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Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

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Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#81

Post by geoduck14 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #36

How much of the workload is just the dev shortage/insufficient staffing? I am currently the only dev on my team because of departures (there should be 4). Now, it is not really all that in production yet so it hasn't required late nights or waking up at odd hours, but it does linger in my mind that this could be a big issue if it grew a lot and my team didn't. I would hate to support it alone. A friend of mine is mis…

> How much of the workload is just the dev shortage/insufficient staffing?

ZERO PERCENT. Listen to me very closely. The quantity of people has ZERO IMPACT on your work quality. Well... maybe like 3%, but hear me out.

Your manager has a HUGH impact on your work quality. The work that is given to you, your PERCEPTION of the work, the urgency of the work, your development opportunities (and your response to them), the people you "hang out with at work" (note, this is about quality and nor quantity of work friends).

Of note, hiring more people can help with things like "We need 24 hr support", but that can also be helped by things like "well, actually, we only need 8 hr support, and the customer can pound sand" - that is where a manager comes in.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#82

Post by MattGaiser »

cloverich wrote: post #74
MattGaiser wrote: post #36

How much of the workload is just the dev shortage/insufficient staffing? I am currently the only dev on my team because of departures (there should be 4). Now, it is not really all that in production yet so it hasn't required late nights or waking up at odd hours, but it does linger in my mind that this could be a big issue if it grew a lot and my team didn't. I would hate to support it alone. A friend of mine is mis…

It might also be applicants recognize that its not a healthy place to work -- interns staying up all night to fix production errors is a red flag. Then the problem is a bit self re-enforcing, and the only solution is to reset expectations and deliverables to maintain a healthy pace of work. If that pace is not possible, and the company can't offer competitive compensation for the scenario (ex: "We're asking you to ca…

Well that's just it. Apparently WLB is great otherwise at the company, but because they can't hire people, it now has become horrible.

Anecdotally, a heck of a lot of teams are in this state.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#83

Post by sethammons »

varelaz wrote: post #16

Developers are getting too spoiled. Did someone do the same research for teachers for example.

I've been a teacher (and a manager, all levels of software engineer up to principal, a construction worker, an inner-city and high gang-presence high school math teacher, a graphic designer, and worked under a yard maintenance guy from Mexico, and several other small jobs. The software stuff has been among the easiest jobs (even with mission critical systems failing in the middle of the night affecting millions of dollars in revenue) I've experienced.

Software developers at many, many companies are absolutely spoiled. I know there have to be negative stories, but on the whole, pay, benefits, perks, and even hours are better than a great many industries. Even game shop crunch hours seem about on par for doctors in residency, some (most?) finance shops, and I'm sure other less notable roles like my friend who works in water distribution who puts in 90 hour weeks regularly and just got off a 39 hour shift.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#84

Post by throwaway3699 »

warent wrote: post #25
debt wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop using esoteric tools and trendy frameworks and use more robust solutions. That might prevent the burnout.

Did you retire from engineering? Esoteric tools can certainly be a problem but that's a tiny portion of the pool of people who experience this. Technology in general changes all the time

Part of the issue is the constant churn, not just change. It's change for change's sake, and more broadly, complexity for it's own sake.

Take microservices for example. Classic cargo culting development of what Google and Facebook are doing, but usually without a dedicated staffing team of hundreds. No wonder devs are burning out if they have to learn how to run a k8s cluster where a simple binary would've sufficed.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#85

Post by deagle50 »

cj wrote: post #34
danpalmer wrote: post #9

Are software developers any different from other professions with regards to burnout?

It might make us feel good to think we're unique and different, but realistically I can't imagine software development to be much more/less worse than being a mechanic, a carpenter, real estate agent, etc. I sometimes wonder how real estate agents avoid burnout. All of the ones I've worked with work most weekends and are on call 24/7 (because they give you their personal cell phone number to call and text any time).

Getting your fair share of the transaction helps.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#86

Post by deregulateMed »

I'd like separate breakdowns based on how long people have worked at the same company and same job.

I'm not sure who is more cynical, the contractor who has seen all companies operate similar, or the "lifer" who has to put up with the revolving door of thankless projects.

I personally can go from burned out from my data job to having fun programming embedded projects.

All bets are off if I'm working more than 40 hours a week.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#87

Post by seriousquestion »

titzer wrote: post #2

If you were a professional painter and every couple of months, someone snuck into your art studio, threw out all your brushes, paint, canvas, and then dumped a huge load of requests for you to "fix" your old paintings, I'm pretty sure you'd get burned out pretty quick.

I think this is why a lot of developers take on things like woodworking as a hobby or even a new career. The tools just WORK. They are reliable. They don't randomly change. There isn't a constant churn. You don't spend all day fighting with your toolset. They fade into the background. Your time is spent on what you actually want to do.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#88

Post by twic »

Someone wrote: post #20

If you read https://haystack-books.s3.amazonaws.com/Study+to+understand+... , you’ll see Q1. To what extent, if any, do the following statements apply to you? I feel burnt out from work. On a four-point scale, that scores 21%, 35%, 28%, 17%. So, they took everyone except those who said they didn’t feel burnt out at all, and got 83%. I think asking for feelings of burnout exaggerates the issue of being burnt out by a…

So they also don't test if people actually are burnt out, just whether they say they are?

My observation is that most people in tech discussing burnout do not know what burnout is. They think it means being bored with your job.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#89

Post by adkadskhj »

briefcomment wrote: post #5
titzer wrote: post #2

If you were a professional painter and every couple of months, someone snuck into your art studio, threw out all your brushes, paint, canvas, and then dumped a huge load of requests for you to "fix" your old paintings, I'm pretty sure you'd get burned out pretty quick.

Is maintenance the cause of burnout then?

I actually question if burnout is related to the idea that as software developers we often come in being passion driven, but "work" as defined by other people tends to whittle away at passion.

Eg there's a common saying, something like "Don't let your passion become work". Implying that if you love creating art, it can be a struggle to keep that same love when you start creating for other people. Of course it's all variable, but i hope my explanation suffices.

Programming can often be similar in my mind. Sometimes i can be in the height of feeling super uninterested in my work - tired, exhausted, all things i'd collectively describe as progressing towards burnout... but then i daydream and get the urge to go code some random idea. The fire is still there, in me, to be creative and produce something in the way i enjoy. It didn't seem inhibited by my work at all. It just seems work is following down a path of unfun that accumulates.

It feels similar to side projects. Devs often joke about how easy it is to start something but how difficult it is to finish. Because larger projects will often become work themselves. But in this side projects you have the luxury of stopping. I suspect if you forced your way through, never stopping on them - you'd burnout in a similar way to real work. If this is at all accurate, the consistent push on uninteresting work is the driving force for burnout in these examples. You're used to doing the work with passion, but extended periods of non-passion feels a lot like burnout, to me at least.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#90

Post by kube-system »

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #75
titzer wrote: post #2

If you were a professional painter and every couple of months, someone snuck into your art studio, threw out all your brushes, paint, canvas, and then dumped a huge load of requests for you to "fix" your old paintings, I'm pretty sure you'd get burned out pretty quick.

I also think some of it comes from the expectations of how much time someone is productive in a day. It’s as if the expectation is that you spend all eight hours of the day making brush strokes on the canvas. It’s not practical and it’s exhausting, especially when you’re not feeling particularly motivated or just need time to think about the work ahead.

It's important for managers to plan time for design, testing, feedback, meetings, administrative tasks, and context switching. In places I've worked that has planned this well, we usually allocated somewhere around 4 hours of development work per day to someone.

I think most burnout is systematic, and caused by incomplete task breakdowns.

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