RESEARCH_FILE
Soyon Lee
Research team publishing in Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE), 2024
Known for:Lead researcher on the first quantitative study of code review anxiety in software engineers, demonstrating it is a distinct, measurable construct that predicts avoidance behaviors and correlates with imposter phenomenon
SEE THE PRACTICE
Turn a thought this research explains into one clear move.
THE THOUGHT
“The PR comments will reveal I'm a fraud”
YOUR RECORDED RESPONSE
“The review is about this change, not my worth.”
ONE PRIVATE MOVE
Open the PR privately, copy the first reviewer comment into a scratch note, and rewrite it in plain language as a task the code needs in under ten minutes.
Key findings
- 2024
Code review anxiety is measurably distinct from general social anxiety, predicts concrete avoidance behaviors including delayed code submission and reduced commenting, and is significantly correlated with imposter phenomenon scores — and can be partially mitigated through structured review norms and explicit framing of code review as a learning practice. Understanding and Effectively Mitigating Code Review Anxiety ↗