The Psychology of Software Teams
summary
Large-scale empirical work shows misaligned perceptions — ~88–90% of managers say technical effort is visible while ~24% of developers disagree — and identifies concrete harms: learning debt that suppresses knowledge sharing, a measured AI skill threat that appears for many (study n≈5,000) and roughly doubles under contest culture, and noisy cycle-time data from 11,000+ developers that undermines simple 10x claims. A real-world RCT reduces code-review anxiety and linked metrics show each unit increase in developer thriving yields ~25% higher self-reported productivity.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Psychology of software teams
- 3:54Invisible technical effort
- 8:51Brains in jars model
- 14:31Brittle versus resilient productivity
- 19:07Cat's Law and performance traps
- 23:22Psychological affordances
- 27:12Threat and identity in tech
- 34:5710x developer myth debunked
- 39:14Rethinking metrics and performance
- 43:51Reducing code review anxiety
- 45:57Summary and call to action
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