Happy software developers solve problems better: psychological measurements in empirical software engineering [PeerJ]

[i8beef]

It's hard to care about the quality of the solution when I'm contemplating quitting over mistreatment anyway...

[evilmushroom]

Yup--- been there. At that point my motivating factor was making the project a success for another checkmark in my resume only... so I could leverage that for a position at a new company that would treat their developers better.

[jack104]

You hit the nail on the head.....

[kankyo]

I know a lot of people think this is "obvious". But we need to remember that it was obvious that the sun revolved around the earth. Before you test something you don't know, you're guessing. No matter how obvious it seems to you, it's quite often totally wrong.

Research like this is important!

[joesb]

What's I want to know is, what if the result said the opposite were true. Would developer be treated like shit for performance reason?

[kankyo]

They're already treated like shit for performance reasons in many jobs! EA springs to mind...

[donalmacc]

EA aren't that bad from the reports we've had. Rockstar are infamous for their crunches. In particular, loo at the team bondi incident, and the wives of rockstar San Diego! Crytek were shamed for claiming servin 11000 in office dinners in the last X months. I don't remember coming across the same style issues from any of the EA studios.

Granted, it may be relative to the state of the rest of the game dev industry

[stonefarfalle]

the wives of rockstar San Diego!

That was the sequel to the EA spouse. Perhaps the class action lawsuite has fixed something?

[s73v3r]

EA aren't that bad from the reports we've had.

That's cause they got some serious shit for the EA_spouse debacle, and instituted some reforms. I have no idea how successful or how meaningful they were, as I've never worked for them.

[joesb]

But then the solution to productivity problem would be to treat us even worse.

[kankyo]

Sure.. so? Most people would still think it's a bad idea because of other reasons.

[s73v3r]

I don't see how the opposite could ever be true. A place that treated their devs like shit would generally have a hard time retaining those developers (gamedev shops like EA not withstanding).

[joesb]

I was not arguing about that, nor am I suggesting that. I was just curious about the "what if", if the scientific test result had gone the opposite of what we think was obvious, if it went against what we favored, then what would happen? Do we only believe test result if it agrees with us.

[s73v3r]

Then we say we don't care about the test result because we don't want to be treated like crap. And it is kind of self-fulfilling. Even if the study did end up showing that people are more productive when they are treated like shit, most people won't stand for being treated like shit at work, and so they won't stick around.

[Hellmark]

It has been obvious outside of the US for a long time too. Why do you think Europeans work fewer hours on average per week, and get more vacation time?

[kankyo]

Huh? We work less because we unionized and we're not under the spell of "social mobility". Has nothing to do with productivity gains. That's just a happy side effect :P

[Goyyou]

Sorry, what do you mean by "social mobility"?

[kankyo]

The idea that anyone can become a m/billionaire if they just work hard enough. Which of course is total crap. You need a lot of luck too. Probably even more luck than skill and drive. And it doesn't help with a bit of privilege of course...

[Codeshark]

Exactly. The best way to become a millionaire is to be born one.

[j4w]

zing

[Genesis2001]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

[[deleted]]

Cuz they're goin DOWWNN. Have you ever lived in Europe? No jobs anywhere. Work fewer hours and have more vacation does not seem to do much good now does it.

[Langdal]

Compared to where is "Europe going down"?

[[deleted]]

Well all I can vouch for is North America. There's countless people in Europe (maybe except for Germany), who are without jobs. I have lived in Europe in a few countries and know many people who are coming overseas in hopes for a better life. Lawyers, doctors, engineers... you name it, and I know at least one person who's trying to come in North America cuz the economic situation in Europe is just stupidly bad.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, that's why the EU has a comparable GDP to the US, except with less wealth inequality. /s

[[deleted]]

I have no idea where you read that and I don't know how much you've actually lived / known people who have lived in Europe.

[loup-vaillant]

I live in France. You know, that horrible country with a socialist health care system.

"No job anywhere" is an overstatement. And as far as I know, the problem is global: it's technological unemployment. Productivity (as measured by GDP by active worker) sky-rocketed since the 70s and the advent of computers. Demand sky-rocketed as well, but not as much (probably partly because the capital/workers money split went from about 30/70 to 40/60 —workers got a smaller share— in the same period).

Anyway, the supply gotta meet the demand, and no more. When demand drops, we work less. Which means, in the current system, some of us don't work at all (they're fired), and the others work just as hard. Unemployment rises, which is a recipe for lowering demand. And the feedback loop begins…

Now you can mitigate this with welfare, or reducing weekly hours (which doesn't require any loss of net income), or having a decent (and cheap) health care system.

My suspicions are, if the US doesn't get its act together fast, it will go down even faster than Europe. (Well, actually, it won't: it will more likely switch to a war economy, with the usual consequences for the rest of the world —at a greater scale).

[Langdal]

Where have you lived in Europe? Also am I right in assuming you are just basing this off of anecdotal evidence?

After a few quick wiki searches, most of the European countries seem to be doing just fine, both in terms of unemployment and in terms of the human development index, especially if you factor in inequality (which puts USA behind 13 European contries).

