Harper Reed, a former CTO of President Obama's reelection campaign and lifelong programmer, emphasizes the importance of personal care and passion for developers to build products that are not just functional but also infused with humanity. He believes that innate hunger and passion in engineers can make them ideal candidates for his company Modest, where they ship great code and improve processes. Harper attributes his own passion for programming to a life-long interest in coding, which started at age five, and stresses the need for developers to remember that customers are people with personality and personhood, deserving of personal communication rather than just being treated as means to an end. He advocates for returning to the roots of communication, such as phone calls and door-to-door interactions, to solve bigger problems and build more meaningful relationships.