Discussion
Can you make a difference in the world by going out, finding a place where you could sit for a while, and talking to people about the human problems they were struggling with, and then using the skills you have to try to tell that story and make it more legible to the world and to the people who could help?
I thought so years ago when I decided to self-fund an interview study where I listened to developers talk about why they felt unseen and undersupported as learners.
From that moment, a vision started: people working in tech had fascinating, tough, complex, insightful, interesting experiences and *the world needed to know about it,* and *people in tech* needed the help that psychology can bring in showing how our human needs shape what we can solve, collaborate on, and build together.
After I released that project, an open access study from outside of any big tech company, I got some superpowers
I could pitch and fund a team that had never existed before -- a team with a charter to do *more* open access studies, to bring in psychologists and experts in the human side of problem-solving and tech, to explicitly focus on questions that people in tech cared deeply about but that no tech co or product was ever going to research. Hard questions, like the role of belonging in tech and who gets to feel it, like the role of code review anxiety and whether self-compassion helps
This has been a vision that I've crafted in long quiet hours alone, lost sleep over, pulled jobs and teams out of thin air to support, and won battles to defend.
This work has taken me wild places. I've stood in front of rooms of executives and taught them research on self-compassion, presented findings about racial equity gaps, and looked famous technical people in the eye and told them the evidence says they won't get the outcomes they want without caring about culture.
But the thing about doing community-based work? It gives you a completely *different* source of power. Developers deserve science. They deserve evidence about their lives, they deserve work that takes their minds and wellbeing seriously, they deserve to understand how great cultures and great innovation can be built together.
Now, as an independent researcher without a marketing budget or behind-the-scenes promo deals...that power is catapulting The Psychology of Software Teams forward.
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