6 ms·

The Psychology of Software Teams

180 points by dcre 3mo ago

xfact192 3mo ago
As a mid-manager, the last two chapters in the ToC appeal: 6. Becoming an Organization That Wants to Understand Itself 7. Fighting Dirty for Good Culture
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
yodon 3mo ago
Giant cookie banner says "Do not sell my personal information" + "switch the toggle to opt out". Which is it? Am I switching the toggle to opt out of selling my personal information or am I switching it to opt out of NOT selling my personal information? I shouldn't have to read a paragraph of fine print to tell if they are intentionally using a dark pattern or merely incapable of composing a simple declarative sentence. It's a shame, because it looks like an interesting book.
- anonymars 3mo ago
  How I miss checkboxes instead of these god-damned Schrodinger's sliders that replaced them Except they've now started ruining them too with the new asinine trend of making them look like radio buttons
  - zombot 3mo ago
    All those designer weenies need to justify their existence.
pluc 3mo ago
The author's site is https://www.drcathicks.com/ https://www.drcathicks.com/ and this is the publisher.
zx8080 3mo ago
For ebooks it offers some "VitalSource ebooks". Does anyone know whether it offers a regular pdf or they shitty custom closed format only?
- mactavish88 3mo ago
  Not "open" as such, but Kobo sells this title.
- pietherr 3mo ago
  You can request an epub it seems https://bsky.app/profile/nezteb.net/post/3mr3tbpp3ds2w https://bsky.app/profile/nezteb.net/post/3mr3tbpp3ds2w
Aurornis 3mo ago
I feel like there could be a lot of value in understanding the psychology of teams and using it to build an environment where they can thrive. However, every person I've worked with who was into these workplace-psychology books started thinking of themselves as expert diagnosticians of other people's psychology. Every personality or problem got mapped back to a scenario from a book they read, even when it wasn't a good fit. They started believing they understood other people better than those people understood themselves. You couldn't talk to them about problems unless you could figure out which book(s) they were using, read them yourself, and then played a game where you explained things to them in a way that would get them to match the stereotyped situations in their books. So instead of saying that the requirements are changing too haphazardly and too often (which would get you labelled as being too rigid or a complainer or something) you would have to explain that the requirements changing process is harmful to the team's psychological safety or other buzzwords. They've read enough books saying that a manager's job is to provide psychological safety, they see themselves as the hero manager, and therefore they need to fix this problem to provide psychological safety for the team. I loathed it all so very much. It's refreshing to go back to managers who just talk to other people like people. I'm sure my good managers also read some of these books, but they didn't put any one book on a pedestal or take it all too literally.
- fcarraldo 3mo ago
  I suspect people who act this way would do so with or without the books. Cargo cult mentality says more about the person than the source material. It’s good to read others’ perspectives and expand your own. It’s even good when you disagree with the author. But you need to read multiple perspectives and adopt a habit of learning.
- nick_ 3mo ago
  My most recent manager was exactly like this.
- sasaf5 3mo ago
  I am very curious: did you figure some of the books they were using?
datadrivenangel 3mo ago
One of the best pieces of work in this genre is Gerald Weinberg's the psychology of computer programming. https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Programming_Psychology.html https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Programming_Psychology.html
- blakeman8192 3mo ago
  Thanks! I read a sample of the book in the original post, and I couldn’t help myself from feeling increasingly weird about the way the author just kept laying the “you’re the smartest person at the company” and “your work is what makes the world go round” stuff on, really thick. It felt like I was being psychology’d into enjoying the book and unfortunately turned me away, even though I was interested. Will check this one out instead.
- pjmorris 3mo ago
  And if that book doesn't appeal, Dr.Weinberg (he'd prefer 'Jerry' though) has an entire sub-genre of really useful books on humans doing software development. Three other favorites: 'How to Become a Technical Leader', the four-volume 'Quality Software Management', and the click-bait-titled but terrific 'The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving & Getting Advice Successfully'. He joined IBM in the 50's, led the design of the telemetry system for NASA's Mercury project in the 60's, aimed to put humans at the center of software development with 'The Psychology of Computer Programming', and spent the rest of his life working on helping people do software development well together. IMO, any time you spend digging in to his large catalog will be well repaid.
smiggels10 3mo ago
I really do not recommend to buy the ebook in this web shop. Its the worst UX I have ever seen in an online shop. Normally you would pay and then receive a link to download. Here it goes like this: - you receive an email: Please create an account on our website, you will benefit a lot from it - then another email: If you want to get the book you just payed for, you must register first and then enter this code: #20 digit cryptic string# - you create an account, eventually successfully bypass the dark pattern to seduce you to accept spam mails from them ("click here if you do not want to receive spam mails from us"). - You log in an see: "No books in your account", where can I enter the 20 digit cryptic code? - Another look at the mails, oh, they said, "If you want to receive your book, you have to create an account on ANOTHER website - You create another acccount - Log in, you see a message: "Please click on the link in your confirmation mail" - no confirmation mail received - Go back, click on "send confirmation mail again" - Some time later, confirmation mail arrives. But just a mail with header and footer but no content, no link to click - Try again, same result - Obviously something went wrong, can i report the bug somewhere? Of course not! I am still waiting for my book.
- N_Lens 3mo ago
