Code And Cognition: Reducing Mental Overload In Modern GitHub Workflows

Modern developer workflows often overwhelm teams with constant notifications, complex pull requests, and endless context switching that drains productivity. This session examines how cognitive load theory applies to everyday development work and explains why our limited working memory is often the primary bottleneck in software delivery. You'll learn practical, actionable strategies to reduce noise and interruptions in your GitHub workflows, optimize your pull request processes, and implement documentation systems that eliminate knowledge bottlenecks—helping your team stay focused and in flow where the best code happens.

Transcript

2. Code and Cognition Reducing Mental Overload in Modern GitHub Workflows Samuel Arogbonlo Snr Software Engineer, Infrastructure
3. Case Study Meet Bayo Snr Software Engineer, Company X Monday Morning, 9:00 AM 47 GitHub notifications ☕ Coffee getting cold 💭 Productivity dreams... dying This is every Monday for 100M developers.
4. The Cognitive Load Crisis 23 min To refocus after each interruption Reports from UC Irvine Reseacrhers 4±1 A human being working memory chunks capacity vs. 40 things GitHub asks you to track $50K Lost per developer annually Context switching cost $450B Global productivity cost Industry-wide impact Your Brain Is The Bottleneck
5. Bayo's Reality at Scale 200+ Daily Notifications In Startups • PR reviews • Issue mentions • CI failures • Team discussions • Security alerts Massive PRs 47 Files changed +2,847 Lines added Impossible to review effectively The Human Cost 83% Developer burnout rate
6. What Data Reveals - The 50 Line Discovery Sweet Spot 50-200 lines 70-90% defect detection rate The Drop-off 400+ lines Effectiveness plummets Source: Cisco, 2023 40% faster merge than 250-line PRs 15% less likely to be reverted 40% MORE total code shipped 40% more review comments per line
7. Case Study: Meta's Engineering Transformation 44% Review increase More code reviewed per engineer 7% Faster turnaround Reduced review time 14x Latency improvement KICKER: Meta built ML-powered reviewer matching Source: Meta Engineering Blog, 2024 Other remarkable results include Duolingo achieving 67% faster reviews (3 hours → 1 hour), Spotify cutting onboarding by 93% (2 weeks → 2 hours), and TELUS reduced onboarding from 10 days to minutes, saving $5.2 million in the process.
8. From engineering metrics to business value THE BUSINESS CASE Why does this matter to GitHub? $450B Global developer productivity cost 433% ROI for DX improvements TELUS Example 13 min/week saved per DX point Industry benchmark This isn't just good UX. This is a market category GitHub could own.
9. • 12.9 hours weekly in meetings (large companies) • 5.6 fewer hours of focus time • 52% of managers link focus time to productivity • 77% say it impacts revenue The Meeting Problem Let’s talk about the meeting tax, shall we ?
10. GitHub's Hidden Leverage Points Notification Routing Custom email filters X-GitHub-Reason headers Priority-based routing PR Workflows Draft PR patterns Skip CI until ready Size enforcement CODEOWNERS Load balancing Team-based routing Prevent bottlenecks Actions Automation ✓ Skip if draft Conditional execution Smart triggers P0: Immediate P1: Hourly batch P2: Daily Digest
11. Automation The System: Automation + Documentation Automation removes friction Documentation externalizes memory • Onboarding in hours, not weeks • Spotify: 93% reduction, 40% cognitive load reduction, 30% faster onboarding, and 14k+ services supported. • TELUS: $5.2M savings Documentation • GitHub Wiki Patterns • Discussions as knowledge base • ADRs for decisions
12. From Configuration to Platform Configuration helps, native features scale Bridge From Tactics To Strategy ← What you can do today Configure & optimize → What GitHub could ship Native features ←
13. Product Vision: Solvable Gaps Intelligent routing that learns what matters Focus Mode Integration Auto-prioritization What if this lived in GitHub Insights? And maybe some AI runs Core 4 Framework Speed - Effectiveness - Quality - Impact P0/P1/P2/P3 Notification Hierarchy Native DX Metrics Dashboard Strategic Product Opportunities vs. GitLab's integrated DevOps metrics vs. Linear's notification intelligence
14. Less is more Let each GitHub should be the platform that protects it From Bayo’s Chaos To systemic transformation
15. Thank you Contact Me