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Researchers Determine What Makes Software Developers Unhappy (vice.com)
Researchers recently surveyed 2,200 software developers to calculate the distribution of unhappiness throughout the profession, and to identify its top causes, "incorporating a psychometrically validated instrument for measuring (un)happiness." An anonymous reader quotes Motherboard:
Daniel Graziotin and his team found their survey subjects via GitHub. Contact information was found by mining archived data for past public GitHub events, where email addresses are apparently more plentiful. They wound up with 33,200 records containing developer locations, contact information, and employers. They took a random sampling from this dataset and wound up with about 1,300 valid survey responses... According to survey results released earlier this month, software developers are on average a "slightly happy" group of workers...
Survey responses were scored according to the SPANE-B metric, a standard tool used in psychology to assess "affect," defined as total negative feelings subtracted from total positive feelings. It ranges from -24 to 24. The mean score found in the developer happiness survey was 9.05. Slightly happy. The minimum was -16, while the maximum was 24. So, even in the worst cases, employees weren't totally miserable, whereas in the best cases employees weren't miserable at all.
The paper -- titled "On the Unhappiness of Software Developers" -- found that the top cause of unhappiness was being stuck while solving a problem, followed by "time pressure," bad code quality/coding practices, and "under-performing colleague."
And since happiness has been linked to productivity, the researchers write that "Our results, which are available as open data, can act as guidelines for practitioners in management positions and developers in general for fostering happiness on the job...unhappiness is present, caused by various factors and some of them could easily be prevented."
Survey responses were scored according to the SPANE-B metric, a standard tool used in psychology to assess "affect," defined as total negative feelings subtracted from total positive feelings. It ranges from -24 to 24. The mean score found in the developer happiness survey was 9.05. Slightly happy. The minimum was -16, while the maximum was 24. So, even in the worst cases, employees weren't totally miserable, whereas in the best cases employees weren't miserable at all.
The paper -- titled "On the Unhappiness of Software Developers" -- found that the top cause of unhappiness was being stuck while solving a problem, followed by "time pressure," bad code quality/coding practices, and "under-performing colleague."
And since happiness has been linked to productivity, the researchers write that "Our results, which are available as open data, can act as guidelines for practitioners in management positions and developers in general for fostering happiness on the job...unhappiness is present, caused by various factors and some of them could easily be prevented."
Being blocked from doing small fixes by Sarbanes-Oxley and management. But really Sarbanes Oxley.
Because, well, you know better than the "PHBs" what the legal / business ramifications are?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The single biggest gripe would be "forced to use the same super-locked down image from IT that is given to management, secretaries and marketing, but expected to 'build great stuff'." Seriously, while I've worked with some very smart IT people, I'd say that the majority of IT is no more knowledgeable about infosec than the average developer and even frequently less knowledgeable.
I've worked at multiple USA and Canadian companies that followed SOX and SAS 70 but never had any of those problems. It's the corporation, not SOX.
The responses of "unhappiness" is something you'd see from newbies, so I strongly question the data set. Far more pressing issues are age bigotry, politics, PHBs, and outsourcing.
What about having to do tedious and redundant work because leadership refuses to prioritize internal tooling and environment upgrades,
What about it? Life sucks. Shit sucks. You either settle and collect your paycheck, or you go to another company. Not all companies are like what you describe, so why do stay where you don't like working? Stop being a bitch. Stop complaining and change to a company that you like working for.
Have non-technicians constantly reject good ideas because they can't understand them, and don't bother trying to,
Being asked to work extra to meet arbitrary deadlines that have absolutely nothing motivating them,
Re-doing the same task three times because the stakeholders cannot make up their minds,
having to work in an open office that is full of noise, socializing, and distracting all the goddamn time while leadership just closes their office doors?
I don't know whether or not you would call these "pressing issues," but they sure make MY job suck.
Same bitching. No one owns you a dream job. Go out and seek it. Life is too short to be bitching about bad employers.