  libgen
- internet_points 3mo ago
  ouf :( maybe original link should be changed to https://www.drcathicks.com/ https://www.drcathicks.com/ ?
- xutopia 3mo ago
  I'm unable to purchase it there even though it is way cheaper than getting it elsewhere because of blocking bugs with my Canadian physical address. Postal code which is valid is considered invalid... my city name which includes a dash is considered invalid. The postal code is blocking.
- NoGravitas 3mo ago
  I preordered the paperback through bookshop.org the day before it was released. Received it in the mail a day or two after it was released. No bad/unexpected UI.
internet_points 3mo ago
The author Cat Hicks also co-hosts https://www.changetechnically.fyi/ https://www.changetechnically.fyi/ which has some interesting episodes, e.g. https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/17541876-andor-and-the-psychology-of-resistance https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/17541876-... In https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116743715688970777 https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116743715688970777 she gives a concise explanation of the minimal groups paradigm where "People assigned to arbitrary groups immediately form strong allegiances, even though they haven’t been given any other psychologically meaningful cues about their group"
trolleski 3mo ago
But isn't AI replacing all of us this time next week?
MrVandemar 3mo ago
This book looks super interesting. I wish I was on a software team so I could justify buying it. But but my $DAY_JOB is answering phones and fixing printer-jams in a medical practice, so not a lot of application there.
- ambicapter 3mo ago
  I hereby give you permission to buy the book and read it for funsies.
joshcsimmons 3mo ago
yikes. this is very out of touch with current trends. i respect writing a book - ive written three, but if there’s a time when most tech leadership cared LESS about understanding software team psychology, i havent seen it. truly a sad state of things. i love this topic and plan to read the book but i dont expect most people to care - the only mantra in software rn is to go as fast as possible on shitty features and burn people out. of course above assessment is about the general state of big tech co’s. some pockets of sanity out there still at smaller companies but not many!
- ambicapter 3mo ago
  Why is that a "yikes"? You don't always have to be "trendy".
  - pluc 3mo ago
    Psychology of AI Software Teams taking preorders now
rramadass 3mo ago
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_programming; 1) Human Technology (online journal, papers) - https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/index https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/index 2) Psychology of Programming Interest Group (papers) - https://www.ppig.org/ https://www.ppig.org/ 3) Cognitive Biases in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study - https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03869 https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03869
- storoj 3mo ago
  (3) has an exciting title but the methodology is: "we observed 10 (ten) developers ..."
  - rramadass 3mo ago
    What are you talking about? That phrase does not occur in the paper linked to in (3) above (i.e. "Cognitive Biases in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study") at all. The Abstract itself states; One source of software project challenges and failures is the systematic errors introduced by human cognitive biases. Although extensively explored in cognitive psychology, investigations concerning cognitive biases have only recently gained popularity in software engineering research. This paper therefore systematically maps, aggregates and synthesizes the literature on cognitive biases in software engineering to generate a comprehensive body of knowledge, understand state of the art research and provide guidelines for future research and practise. Focusing on bias antecedents, effects and mitigation techniques, we identified 65 articles (published between 1990 and 2016), which investigate 37 cognitive biases. Despite strong and increasing interest, the results reveal a scarcity of research on mitigation techniques and poor theoretical foundations in understanding and interpreting cognitive biases. Although bias-related research has generated many new insights in the software engineering community, specific bias mitigation techniques are still needed for software professionals to overcome the deleterious effects of cognitive biases on their work.
surcap526 3mo ago
[dead]
neilk 3mo ago
I haven’t read this book, but I noticed the author makes much of their empirical research available with a CC license. https://catharsisinsight.com/ https://catharsisinsight.com/ , scroll way down to “Developers deserve science.” I found this one interesting. The authors note that often, developers avoid code reviews, and engage in a lot of unproductive behavior around them. They claim that a pretty simple one-session cognitive-behavioral intervention can dramatically change that. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-024-10550-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-024-10550-9 Anyway, the longer I work in this field the more I see psychology as the dominant factor in team productivity. Assuming the job is doable, and you’ve hired good people, and the team has adequate control over their own work, that’s what’s left. You might argue that tool use or team practices are more important, but what stops you from adopting them or using them correctly? What stops you from learning from your mistakes? Usually something about your group psychology.
SpaceL10n 3mo ago
A lot of smaller organizations really struggle to collaborate with their software teams. Collaboration is hard, in general, but especially so if the organization isn't fluent and competent in software product development. Before you go diving into the psychology of your sad and despondent software team, look around them. Are the people working with them capable of supporting and engaging with these engineers?
rotariuvladimir 3mo ago
software teams treat trust and conflict as soft concerns, then seem surprised when delivery slows and people leave. the subject is real, but the value depends on whether the book stays empircal instead of becoming another set of management scripts. useful frameworks help you notice failure modes, not give you new vocabulary to impose on poeple.

