Talk 2 at Laravel Live 2025: Carly Richmond – How to Destroy a Software Engineer

The title of Carly's talk was very intriguing. She discussed cultural anti-patterns and negative cultural norms, and explored the impact they have on developers.

For example, having the same alert for all thresholds means every alert demands an urgent response to determine its priority - this leads to alert fatigue. In healthcare, it's crucial that an emergency alert gets immediate attention, which is why machines don’t beep when everything is okay. We should only have alerts when something actually needs attention, otherwise it can cause the opposite behaviour - teams may begin to ignore or mute alerts altogether.

(I can confirm I have muted some automated Slack channels I find distracting!)

I'm also guilty of sending Slack messages “while I’m thinking about it” at the end of the workday. Instead, I should schedule these for the next day or a more convenient time. This way, I won’t forget overnight, but I also won’t bother anyone else until a suitable time the next morning.

We can also protect ourselves by using Do Not Disturb to block social media and other interruptions during the workday - and do the reverse in the evenings and on weekends.

Flow state is a real psychological phenomenon that supports skill mastery and productivity, so we need to minimize distractions. We also need space and time to dream, learn, and grow. It all helps, even if indirectly.

Carly also discussed The Brent Effect from The Phoenix Project, where one person becomes the bottleneck in an organization simply by being too essential. Fixes for this could include documentation or even automation of Brent’s responsibilities. There’s also the need to build everyone’s skills and muscle memory for how to respond - this can be achieved through War Rooms, where teams run through possible scenarios and how to handle them.

We also looked at the importance of being human in code reviews, including practical tips and links to resources that help others learn. Tools, such as linters, can enforce standards - and standards are essential. They don’t need to be perfect, but they do need to exist.