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About Fight for the Human

I'm Cat Hicks, and I'm a psychologist for software teams. That's all feeling pretty complicated right now. I started this project to create a space for my bigger, bolder, and scarier writing about tech and the human.

Fight for the Human is a different kind of tech newsletter for people who want to learn how to rehumanize tech. This newsletter weaves together science, empirical evidence, behavior change, theory creation, personal essays and expert observations from working with technical teams in extraordinary circumstances (and extraordinary people in terrible circumstances). I've consulted for organizations with thousands of developers and led creative empirical research to learn about thousands more; I am certain that we are not alone in caring about this. We deserve better weapons, a shared language, and strong strategic theories that can help us build.

Tech has created plenty of theories for how to dehumanize. I want to create something different. Maybe you do too.

You may know me as grimalkina on social media where I'm often talking about science, culture, how our complicated minds work and how engineering organizations understand themselves. In tech, my social science has centered on being a research architect for multidisciplinary empirical evidence about things that matter to people in technical environments and to a future of technology, such as:

  • How we learn
  • How we stay creative
  • How we persist & protect our wonderful minds despite stress and trauma
  • How we unlock coalitions in tech and why we so often fail to get there
  • How we measure difficult-to-measure-but-important human experience so we can show costs to it or fight to invest in improving it

For example, I've advanced theory about why developers struggle with identity threat in response to AI, how Code Review Anxiety operates and how to mitigate it, and what drives innovation across technology collectives, and why a lot of aggregations of software metrics are bad math. I host a deep-dive podcast on science, tech and positive change called Change, Technically. My upcoming book, The Psychology of Software Teams, will debut in 2026 with CRC Press.

Perhaps more importantly, I help other people figure out how to make change and use human evidence for good.

this is scientist-speak for "y'all mf'ers need science" - Dave Alvarado, full-stack dev
Cat Hicks is one of the most brilliant people I have met in this industry. She sees things in a truly unique way, and brings a multidisciplinary approach to everything she does. - James Governor, RedMonk co-founder
Dr. Hicks' research leadership continues to center and inform key conversations around how to support and enrich developers as they learn, build, and grow together.... Dr. Hicks' work and the work of her team is thorough, sound, and sets the bar for how to move applied research into a global ecosystem. - amanda casari, Staff Developer Relations Engineer, Google Open Source
Something I'm learning about Cat Hicks' work is that it always comes with plenty of references and appendices. 😁 - Jonathon Yu
Dr. Cat Hicks is a master of exploring the human side of technology - Hazel Weakly, Technology Leader & "firehose of insights"
Cat Hicks asks all the best questions. - Tracy Miranda, Technology Leader
If you're a software engineering manager, "It's Like Coding in the Dark" by Cat Hicks is the most useful thing you could be reading right now. - Greg Wilson, Tech Leader & Author

Fuel for the Fight: the newsletter

When you sign up at the free tier, you'll get a complicated deep dive from my brain in the form of a newsletter with new content on about a monthly schedule.

I am going to use this space to interrogate the mental models that hold us back, drawing on my expertise as a social scientist and my work leading cumulative behavior change and theory-building about technical environments. I'll also be highlighting the work of other scientists, scholars and organizers who inspire me, because I hope they can inspire you.

Cat's research formalizes squishy indefensible feels I've had around team ownership and review culture issues, and has given me a push to try making changes as a small product owner in a big org. - Developer & Product Owner
Cat Hicks is one of a select few that are bringing the science of psychology to the world of software development to better understand the culture that creates our digital world(s). - Peter Chittum, Tech Leader

Tools for the Fight: the resources

If you want to support my work further – you can opt in to a paid tier. Folks at this level will gain access to an additional newsletter that focuses on actionable guidance. If you subscribe at the paid tier, you will get access to the research-backed content that I create for Fight for the Human such as literature reviews and evidence summaries, you'll support my ongoing scicomm and developer science work, and you'll gain the ability to comment on posts and occasionally submit your own unique questions to be answered in my deep dives. Paid subscriptions keep this whole project alive and allow me to set aside the time to invest in this work.

This tier is great for engineering leaders, product leaders, developers who want help navigating their complex workplaces, and developer experience leads or developer advocates who want to infuse their practice with evidence-based strategies (a nice use for those team learning budgets!), and for anyone who wants to support my work.

I have long fought to share open access science in service of software teams and all of us who are impacted by the work of software teams – this is at the core of what I do, and my foundational research projects will always remain open. By supporting this project, your subscription contributes to my open work and makes it possible for me to invest more time into creating science communication and tools for people to use. Thank you!