180 points by dcre 3mo ago

As a mid-manager, the last two chapters in the ToC appeal: 6. Becoming an Organization That Wants to Understand Itself 7. Fighting Dirty for Good Culture

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

yodon 3mo ago

Giant cookie banner says "Do not sell my personal information" + "switch the toggle to opt out". Which is it? Am I switching the toggle to opt out of selling my personal information or am I switching it to opt out of NOT selling my personal information? I shouldn't have to read a paragraph of fine print to tell if they are intentionally using a dark pattern or merely incapable of composing a simple declarative sentence. It's a shame, because it looks like an interesting book.

anonymars 3mo ago
How I miss checkboxes instead of these god-damned Schrodinger's sliders that replaced them Except they've now started ruining them too with the new asinine trend of making them look like radio buttons
- zombot 3mo ago
  All those designer weenies need to justify their existence.

pluc 3mo ago

The author's site is https://www.drcathicks.com/ https://www.drcathicks.com/ and this is the publisher.

zx8080 3mo ago

For ebooks it offers some "VitalSource ebooks". Does anyone know whether it offers a regular pdf or they shitty custom closed format only?

mactavish88 3mo ago
Not "open" as such, but Kobo sells this title.
pietherr 3mo ago
You can request an epub it seems https://bsky.app/profile/nezteb.net/post/3mr3tbpp3ds2w https://bsky.app/profile/nezteb.net/post/3mr3tbpp3ds2w

