Engineers and Therapists - Not So Different After All

As a CTO of a mental health company, two kinds of people I work very closely with are "Engineers" and "Therapists".

For the longest time, I thought they were from different planets.

Engineers live in binaries... ones and zeros, either this or that. Therapists on the other hand live in the grey, in the messiness of human emotion.

Engineers want to fix things immediately. Therapists want to understand why things broke in the first place.

But after years of working with both, I've started seeing new patterns as well.

- Both are problem solvers.
- Both need patience and need to manage their own biases.
- Both need to know when to intervene and when to step back.

The difference isn't in what they do. It's just in the tools they use. One uses code. The other uses conversations.

As mental health companies, I think we should change the way we hire these people. We should be hiring therapists who "think" like engineers and engineers who "feel" like therapists.