mastodon.online is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A newer server operated by the Mastodon gGmbH non-profit

Server stats:

12K
active users

Reading about this xz backdoor story from the outside as a person who is still learning much about the technical ins and outs, but as a psychologist it is just overwhelming to imagine a maintainer in this position and all of the feelings of pressure and skill based identity and social isolation that must be involved.

Imho psychology has a duty to show up for technology practitioners and work for them just like we see and work for the well-being of emergency workers, healthcare providers.

I feel that as a field, psych has largely let the human side of software development pass it by and we have been content to be merely consumers as much as the rest of the world. But the needs of these people are going unaddressed, undermeasured and unheard. I talk to a lot of psychologists about why I started working with software teams and the human needs that are there and the massive amounts of societal responsibility & pressure that are there too. We really need to have this conversation.

Scott Williams 🐧

@grimalkina My degrees aren't in tech. My undergrad is in Psychology and I'm always amazed at how relevant it is to tech. Tech problems are fundamentally people problems (eg, Conway's Law).

@grimalkina Whenever I start a new job as a DevOps engineer, I know I'm going to be disliked for at least the first 6-12 months. You don't change the dysfunctional software development workflows without changing the culture that built those workflows. Eventually, it comes together and is absolutely worth it, but it can definitely take a strong toll on the mental health of the people implementing the necessary work. It's little wonder there's a high burnout rate for DevOps.

@vwbusguy I bet :/. Do you feel like you have a larger community around this of fellow practitioners who "get it"? Or does it feel really solitary? Both?

@grimalkina It's one of the reasons I make a point of getting out to at least one conference per year, even if I have to pay out of my own pocket. Networking with others in the field is important, both for learning new and useful things, but also for sharing war stories and encouraging one another.

@grimalkina The short answer though, is "both". At times it's easy to feel lonely and underappreciated, but belonging to the greater community of DevOps and open source developers can also go a long way in helping in those times.