Cat Hicks

Psychologist for the humans of tech.
Evidence strategy for technical teams

Co-host at Change, Technically: https://www.changetechnically.fyi/

Author: Psychology of Software Teams (CRC Press, coming July 2026)

Seizing the means of scientific production. Quant Psych PhD (but with a love for qual). Chronically underpublished. She/her

Founded: Catharsis Consulting, Developer Success Lab
Neighborhood Cool Aunt of Science

Podcast: https://www.changetechnically.fyi/
Blog: https://www.drcathicks.com/blog
Developer Science: https://www.drcathicks.com/projects
Newsletter: https://fight-for-the-human.ghost.io/

Public Key

npub18g0d4j2g7k6zll4jkr4clkp6vuurlyakdsrs2f4fv0ywnqfmjhuqm00a9e

NIP-05 Address

grimalkina_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

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Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

public.relaying.io

relay.nostr.band

Author Public Key

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Last Notes

2026-01-24 20:46:53 UTC

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Literally nothing feels like enough but we are finding what tiny ways to connect and be in person with neighbors and say do you see what's happening, what can we do here and now

2026-01-24 20:46:42 UTC

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Put a note in your neighbor's mailbox with your phone number to text if they are in trouble
We are putting out coffee and donuts tomorrow and sitting outside
You can't help people if you don't know people

2026-01-24 20:46:27 UTC

If you are feeling as helpless and no words are enough enraged as we are, get together with neighbors. We are doing that today and tomorrow and the next day

2025-10-16 13:00:51 UTC

Super grateful that our No Silver Bullets paper has had such a nice response.
Additionally, getting some engagement on it has yielded the kind of interestingly depressed messages my work always, always, always provokes:
- thanks for doing this, it's meaningless
- great work, no one will care
- you have the data, but data won't matter
- how about instead of doing this study, you get rid of all managers
It is, to me, a diagnostic more than anything

2025-10-10 06:48:10 UTC

Completely surreal to be wrapping up our Dagstuhl today. This was an intellectual bucket list experience for me and I'm so grateful for the warmth, open mindedness and strategic thinking of the organizers which bridged so many gaps, including industry and academia, career stages, & many countries

2025-09-20 16:44:08 UTC

Software got obsessed with Csikszentmihalyi for some reason ("flow state") and I sometimes imagine an alternate history where tech got obsessed with Sternberg ("practical and adaptive intelligence"/creativity) and what would've happened to the implicit models of developer problem-solving in that universe
I mean I don't like the Great Man Said a Thing thing we have going on in software but it's fun to imagine

2025-09-10 16:34:27 UTC

This science story has everything:
- a superheroic scientist who has the condition she is battling to drive work on
- a riveting scientific breakthrough story (I was gasping)
- an absolute gutpunch about whether her work will be defunded
https://www.science.org/content/article/driven-pain-endometriosis-scientist-uncovering-clues-its-causes

2025-09-08 15:31:24 UTC

Pondering science rigor and reform and pseudoscience conversations on bsky this morning (in the wake of all the "tylenol -> autism bullshit) so copying that thread over here in case of interest
Speaking outside the academics here, so what do I know. But I honestly think a lot of unexamined issues here come from the fact that people are not willing to face what an enormous completely self-sustaining ecosystem pseudoscience has become. They CAN and WILL replicate themselves.

2025-09-08 15:15:30 UTC

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Psychological interventions can't just sound nice, or feel nice, or make intuitive sense to us when we imagine an ideal version of them.
They have to WORK.

2025-09-02 10:45:45 UTC

Learning and task solving strategies aren't the same as immutable abilities; the conflation of the two bothers me a lot because it creates a worldview in which any learning loss is irredeemable and people who face adversity are punished for inevitably suffering its effects.

2025-09-01 14:55:22 UTC

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-- e.g., seeing community knowledge contributions and eventually interacting with them and learning where knowledge was aggregated from, vs interacting with only aggregated, anonymized synthesis (as is the current AI 'information ideal' imagined in so many products)

2025-08-20 15:12:48 UTC

Is this a good time for a hyper-niche explainer thread about preprint ecosystems and why "psychology for software teams" work has no home, even in the INFORMAL systems of knowledge sharing?
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/115059063053875654

2025-08-09 15:41:11 UTC

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"everything will be fixed by a union" also not a complete change theory
have you ever observed a union dominated by certain sets of identities and ideologies before? No? Please go read about the actions of a police union.

2025-08-07 16:08:47 UTC

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Let's all go to church and recite the litany of the grind factory, lmfao. Let's spread our gospel to the children, no it's because they're "hardcore," not because they're tractable!! For sure the actions of a culture that has a strong handle on the human mind haha

2025-07-30 19:12:25 UTC

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Science moved away from individual hindsight storytelling for a reason. Not trying to be snotty about empirical evidence but it's an incredible source of wealth that we HAVE at least some empirical evidence for our questions. We do not need to anecdote about everything. We can test questions.

2025-07-30 19:11:09 UTC

I am showing my educational inequity research past over on bluesky today, a thing I rarely deploy at full force when talking about software development because it's exhausting, but I'll copy some of my posts into a thread here in case useful!! Or maybe more importantly, validating

2025-07-29 15:14:09 UTC

"How do scientists get the money to work on ambitious & hard questions"
by winning grants and funding
"How do scientists win grants and funding"
with research that gets top percentiles in some of the most competitive processes around
"How does their research get top percentiles"
by being cited and shared a ton
"How does their work get cited and shared"
by being in a top journal
do you see the problem with saying, "just don't submit your work to top journals"

2025-07-12 15:49:44 UTC

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the only time I saw Ashley cry after teaching was during the pandemic while wrestling with completely transforming and writing entirely new curricula on a moment's notice with no control over it or support and with enforced technology from the university. Tech and education mixtures can be devastating

2025-01-25 20:36:08 UTC

The NIH pays off beyond our dreams.
In a special edition of Change, Technically, [@analog_ashley](https://mastodon.social/@analog_ashley ) and I get into the facts of the #NIH : what it does, how it works, and the consequences of disrupting its essential work.
Listen here: https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/16501906-the-nih-pays-off-beyond-our-dreams
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/890/906/781/851/692/original/e3b91bcd1a24b74b.mp4