Aurornis 3mo ago

I feel like there could be a lot of value in understanding the psychology of teams and using it to build an environment where they can thrive. However, every person I've worked with who was into these workplace-psychology books started thinking of themselves as expert diagnosticians of other people's psychology. Every personality or problem got mapped back to a scenario from a book they read, even when it wasn't a good fit. They started believing they understood other people better than those people understood themselves. You couldn't talk to them about problems unless you could figure out which book(s) they were using, read them yourself, and then played a game where you explained things to them in a way that would get them to match the stereotyped situations in their books. So instead of saying that the requirements are changing too haphazardly and too often (which would get you labelled as being too rigid or a complainer or something) you would have to explain that the requirements changing process is harmful to the team's psychological safety or other buzzwords. They've read enough books saying that a manager's job is to provide psychological safety, they see themselves as the hero manager, and therefore they need to fix this problem to provide psychological safety for the team. I loathed it all so very much. It's refreshing to go back to managers who just talk to other people like people. I'm sure my good managers also read some of these books, but they didn't put any one book on a pedestal or take it all too literally.

fcarraldo 3mo ago
I suspect people who act this way would do so with or without the books. Cargo cult mentality says more about the person than the source material. It’s good to read others’ perspectives and expand your own. It’s even good when you disagree with the author. But you need to read multiple perspectives and adopt a habit of learning.
nick_ 3mo ago
My most recent manager was exactly like this.
sasaf5 3mo ago
I am very curious: did you figure some of the books they were using?

datadrivenangel 3mo ago

One of the best pieces of work in this genre is Gerald Weinberg's the psychology of computer programming. https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Programming_Psychology.html https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Programming_Psychology.html

blakeman8192 3mo ago
Thanks! I read a sample of the book in the original post, and I couldn’t help myself from feeling increasingly weird about the way the author just kept laying the “you’re the smartest person at the company” and “your work is what makes the world go round” stuff on, really thick. It felt like I was being psychology’d into enjoying the book and unfortunately turned me away, even though I was interested. Will check this one out instead.
pjmorris 3mo ago
And if that book doesn't appeal, Dr.Weinberg (he'd prefer 'Jerry' though) has an entire sub-genre of really useful books on humans doing software development. Three other favorites: 'How to Become a Technical Leader', the four-volume 'Quality Software Management', and the click-bait-titled but terrific 'The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving & Getting Advice Successfully'. He joined IBM in the 50's, led the design of the telemetry system for NASA's Mercury project in the 60's, aimed to put humans at the center of software development with 'The Psychology of Computer Programming', and spent the rest of his life working on helping people do software development well together. IMO, any time you spend digging in to his large catalog will be well repaid.

smiggels10 3mo ago

I really do not recommend to buy the ebook in this web shop. Its the worst UX I have ever seen in an online shop. Normally you would pay and then receive a link to download. Here it goes like this: - you receive an email: Please create an account on our website, you will benefit a lot from it - then another email: If you want to get the book you just payed for, you must register first and then enter this code: #20 digit cryptic string# - you create an account, eventually successfully bypass the dark pattern to seduce you to accept spam mails from them ("click here if you do not want to receive spam mails from us"). - You log in an see: "No books in your account", where can I enter the 20 digit cryptic code? - Another look at the mails, oh, they said, "If you want to receive your book, you have to create an account on ANOTHER website - You create another acccount - Log in, you see a message: "Please click on the link in your confirmation mail" - no confirmation mail received - Go back, click on "send confirmation mail again" - Some time later, confirmation mail arrives. But just a mail with header and footer but no content, no link to click - Try again, same result - Obviously something went wrong, can i report the bug somewhere? Of course not! I am still waiting for my book.

N_Lens 3mo ago
libgen
internet_points 3mo ago
ouf :( maybe original link should be changed to https://www.drcathicks.com/ https://www.drcathicks.com/ ?
xutopia 3mo ago
I'm unable to purchase it there even though it is way cheaper than getting it elsewhere because of blocking bugs with my Canadian physical address. Postal code which is valid is considered invalid... my city name which includes a dash is considered invalid. The postal code is blocking.
NoGravitas 3mo ago
I preordered the paperback through bookshop.org the day before it was released. Received it in the mail a day or two after it was released. No bad/unexpected UI.

internet_points 3mo ago

The author Cat Hicks also co-hosts https://www.changetechnically.fyi/ https://www.changetechnically.fyi/ which has some interesting episodes, e.g. https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/17541876-andor-and-the-psychology-of-resistance https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/17541876-... In https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116743715688970777 https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/116743715688970777 she gives a concise explanation of the minimal groups paradigm where "People assigned to arbitrary groups immediately form strong allegiances, even though they haven’t been given any other psychologically meaningful cues about their group"

trolleski 3mo ago

But isn't AI replacing all of us this time next week?

