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Happy Software Developers Solve Problems Better
First time accepted submitter HagraBiscuit (2756527) writes Researchers from the Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy, have quantified and analysed affective mood index against objective measures of problem-solving effectiveness for a group of software developers. From the report abstract: "The results offer support for the claim that happy developers are indeed better problem solvers in terms of their analytical abilities. The following contributions are made by this study: (1) providing a better understanding of the impact of affective states on the creativity and analytical problem-solving capacities of developers, (2) introducing and validating psychological measurements, theories, and concepts of affective states, creativity, and analytical-problem-solving skills in empirical software engineering, and (3) raising the need for studying the human factors of software engineering by employing a multidisciplinary viewpoint.
People who are happy do better at things.
It's not just software development, but any job. If the employees are happy about how they're being treated, they'll do the best job they can, because they want to stay with the company. If they're not, they're going to do the bare minimum to stay employed while they look for another job at a better company.
Happy people at work are more motivated to work than people that are inside a cubicle for 12 hours with the boss breathing on their neck.
This is one more tricky aspect of managing software or any other creative/analytic project. You can start with the smartest, happiest people in the world, only to have your schedule blown because one of them is going through a messy divorce or a loved one gets cancer. The bad vibes can drag a whole team down. I forsee a huge market in happy pepper-upper pills for programmers. Oh, wait. That's what coffee is for.
The beatings will continue until morale improves
Am I the only one who thought of employer-sponsored twice-a-day blowjobs?
Oh, I am. Dammit, this looks bad.
Ah yes. The thousand yard stare.
Have gnu, will travel.
It depends on what you consider happiness. If Happiness means constantly slightly elevated dopamine levels as produced by non impairing drugs, yeah it's not going to do a damn thing. If by happiness you mean fulfilled by the work you do, no marital trouble at home, no crippling financial issues or personal crises outside of work taking attention away or requiring effort that leaves the employee sleep deprived, then yes it will make a huge difference. Happiness doesn't have some special effect in and of itself, but it is an indicator that problems that can creep into work time are manageable or nonexistent and that the person is a least somewhat motivated to do their work, which will produce much better results than the opposite circumstance.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
How much of our "understanding" of human psychology is based on academic studies on college undergraduate subjects?
Ever wonder how many volunteer subjects try to fuck with an experiment?
Talk about a headline from the No Screaming Shit Department, of course happier programmers are going to do a better job. There's no motivation to do your job well when you're miserable. That's why the team dynamics are more important than individual skill. I've seen one hot-shot programmer with great coding skills and horrendous personal skills totally undermine the team dynamic. No amount of skill makes up for being an arrogant ass.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Fire all the visibly unhappy developers! The beatings will continue until morale improves!
Are you a psychopath, autistic, or just insane?
I think there is a balance:
Morale is a vital factor. I have seen companies change management styles which changed employee morale from excellent to "why am I even working here?" When morale hit the skids at this startup I worked at a number of years back, security problems went through the roof, just because people didn't give a rat's ass about bothering with it. For example, people would actively intercept tailgaters and ask what they were doing, no badge, no entry. After the new management took over, nobody cared, and it became not uncommon for skulkers to get in and "liberate" laptops from offices. Root and enable passwords for machines eventually just got slapped on the box with a labelmaker (more permanent than a Post-It, and they didn't change.)
The cost in replacement equipment and IT policies of enforcing physical laptop security was a lot more than what was gained from the change in management [1].
It goes without saying that part of management is watching morale. Even in MBA school [2] they teach this in regards to management, because if it goes too low, the only thing a company can do is increase security or layoff and offshore, and that will make things even worse. The company I worked for that changed management styles? It went under when the core sales team jumped to the competitor... with the core dev team with them.
[1]: All hands meetings where everyone was told that they could be replaced at a whim with someone from an offshore firm, didn't help things.
[2]: There is a reason why I'm posting this AC... the shame would be too much to bear.
Happy developers? I didn't even know that was a "thing"
How could they have possibly run this test?!!? Frauds!
For developers to be happy in the first place, there's gotta be less administrative and politics bs to begin with. No wonder programmers are more efficient in such environment
solve problems best of all.
A friend of mine worked at a huge DIY chain. The founder and owner worked there and did any job in the house, he was 'one of the staff' and everybody loved him and "would have ran into certain death situation" for the guy.
Then the old man died and his son took over, straight from business school. The staff called his management style "Command & Conquer". He stripped people of their uniform on the floor and fired them on the spot. Suddenly, everyone hated their job and would do nothing unless absolutely required.
So I guess it does apply in more that just programming.
I would have to agree. If you'll allow me to bitch, my experience at Initech was that I was doing pretty well solving problems, and was fairly content despite some boredom. Then I was "borrowed" to double duty with another team, as we don't believe in focusing on one project here. You're supposed to focus on every project all at the same time. Obviously this redefines the word focus a bit.
