An engineer setup is one of the most critical aspects of their jobs. Their choice of tools, IDEs, shortcuts, fonts and ever colour schemes have a fundamental part in either making an individual more or less productive. Tech leads often overlook this essential part. It's often left for the developer to set up at their discretion. But is this the best approach?

In this talk, you'll follow the story of three different developers and how their preferred setup was causing them to struggle in delivering. A few changes on their IDE, colour scheme or even a better choice of tools changed how they worked and how to flow state would become way more natural. It's a talk about cognitive shifts, developer experience and the reason dark mode is not only about not attracting bugs.

This talk was presented in Lead Dev London 2022 and Turing Fest 2022