MrVandemar 3mo ago

This book looks super interesting. I wish I was on a software team so I could justify buying it. But but my $DAY_JOB is answering phones and fixing printer-jams in a medical practice, so not a lot of application there.

ambicapter 3mo ago
I hereby give you permission to buy the book and read it for funsies.

joshcsimmons 3mo ago

yikes. this is very out of touch with current trends. i respect writing a book - ive written three, but if there’s a time when most tech leadership cared LESS about understanding software team psychology, i havent seen it. truly a sad state of things. i love this topic and plan to read the book but i dont expect most people to care - the only mantra in software rn is to go as fast as possible on shitty features and burn people out. of course above assessment is about the general state of big tech co’s. some pockets of sanity out there still at smaller companies but not many!

ambicapter 3mo ago
Why is that a "yikes"? You don't always have to be "trendy".
- pluc 3mo ago
  Psychology of AI Software Teams taking preorders now

rramadass 3mo ago

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology_of_programming; 1) Human Technology (online journal, papers) - https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/index https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/index 2) Psychology of Programming Interest Group (papers) - https://www.ppig.org/ https://www.ppig.org/ 3) Cognitive Biases in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study - https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03869 https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03869

storoj 3mo ago
(3) has an exciting title but the methodology is: "we observed 10 (ten) developers ..."
- rramadass 3mo ago
  What are you talking about? That phrase does not occur in the paper linked to in (3) above (i.e. "Cognitive Biases in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study") at all. The Abstract itself states; One source of software project challenges and failures is the systematic errors introduced by human cognitive biases. Although extensively explored in cognitive psychology, investigations concerning cognitive biases have only recently gained popularity in software engineering research. This paper therefore systematically maps, aggregates and synthesizes the literature on cognitive biases in software engineering to generate a comprehensive body of knowledge, understand state of the art research and provide guidelines for future research and practise. Focusing on bias antecedents, effects and mitigation techniques, we identified 65 articles (published between 1990 and 2016), which investigate 37 cognitive biases. Despite strong and increasing interest, the results reveal a scarcity of research on mitigation techniques and poor theoretical foundations in understanding and interpreting cognitive biases. Although bias-related research has generated many new insights in the software engineering community, specific bias mitigation techniques are still needed for software professionals to overcome the deleterious effects of cognitive biases on their work.

surcap526 3mo ago

[dead]

neilk 3mo ago

I haven’t read this book, but I noticed the author makes much of their empirical research available with a CC license. https://catharsisinsight.com/ https://catharsisinsight.com/ , scroll way down to “Developers deserve science.” I found this one interesting. The authors note that often, developers avoid code reviews, and engage in a lot of unproductive behavior around them. They claim that a pretty simple one-session cognitive-behavioral intervention can dramatically change that. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-024-10550-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-024-10550-9 Anyway, the longer I work in this field the more I see psychology as the dominant factor in team productivity. Assuming the job is doable, and you’ve hired good people, and the team has adequate control over their own work, that’s what’s left. You might argue that tool use or team practices are more important, but what stops you from adopting them or using them correctly? What stops you from learning from your mistakes? Usually something about your group psychology.

SpaceL10n 3mo ago

A lot of smaller organizations really struggle to collaborate with their software teams. Collaboration is hard, in general, but especially so if the organization isn't fluent and competent in software product development. Before you go diving into the psychology of your sad and despondent software team, look around them. Are the people working with them capable of supporting and engaging with these engineers?

rotariuvladimir 3mo ago

software teams treat trust and conflict as soft concerns, then seem surprised when delivery slows and people leave. the subject is real, but the value depends on whether the book stays empircal instead of becoming another set of management scripts. useful frameworks help you notice failure modes, not give you new vocabulary to impose on poeple.