The Psychology of Software Teams

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.

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.

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!

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

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

The author Cat Hicks also co-hosts https://www.changetechnically.fyi/ which has some interesting episodes, e.g. https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/17541876-...

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"

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.

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

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

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

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.