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.
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.
Aurornis 13 hours 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.
krystalgamer 3 hours ago [-]
co-worker started reading "Extreme Ownership" and it improved his mindset and approach to problems. at the same time became extremely unbearable towards own team. if someone was complaining it was hard to get follow-up on a task from someone external he'd jump in and say "you're not owning it".
the tipping point for me was when he started preaching "Never Split the Difference". he'd gotten so cocky to the point he'd start meetings with "I already know how this is gonna end".
i don't mind these books as long as they come from a place of need, but it seems the main crowd are wannabe master manipulators. also, they can often be distilled to a couple chapters, not sure why they're so long.
vjvjvjvjghv 55 minutes ago [-]
Reminds me of my sister doing a course in Nonviolent Communication and then for a while violently forcing all communication with her to follow these principles or she would get really angry.
StilesCrisis 2 hours ago [-]
The problem is when someone writes one viral blog post, then decides to pad it out and sell it as a book. If you can find the original post, you get the entire substance for free in ten minutes.
skeeter2020 2 hours ago [-]
It's funny when popular blog writers get criticised for turning blog posts into books (usually while leaving the original posts accessible) when I feel this is way more honest than doing exactly what you say. Resilient Management by Lara Hogan and An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson do the former and are two of the most useful SW Management books I've ever read.
harryf 1 hours ago [-]
Wow. The book we need should be titled something like "Of Software Teams and Cargo Cults"
"... a book had washed up on the shore... 'Extreme Ownership' ... soon the tribe was worshipping the book"
It happens over and over again in software history. I remember people running around panicking about TDD "But we only have 99.8% test coverage" until eventually it started to get shot down by "Show me the ROI on tests"
norome 7 hours ago [-]
I'd say it's a reflection of an earlier stage of interpersonal maturity to try and put people into categories. More socially attuned people realize the complexity of other people and situations and synthesize all the available information to make a decision that is truly reflective of reality.
pietherr 7 hours ago [-]
You must have read Changing on the job :p
antihipocrat 12 hours ago [-]
This seems to be common in large corporations. Your example (requirements changing haphazardly) is a very common occurrence, it's a class of problem where the inevitable failure can't be isolated to one or two things with certainly.
Failure could be team burnout and attrition, it could be a major bug due to fast tracking validation (or not checking AI output), or a fundamental architectural issue with future repercussions that with a clearer mindset would have been considered .. or myriad other things in combination.
The person calling out the risk knows that it will 100% cause a failure somewhere. Exactly where and how the failure will occur cannot be predicted beforehand and it actually doesn't matter as the end result will be a missed delivery or incident.
Unfortunately the executive decision maker needs a concrete failure in order to implement a concrete solution.
onion2k 11 hours ago [-]
Working with someone who thinks Team Topologies is an instruction manual is not fun.
CuriousSkeptic 2 hours ago [-]
Try handing them a copy of “10X Org”
(the authors tries to abstract over team topologies, adding some additional design dimensions)
a_bonobo 5 hours ago [-]
Doesn't that happen with any first-year psychology or med-student, too? You have some basic knowledge of what could happen, which therefore means that it does happen, right now, here. It normally goes away with more experience and exposure, and yeah, some personal growth.
5 hours ago [-]
rjsw 3 hours ago [-]
Not just first-year. I don't think psychologists ever lose their urge to perform experiments on any people they meet.
a_c 5 hours ago [-]
People learn and relearn the core concepts from different paths. A recent trend due to coding agent is that people are learning software engineering is not about syntax and frameworks. It is just the way it is. People build up concepts with things they already understand. The same happens when someone doesn't use a book. It just went implicit and way harder for you to find the magic combo.
sasaf5 12 hours ago [-]
I am very curious: did you figure some of the books they were using?
Aurornis 11 hours ago [-]
That's a good question. Some of the perspectives in the book can be helpful. The limitation is that the scenarios and themes in the books are always a little too perfect to reflect real life.
Like you're watching a movie and everything is going disastrously wrong, then the hero shows up and the tone completely changes for the better. Everything starts going right.
The most valuable parts are probably reframing the situations and looking for different perspectives as a way to broaden your thinking. I try to take them as as additional perspectives to have available.
