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Researchers Determine What Makes Software Developers Unhappy (vice.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the spaces-instead-of-tabs dept.

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."

17 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. I was most frustrated by ... by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2, Informative

    Being blocked from doing small fixes by Sarbanes-Oxley and management. But really Sarbanes Oxley.

    Prior to SOX, I could see a problem- fix it, refactor the code.. etc. or see a minor improvement- implement it, refactor the code, etc.

    After SOX, I had to run everything thru the team lead who had to justify it to the manager who had to justify to the director who had to justify it to the senior director who had to justify it to the Department head, who had to justify it (in a group of other changes) to the CIO.

    Just the overhead meant that something which would make the code 2% better was blocked many times per year. Not worth the ROI.

    And the overhead meant that improvements to the code which would make future maintenance easier were never approved any more. So the code just got harder to maintain over time.

    The time constraints would also be important. I didn't really care about co-workers performance. That was between them and management.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    1. Re:I was most frustrated by ... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.
    2. Re:I was most frustrated by ... by Z00L00K · · Score: 2

      Maybe it was because the company also used SOX as an excuse to save on development costs.

      Imagine the impact if the company was reviewed and then it was revealed that a fix for a security problem wasn't put in place due to the process.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    3. Re:I was most frustrated by ... by asylumx · · Score: 2

      I totally agree with the parent -- I also have the 'luxury' of being in a FDA regulated field so there even if your systems aren't in SOX scope, they are often still in FDA scope which is just as bad. Then you have overzealous compliance folks who think every system is somehow within SOX or FDA scope, who make the situation even worse!

    4. Re:I was most frustrated by ... by knightghost · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:I was most frustrated by ... by Gorobei · · Score: 3, Informative

      Being blocked from doing small fixes by Sarbanes-Oxley and management. But really Sarbanes Oxley.

      Prior to SOX, I could see a problem- fix it, refactor the code.. etc. or see a minor improvement- implement it, refactor the code, etc.

      After SOX, I had to run everything thru the team lead who had to justify it to the manager who had to justify to the director who had to justify it to the senior director who had to justify it to the Department head, who had to justify it (in a group of other changes) to the CIO.

      SOX dictates policy, not process. Nothing in SOX requires the process your company has chosen to implement. SOX basically says: do whatever the fuck you want, but it had better be understandable and sane; if you fail at that, but claim you are compliant, we can jail your senior management.

      If you are lucky enough to be working for a good company, you hardly notice SOX. If your company sucks, well, senior management doesn't want to get jailed, so they make a process of hierarchical justifications that is understandable, sane, and stupid: they keep their jobs and stay out of jail.

    6. Re:I was most frustrated by ... by luis_a_espinal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  2. On Average I Feel Fine by BinBoy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > software developers are on average a "slightly happy" group of workers...

    As the old saying goes... A statistician with his head in an oven and his feet in a freezer says, “On average, I feel fine.”

    Overly complicated, bloated frameworks, lack of documentation, buggy tools and incompatibilities make life miserable. Learning something new, finishing a project your proud of or raising your skill to a new level feels great. It would be nice to eliminate the lows though.

  3. Users by allo · · Score: 4, Funny

    Users

    1. Re:Users by ChadSmith4920 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Sales Staff

  4. What makes me unhappy by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Funny

    These researchers who keep asking me if I'm happy are making it hard for me to focus on getting my work done...

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  5. Wait... by meglon · · Score: 3, Funny

    Running out of Mountain Dew wasn't top on the list? I call bullshit.

    --
    Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
  6. Anything except coding by petes_PoV · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... 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.

    In my experience what makes developers unhappy is having to write documentation, perform testing and fixing bugs.

    Of course, that might simply define the habits of the "under-performing colleague" that then drags down the happiness of other, more diligent and professional, developers.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  7. Doesn't sound like most of the ones I know by DeplorableCodeMonkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re: Doesn't sound like most of the ones I know by buchanmilne · · Score: 2

      "I'd say that the majority of IT is no more knowledgeable about infosec than the average developer and even frequently less knowledgeable."

      Like some developers I have worked with in the past, who insist that the application user must have write access to the Java keystore? Why? Because they wrote code to import the SSL cert of any host they connect to as a trusted cert to the keystore, because they couldn't figure out how to import the CA cert with keytool (but found random java code on stackexchange that "worked" because it also disabled all certificate validation)?

  8. I'll tell you what makes 'em unhappy by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

    What makes developers unhappy is bloody researchers coming to the door with their surveys.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  9. I wonder about the under-performing coworker by chispito · · Score: 2

    I wonder if the happiest developers were the under-performing coworkers? (The Wallies.)

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!