussions on daily.dev to sharpen product judgment._ ### What is the ISO 9241-210 standard and how does it apply to software design? ISO 9241-210 is the standard for ergonomics of human-system interaction, covering any interactive work including application screens and APIs. It defines a human-centered design process: plan how user experience will be managed, understand users' goals and context, turn needs into testable requirements, build prototypes, test with users, and iterate until critical requirements are met. _Developers researching human-centered design standards can track related practices on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@markojr** · 0 upvotes > "A six step empathy loop..." > > I think only people without empathy can take this serious ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Designing for Empathy: The Practitioner Framework](https://daily.dev/posts/designing-for-empathy-the-practitioner-framework-pw62rjzih) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [A Unified Theory Of Ego, Empathy, And Humility At Work](https://daily.dev/posts/a-unified-theory-of-ego-empathy-and-humility-at-work-87w6pgdlu) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Empathetic policy engineering: The secret to better security behavior and awareness](https://daily.dev/posts/empathetic-policy-engineering-the-secret-to-better-security-behavior-and-awareness-02sksdl3v) · CSO Online · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why Soft Skills Matter More Than Technical Skills in Agile Teams](https://daily.dev/posts/why-soft-skills-matter-more-than-technical-skills-in-agile-teams-3ftrpbzs4) · The Mountain Goat Software · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ux](https://daily.dev/tags/ux) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/empathy-in-the-workplace-for-software-companies-srkn43g7r) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Empathy in the Workplace for Software Companies","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/empathy-in-the-workplace-for-software-companies-srkn43g7r","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/empathy-in-the-workplace-for-software-companies-srkn43g7r"},"datePublished":"2026-07-22T13:53:15.208Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:41:44.799Z","description":"Empathy in software companies goes beyond a soft skill — it's a practical discipline for replacing internal assumptions with real user understanding. 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