Anyway, the management for the new team was hellish; they provided threats instead of encouragement. Now instead of working to solve problems, I'm trying desperately not to have bad marks on my performance review as was explicitly threatened if the project failed. To make it worse, they made unrealistic deadline promises to the customer despite the fact that no one analyzed the work to provide a realistic estimate.
Instead of clarity of mind, I have worries. There's an unreasonable pile of work and no time to do it. I've asked repeatedly for additional help, but they cannot hire or borrow anyone else. Despite being an "important" project, there's no budget for even one developer's part time help, although they entertained the idea for a while. I suppose that was just to shut me up.
I guess it's not important enough to have a budget, but it is important enough to burn our developers out. Burnout is FREE! Also, the "important" project might get canned at some point because it's one of the many duplications of effort around here, because our organization is silo'd and projects are developed because they belong to our department, not because they actually serve customers.
This turned a "meh" job into one that I actively disliked. My productivity suffered as a result. Obviously, now I want to move on, and when I do there will be a few additional systems in the company that no one remaining on site understands.
This article is interesting but our fast paced internet startup requires high amounts of communication and collaboration so we're going with developers sitting side-by-side on long rows of tables in an open office.
The easy, obvious, and self-serving interpretation: making programmers happy will make them more effective at solving problems. Alternative interpretation: people who are good at solving problems are happier than people who aren't. Corollary: maybe adding a foosball table in the lobby won't help after all.
Stupid problems are often the way to sad developers. We once had a customer require in a custom interface to make "check boxes" mutually exclusive - when we suggested that industry-standard was to use radio buttons for that type of selection we were told they were just "more comfortable" with the squares, but didn't want users to be able to pick more than one.
Stupid. Sad.
public happylittle HelloWorld : hugs Object { :-) { :-) { :-);
public ecstatic ambitious main(String[] compliments
weee (int i =) 0 ; i 10; i++
Compy.outAndProud.prettyplease.print("Hello, World!!!!"
}
}
}
Lets roll the dice... 8 o ]
I expect this type of drivel from social "scientists". I'm appalled that this crud is coming from a computer science department. I expect that this is the sort of computer science department that will grant degrees to students who have never taken any programming courses (yes, I've actually interviewed such people who don't understand why they cannot get jobs as programmers).
Even for slashdot, this article is a waste of electrons.
This was from the "beatings-continued-until-morale-improved" dept. It should have been from the "tremendous-grasp-of-the-obvious" dept.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Happy means you have more time to focus on the task at hand vs focusing on stress things that maybe non-work related (e.g. relationship issues).
Stressful employers makes it even worse to focus on anything in general, cause it leads to worrying about your job, aka income.
That explains why Microsoft software ......
Looking away from my code for a moment, I'm reminded of a quote from the movie "Bridge on the River Kwai" "Colonel Saito: Let me remind you of General Yamashita's motto: be happy in your work."
That's what it is.
The end of quarter profit is what matters. Suck it up and take it like a man! Pull your weight like a true team player or you'll be let go to make way for a flexible, empowered, dedicated business-oriented go-getter from the thousands of them queuing up at the door.
If you can't do it right, or don't like it, get out. Don't drag the team down with you, loser.
Stick Men
Buzzwords make me sad.
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
When you're here I know you're unhappy and that's the same thing as work.
Happiness is Nature's way of informing Human Resources that you're overpaid.
As someone who spiraled from mild depression to serious depression (where I still am) during the first four years of working at a software company I can confidently say that this was true at least for me. Furthermore the deeper into depression I fell the worse I became at problem solving and that deepened my depression even more because I felt I couldn't do my job as well as before and it also sucked enjoyment out of the job. It's a problem I struggle with every day. I try to keep telling myself that what I do is good enough but it doesn't help. We need more money in actual depression research. Depression is a killer in mentally challenging work like software development where you are faced with completely new problems multiple times a day and you have to come up with solutions based on knowledge you didn't have an hour ago. Also it's not something you can really talk about unless your boss is really understanding cause the guy who is slower than the rest is the first to leave if necessary.
Happy software developers don't know how stupid they are.
I always thought that beer made me a better coder, and now here is the proof!! Woo Hoo!!
Should'a, Could'a, Would'a... Did'na
I guess that is the problem with management by sociopath. They ruin everything they touch.
I forsee a huge market in happy pepper-upper pills for programmers. Oh, wait. That's what coffee is for.
Exactly! I go to work with a 2-quart thermos full of stovetop-percolated coffee.
I pound coffee until I become happy. Well, happy maybe isn't the word...but enough coffee and I'm like "Wow, this badly-written code is just FASCINATING! I can't WAIT to fix this crap while my so-called co-workers are off creating even MORE piles of crap for me to clean up! WOOOOOOOOO!!!"
I have a Gladware container full of chocolate-covered coffee beans too, for when 2 quarts of coffee isn't enough.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters