@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social
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KFosterMarks

@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social

ultrarunner, writer, & Developer Experience Engineer @ the Developer Success Lab

Background in language teaching pedagogy, Second Language Acquisition, and classroom-based research.

Passionate about integrating social and behavioral science into the tech world, particularly in enhancing how software teams and practitioners learn, work, and thrive.

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CSLee, to seresearchers
@CSLee@mastodon.social avatar

NEW RESEARCH PAPER OUT! In this paper, @grimalkina and I explore how review anxiety is maintained and exacerbated to develop a model of code review anxiety. We also go a step further to develop and test the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral intervention for code review anxiety, so that we can reduce code review anxiety in an evidence-based and empirically-supported way (because science > vibes): https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8k5a4

@seresearchers

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

@CSLee @grimalkina @seresearchers

I shudder to think of all of the learning opps I've passed up because of the code review anxiety I've experienced as a software developer in various contexts. This is the research, workshop and intervention that I've needed.

I just can't emphasize enough how important I think this research is! I hope the community will take the time to read and understand.

KFosterMarks, to random
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Slide deck for my talk 💬 "I Didn't Grow Up Speaking Code": GitHub Copilot as a Programming as a Second Language Tool 💬 is now live and accessible via my website!

I welcome all the feedback 😍

https://www.kristen-foster-marks.com/post/i-didnt-grow-up-speaking-code

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

❓ Question for y'all software folks:

@CSLee and I are working on creating the Code Review Anxiety Toolkit based on her and @grimalkina's latest research: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/8k5a4.

The purpose of this resource will be to enable software developers to understand and mitigate their code review anxiety in a way that is supported by the empirical research.

(❓ question in reply)

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

We want to make this resource super accessible for folks, and so are wondering: Would y'all prefer a:

  • text-based workbook?
  • text-based workbook with some supplementary, embedded videos?
  • podcast-style audio guide?
  • video tutorial/guide?
    -something else we haven't thought of?

Basically I'm asking: Do you prefer text, audio, or video? Truly, this is for YOU, so we want to know what works best for you. Thanks in advance for providing your feedback and preferences!

KFosterMarks, to random
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Y'all, @grimalkina is hosted tomorrow by Rebel Astronaut & Dr. Jennifer Pierce to talk about 🎉 Belonging & Creating Environments where Women Thrive in tech. 🎉

Dr. Hicks will be sharing science-backed recommendations for increasing belonging on software teams, Dev Success Lab research findings on gender equity gaps and other equity gaps in AI adoption, and how a thriving environment helps ALL developers.

https://www.meetup.com/rebelastronaut/events/299702081/

KFosterMarks, to random
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I deeply believe that honesty is more valuable to a software developer, their team, and their organization than an inflated ego, a false sense of confidence, or a resolve to “fake it ‘till you make it.”

In this piece, I argue that being honest with your team and leader when you don’t yet know how to do something – and asking for help when you need it – isn’t a sign of weakness, but rather a powerful display of confidence and integrity.

https://www.kristen-foster-marks.com/post/on-the-need-for-confidence-honesty-integrity-in-software-development

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

Just discovered the fully online book "Cooperative Software Development" by @amyjko . It's now at the top of my to-read list.

In the introduction, Dr. Ko writes that the book focuses "on the many ways that software engineering work is cognitive, social, and organizational", and that "it does so by engaging extensively with academic research literature".

https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/cooperative-software-development

KFosterMarks, to random
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The second interview in the Voices of Developer Thriving interview series is live, folks! 🎉

https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/leadership/voices-of-developer-thriving-eli-mellen

This written interview series explores how the four components of the Developer Thriving framework manifest in the lives of software engineers.

Here, I chat with Software Jack-of-all-Trades Eli Mellen about how the following factors have impacted his thriving throughout his career as a software practitioner:
✅ agency
✅ learning culture
✅ belonging
✅ motivation & self-efficacy

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

🗨 “I also think I’ve often worked in spaces (and this isn’t particularly unique) where the bulk of the work is undocumented. For me, this makes it even harder to advocate for the space to learn, because without documentation the first step is often having to ask someone, and then it isn’t just me who needs some time to tackle some learning debt, it is someone else.”

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

I’m thrilled to share that this week, I started a new position as 👩‍💻 Principal Developer Experience Engineer 👩‍💻 with the 🔬 Developer Success Lab!

I couldn't be more excited to contribute to original, empirical research on software teams, as well as apply evidence-based science to help software teams learn, work, and thrive.

This is kind of a dream job for me, folks. Huge thanks to social & data scientist @grimalkina and clinical research scientist @CSLee for bringing me to the team!

KFosterMarks, to random
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I was reminded the other day of the case study that @CSLee and @grimalkina did on Hackathons in late 2022.

Titled "How Successful Hackathons Increase Belonging, Reduce Anxiety, and Create New Self-Concepts for Future Skill Growth: Research Insights from Hacking the Pluralsight Hackathon", this study looked at the impact of hackathons on 64 employees participating in a corporate hackathon at Pluralsight.

You can read the research here: https://www.pluralsight.com/resource-center/guides/how-hackathons-increase-team-development

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

Findings included that:
✅ Hackathons decrease anxiety and increase belonging.
✅ Many people come to hackathons with existing anxieties that can impact their success.
✅ Characteristics of the team can change the likelihood of success.
✅ Hackathons can serve as impactful social interventions.

There are existing rituals and ceremonies in the software space that, when planned and facilitated thoughtfully, can truly do an incredible job of increasing and .