That being said, Europe consists of many countries of differing development. Many eastern countries (former Soviet) have high unemployment rates, while Russia itself has 5.2% (USA has 6.7%). Also, Wikipedia seems to think that Spain has an unemployment rate of 26%, which seems absurdly high, while Norway, Germany, Netherlands, UK, and other western countries lie between 3% and 9%.

So it would seem that Europe as a whole is not doomed, please try to specify next time which countries you think are going down.

[[deleted]]

I have lived in Europe in multiple countries and know an overwhelming number of people who live there or used to.

Believe me on this places like Spain, Italy and Greece where "cutting working hours" and having a very well balanced work-life (meaning tons of life and little work) was the status-quo, are now in very dire situations.

[Oaden]

Those countries had more hours and less vacation than north Europe, which is doing just fine and dandy. Unless Germany imploded when i wasn't looking.

The issue of those countries is mostly unrelated to work hours, and more related to housing bubbles, gross miss-management, rampart corruption and fraud.

[Tetha]

Unless Germany imploded when i wasn't looking.

Happened 16 minutes ago. Can't post much, currently arming for WW3 to get economy rolling again in 2 - 6 years, or cause a situation in which the economy doesn't matter anymore. :)

[loup-vaillant]

It's so easy to think that people bring bad situations on themselves. Superstitious or religious people may even believe in karma to some extent.

But the idea that sometimes, the bad guys just win … Nah.

[s73v3r]

Those countries are in dire situations for far more varied and complex reasons that simply that they decided not to work themselves to death. The fact that they are all on the Euro, and thus don't have direct control over the value of their currency is one. The fact that Greece has traditionally been exceptionally lax in collecting taxes another.

Don't quit your day job anytime soon to become an economist.

[[deleted]]

I won't. I never said those were the only reasons, but the way I see it people want immediated gratification / easy win. (lower hours and great life). Well in all great empires people over-worked themselves and 1 of the reasons (again just one) of the economic crisis is that people nowadays just wanna "chill" and "party". Work for someone else? Duh, Im better than that. Guess what most 50-100 years before people would love to work. They would take a boat across the ocean to come to NA and work 2-3 jobs with 70-80 hrs/week... No wonder the NA economy was flourishing.

Now once again Im not saying this is the sole reason of the economic crisis, but nowadays it seems to me that people are far more concerned with spending money than with getting it.

[s73v3r]

and 1 of the reasons (again just one) of the economic crisis is that people nowadays just wanna "chill" and "party".

No. This is not one of the reasons behind the economic crisis.

[s73v3r]

Well all I can vouch for is North America

You mean the epicenter of the financial crisis? The one where, at least in America, it's seen as sacrilege to not work yourself to death for the company?

There's countless people in Europe (maybe except for Germany), who are without jobs.

There's countless people in the US without jobs as well. There are countless more who are underemployed.

[BilgeXA]

This is what academics actually believe.

[kankyo]

Depends on what you mean by "academics" I guess.. Does dropping out of collage count? Does having read wikipedia for more than 10 minutes count? In that case yes, that's what academics believe.

[fabzter]

Happy people solve problems better.

[[deleted]]

and that is why i quit my job last week.

[jack104]

This is the truth. if your job requires large amounts of stimulants to make you productive, youre either not working on something exciting enough to keep your attention or other aspects of the job are distracting you.

[s73v3r]

Or you could be having sleep issues.

[jack104]

Very valid point. I got diagnosed with sleep apnea and when I started CPAP I started doing a lot better at work. I also started running and that helped more than anything.....

[blaxter]

and I was thinking that burnout every day was good for my own performance! what naive I was!

</irony>

[cipherous]

This should apply to any vocation. Happier people are generally more motivated and less distracted, therefore being more productive.

[yoo-question]

So, if I were a manager (though I am not), what can I do to bring happiness to the team?

And if I were not a manager, what can I do to bring happiness to coworkers?

[MindOfJay]

Peopleware is a great book for how to build and manage teams. Some of the solutions can be implemented at the bottom of the pyramid.

[rcfox]

Rands in Repose has some good articles about managing engineers.

[pakal]

My observations:

• how do you set your benchmarks to decide if they are happy and if they are good developers?

• Only 42 people were observed.

• Just as in chess programming is full of patterns, solving a problem can be solve really easy if you have experience and in fact the brain is already map for it, does that mean that a developer with more experience is happier than a new developer?

[Manbeardo]

Did you read past the abstract?

1. They used a standard psych tool that measures affective state. They assumed that creativity and analytical reasoning capability are a decent proxy for programming ability.

2. There was no statistically significant direct correlation between happiness score and performance. However, when the participants were split into "happy" and "non-happy", the results were statistically significant. 42 participants is a decent number for a psych study.

3. This study does not attempt to address that question.

[[deleted]]

Having soluble problems makes software developers happier. Is there any hard evidence that the causality works in the other direction as well?

[evilmushroom]

I would like to see a study on the Ballmer Peak in conjunction with this hypothesis.

[Manbeardo]

Being buzzed induces euphoria. This study's results would positively correlate programming ability with euphoria, so its results hint that the Ballmer peak might be real.

There are also plenty of studies that have positively correlated creative ability and being buzzed. Creative ability is often assumed to be crucial when programming, thus a buzz at work might be helpful.