Not only is Kelly Vaughn one of the pioneers in building thought-leadership content for the developer community, she’s one of the rare programmers who comes to the craft with the background of a trained therapist.

From knowing what content devs need to grow to being able to recognize the cognitive-behavioral impacts of the developer experience, Kelly Vaughn is truly one of our most unique guests to date.

In our conversation, Kelly leveraged her background as a therapist to explore what dev orgs should be doing to recognize developers as unique human beings, with their own feelings, motivations and biases.

A discipline-crossing discussion, this pod is invaluable if you’re thinking about what a healthy dev team should look like as well as how to build one.

Episode Highlights Include:

  • (1:09) Ladybug podcast
  • (4:44) Kelly's degree in clinical social work
  • (12:37) What not to share on social media
  • (19:01) Why burnout is not a "24 hour flu"
  • (22:23) Bringing more empathy into 1:1s
  • (23:50-31:27) Dealing with Imposter Syndrome, negative self-talk & toxic positivity
  • (41:41) Dangers of comparing yourself to others
  • (44:51) Importance of building your network as an entrepreneur