A compass for rehumanizing tech
Do we understand our code? I think we need to get past symptoms and into causes. Here's a field-tested measure of one organizational condition that can erode comprehension (Overproduction Pressure) you can use to find out which world your team is living in.
I expected to love Project Hail Mary (this was an easy prediction. Things I like: space movies, puppets, problem-solving, emotional soundtracks, plots that revolve around solving problems, people who are isolated and at risk of giving up but don't give up). I LOVED Project Hail Mary. This
This month I gave two invited talks that as paired pieces form a kind of bracket to hold together several big things I've been thinking about and working on lately: community-based research for developer science and what it gets us (to an audience of researchers) , and what
My upcoming book, The Psychology of Software Teams, exists in the eyes of the International ISBN Agency, various book sellers, and most importantly my publisher: it's coming out July 14th! That means it's time to share the cover with you too! insert trumpet noises credit: Ashley
The Sometimes-Wrong Bot When I was a postdoc, reflective of the inability of the university to contain my multitudes, I was cross-appointed in three disciplines (Cognitive Science, Computer Science & Engineering) in an interdisciplinary center ( The Design Lab at UC San Diego ). That summer the Design Lab had
You did your best, but it happened: somebody told you that you are the one who has to measure the ROI of AI on the developers in your software organization.  I like to imagine that when this is your first time getting pulled into being responsible for estimating a
I decided to change my own mind about evolution in my freshman year of college, which is common: college is often the time and place where non-evolutionists grapple with whether we will become evolutionists.  I am comfortable telling people that I used to not believe in evolution –
I hosted another Developer Science Office Hour last month, and for some reason, decided I needed to blackmail myself into making it a brief (very brief!) workshop on research design. In general I am a fan of prosocially pressuring myself , as well as running chaotic experiments, and I had posted
There's a paper I recently came across by Mohammad Tahaei and colleagues called Privacy Champions in Sofware Teams: Understanding Their Motivations, Strategies, and Challenges . In it, they interview 12 folks on software teams who try to promote user privacy across their teams and organizations. It's a
I hear people name these three fears: will developers lose their problem-solving skills, learning opportunities, and critical thinking? One science-backed area can help: better metacognitive strategies.
Seven different people texted or otherwise messaged me about this study which claims to measure “the impact of early-2025 AI on experienced open-source developer productivity.” You know, when I decided to become a psychological scientist I never imagined that “teaching research methods so we can
So somebody came to you (maybe it was your own mind, that traitor!) and said you need to think about cause. Maybe you are asking yourself how to remove friction or identify blockers that are disrupting your colleagues’ work. Maybe there is a DevEx pilot we said we would
With some regularity, kind-hearted Technical people tell me that I Can Be Technical, Too. This usually happens when I’m asking us to define what we’re calling technical in a software environment. I understand why it happens. I am a psychologist of software environments and that