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

@CSLee also gave a talk on this research at LeadDev New York in 2023 if watching/listening is better for you: https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/teams/how-hackathons-increase-team-moral-leaddevnyc

KFosterMarks, to random
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Lit reviewing "developer experience" as a construct and earliest thing I found in initial search is from Fagerholm and Münch(2012):

F. Fagerholm and J. Münch, "Developer experience: Concept and definition," 2012 International Conference on Software and System Process (ICSSP), Zurich, Switzerland, 2012, pp. 73-77, doi: 10.1109/ICSSP.2012.6225984.

It doesn't reference any existing literature on developer experience. Google ngram also shows a HUGE spike in "developer experience" mentions in 2013.

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

For those who have been in the software development & engineering space for awhile: Does this feel temporally accurate? Do you remember talking about "developer experience" way ahead of 2012? I'm wondering if industry informed research focus with this paper, or if the paper and operationalization of the term informed industry.

KFosterMarks, to random
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I'm considering writing a literature review or annotated bibliography that surveys major scholarly work around DevEx. I have about a million writing projects I'd like to do, though, so thought I would see if y'all thought this kind of piece would be useful and interesting.

The purpose of the piece as I'm imagining it would be to survey major scholarly work in the DevEx domain in order to educate folks about the empirical, scholarly examination of the concept.

KFosterMarks, to random
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Okay, I just learned about a tech company that PAYS THEIR DEVELOPERS TO BE ON-CALL. Like, they pay them money in addition to their salaries to be on-call. And developers are not at all pressured to sign up, apparently.

I love this - is this common!? How am I just finding out about this? Somebody tell me this is common, please. And if it's not, let's make it common.

KFosterMarks, to random
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Anybody familiar with both Snowdonia National Park in Wales and the Snowdonia 50k course? Spending two days on my feet there in June and trying to decide where to allocate my ~40-50 trail miles. 50k course SEEMS like a no-brainer, but would love folks familiar with the trails there to argue against simply covering the course miles - there’s a LOT of cool looking trail out there. For me, the steeper the better. Thanks in advance friends 😍

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

Okay new-ish to Mastodon, but can I tell you I LOVE IT HERE. Been perusing recent posts by folks and entities I follow this morning, and here's what I'm digging into today (the first day of a much-needed week-long vacation!):

1️⃣ “Diversity Within”: The Problems with “Intersectional” White Feminism in Practice | 🔗 https://academic.oup.com/sp/article/30/2/630/6965078?login=false

2️⃣ When Coding Meets Biology: The Tension Between Access and Authenticity in a Contextualized Coding Class by @analog_ashley | 🔗 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3626252.3630966

KFosterMarks, to opensource
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Just learned about the (ever-growing!) Women of Open Source community 😍

https://womenofopensource.org

KFosterMarks, to random
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There’s a lot I agree with in this editorial by @GavinSchwarz in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (Jan 2023) https://doi.org/10.1177/00218863221144494. I see his argument as validation for the existence of my role working alongside research scientists in the Developer Success Lab.

Schwarz argues that in academia, “Practice-driven work is seen as helpful but is not ‘real’ research—seen instead as useful for consulting and helpful to prove engagement bona fides to meet university metrics and goals.”

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

One of the things I’m most excited about in my new role with the Developer Success Lab is getting to take rigorous, empirical research and make that work accessible and usable for the software teams that are meant to benefit from it. @grimalkina and @CSLee have been committed to this mission since the inception of the lab, and with the addition of my role, there will be a lot more evidence-based, applied materials (like our Generative AI Adoption Toolkit) coming out of the lab 🎆

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

Y'all, the Developer Success Lab is thrilled to announce that we’re giving two talks AND facilitating two workshops at LeadDev London this June, 10-12th!
https://leaddev.com/leaddev-london/2024agenda

Details in the comments....

#DeveloperExperience #SEResearch #softwaredevelopment #DeveloperThriving

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

On Tuesday, June 11th, I’m giving a talk that shares some simple, evidence-based ways to increase new teammates’ sense of belonging that draw on the concept of microinclusions.

Mere hours later, @grimalkina is giving a talk that shares the research story of how our research lab fought to bring a human-centered approach to pressing questions that engineering organizations are facing about the rapidly-changing possibilities of AI-assisted coding.

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

I had a blast participating as a panelist for a Girls Who Code event yesterday. In answering a question about identifying transferable skills, and dialoguing with my fellow panelists, one of my deeply-held beliefs came up: Software practitioners are well-served and well-poised to learn the tenets of rhetoric and rhetorical situations. This knowledge and these skills are foundational to communicating effectively.

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

https://www.kristen-foster-marks.com/post/your-engineers-need-communication-skills-part1

I wrote this piece (with lots of informative feedback from composition and rhetoric maven Amanda Memoli) last summer and I stick by it!

(And I would be remiss to not point out @gvwilson's role in helping me see how relevant this argument is in the software dev/engineering space!)

KFosterMarks, to random
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

I spent a lot of time reading this weekend, and it got me thinking about epistemology, knowledge acquisition, mental models, and belief systems.

We constantly encounter, evaluate, and integrate new information into our mental models, whether consciously or subconsciously, but we don’t always take the time to re-examine our deeply- and long-held beliefs in the context of that new information.

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

@gaqzi Exactly! omg, we're talking the same language here. I spent August of 2022 through first of this month as a sort of technical upskilling specialist for my company's tech org, and I have LOTS of data that sheds some light on The Engagement Problem. And resoundingly, folks consistently ditch "learning work" for what they consider their "real work". So how do we help them see that learning work IS REAL WORK?

KFosterMarks,
@KFosterMarks@mastodon.social avatar

@gaqzi I think that @grimalkina's research on learning culture and learning debt is a must-read in this department. This paper impacted me SO MUCH when I read it ~ 2 years ago. In fact, I reference it so much that I have it bookmarked in my browser 😆

https://www.catharsisinsight.com/_files/ugd/fce7f8_2a41aa82670f4f08a3e403d196bcc341.pdf

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