Every day we make decisions. Those decisions can be around improving your product, process, company; sometimes even bettering yourself. But many of our decisions are not made consciously. We all have biases. And even though most of our biases are unconscious, those biases still can get in a way of making the best possible decision. This is not a talk about gender and racial bias in tech hiring (altho I will also touch on hiring procedures and biases). This is a talk about different biases that skew our technical decision process that we deal with in out day-to-day operations.

1. @papa_fire
9 biases
in tech

2. @papa_fire
phycologists me
(not a phycologist)

3. 3
affinity bias

4. @papa_fire
Donuts
Python
AWS
Chef
Circonus
Postgres
Redhat
Donuts
Node
AWS
Ansible
Circonus
MongoDB
Redhat
Sushi
Java
Azure
Ansible
Circonus
Postgres
Windows
Donuts
Python
AWS
Ansible
Nagios
Postgres
Redhat
Donuts
Python
AWS
Ansible
Circonus
Postgres
Redhat
Donuts
Ruby
AWS
Ansible
Circonus
Postgres
Redhat

5. @papa_fire
confirmation
bias

6. @papa_fire
MySQL is used by Apple!

7. @papa_fire
bandwagon effect

8. @papa_fire
>new person: WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF
>old hands: yeah we know we’re concerned about it
>new person: WTF WTF wTF wtf wtf w…
>new person gets used to it
>new person #2 joins
>new person #2: WTF WTF WTF WTF
>new person: yeah we know. we’re concerned about it.
WTF
yeah we know
we need to fix that
3 months later …
yeah we know
we need to fix that
WTF

9. @papa_fire
comfort bias

10. @papa_fire
change drives
progress

11. @papa_fire
ownership bias

12. @papa_fire
we’ll rewrite
everything
we can’t figure out
how it works, so

13. @papa_fire
ikea effect

14. @papa_fire
sunk cost bias

15. @papa_fire
don’t cling to a
mistake just because
you spent a lot of time
making it

16. @papa_fire
anti-ikea effect

17. @papa_firebuild what differentiates you
buy what accelerates you

18. @papa_fire
anti-bias bias

19. @papa_fire
second guess yourself

20. @papa_fire