I think the thing I disliked the most about having the books applied to me was when they were treated as an instruction manual for all situations. People would read those books and then start to fit every situation into something from the book.
The Team Topologies book that another comment brought up is a common offender. For years you could tell when someone had read the book because they'd try to force every organization to fit into the prescribed team and interaction formats. If it wasn't working out they'd switch to one of the other formats instead of thinking critically about what we needed for our unique situation.
hirsin 11 hours ago [-]
Re: Topologies I found it resulted in a lot of reorgs founded on the seeming belief that Conway's law is both immediate and retroactive - if we change the teams and what they own, their features and code will similarly now become cleanly organized.
It's a shame because the underlying message of not overloading teams with extremely broad feature areas is good, and was exactly what we needed.
gpi 6 hours ago [-]
"You are a stream-aligned team"
SmirkingRevenge 2 hours ago [-]
So many of those books are basically like those "Here's one weird trick to succeed at X" style articles in book length form.
nick_ 13 hours ago [-]
My most recent manager was exactly like this.
fcarraldo 13 hours 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.
smiggels10 9 hours 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.
xutopia 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.
In 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"
joshcsimmons 3 hours 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!
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 12 hours 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 9 hours ago [-]
All those designer weenies need to justify their existence.
datadrivenangel 12 hours ago [-]
One of the best pieces of work in this genre is Gerald Weinberg's the psychology of computer programming.
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.
blakeman8192 11 hours 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.
trolleski 6 hours ago [-]
But isn't AI replacing all of us this time next week?
xfact192 6 days 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
6 days ago [-]
zx8080 13 hours ago [-]
For ebooks it offers some "VitalSource ebooks". Does anyone know whether it offers a regular pdf or they shitty custom closed format only?
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.
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
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.
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.
the tipping point for me was when he started preaching "Never Split the Difference". he'd gotten so cocky to the point he'd start meetings with "I already know how this is gonna end".
i don't mind these books as long as they come from a place of need, but it seems the main crowd are wannabe master manipulators. also, they can often be distilled to a couple chapters, not sure why they're so long.
"... a book had washed up on the shore... 'Extreme Ownership' ... soon the tribe was worshipping the book"
It happens over and over again in software history. I remember people running around panicking about TDD "But we only have 99.8% test coverage" until eventually it started to get shot down by "Show me the ROI on tests"
Failure could be team burnout and attrition, it could be a major bug due to fast tracking validation (or not checking AI output), or a fundamental architectural issue with future repercussions that with a clearer mindset would have been considered .. or myriad other things in combination.
The person calling out the risk knows that it will 100% cause a failure somewhere. Exactly where and how the failure will occur cannot be predicted beforehand and it actually doesn't matter as the end result will be a missed delivery or incident.
Unfortunately the executive decision maker needs a concrete failure in order to implement a concrete solution.
(the authors tries to abstract over team topologies, adding some additional design dimensions)
Like you're watching a movie and everything is going disastrously wrong, then the hero shows up and the tone completely changes for the better. Everything starts going right.
The most valuable parts are probably reframing the situations and looking for different perspectives as a way to broaden your thinking. I try to take them as as additional perspectives to have available.
I think the thing I disliked the most about having the books applied to me was when they were treated as an instruction manual for all situations. People would read those books and then start to fit every situation into something from the book.
The Team Topologies book that another comment brought up is a common offender. For years you could tell when someone had read the book because they'd try to force every organization to fit into the prescribed team and interaction formats. If it wasn't working out they'd switch to one of the other formats instead of thinking critically about what we needed for our unique situation.
It's a shame because the underlying message of not overloading teams with extremely broad feature areas is good, and was exactly what we needed.
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.
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.
In 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"
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!
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.
Except they've now started ruining them too with the new asinine trend of making them look like radio buttons
https://geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Programming_Psychology.html
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.
https://bsky.app/profile/nezteb.net/post/3mr3tbpp3ds2w
1) Human Technology (online journal, papers) - https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/index
2) Psychology of Programming Interest Group (papers) - https://www.ppig.org/
3) Cognitive Biases in Software Engineering: A Systematic Mapping Study - https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.03869
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.