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Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

usehaystack.io

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Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#171

Post by Lutger »

myWindoonn wrote: post #158
throwawayswede wrote: post #56

This is such a great example of bullshit studies. Yeah I'm gonna go on a limb and say this is a marketing campaign. It's an insult to science to call this a "study". From the pdf: > The fieldwork of this study was carried out at remarkable speed, from the 23rd to 24th of June 2021 Data was collected in 1 day. Is this a joke? No it's not! > The population sampled included Software Engineers aged 18+ living in the Unit…

Your arguments are specious; perhaps you're simply angry that you didn't understand an industry you've worked in for a while? Perhaps you're in management, or in the 20% who aren't burnt out, and you're embarrassed by proxy? Psychological experiments and surveys are often done in only one or two days. Why would a wider window of time help when taking a snapshot of a current situation? Hm, is 258 a small sample size?…

It's a lot and I'm not surprised. Recent research in my country (from a reputable institute, the Netherlands) mentions 1 out of 6 people feel burnout and ranks IT industry in the top 3 sectors. This survey articulates it in quite a broad way however, just asking if respondents have 'feelings of burnout', which most of us have once in a while.

That doesn't mean they are burned out clinically speaking, or even if they have symptoms of burnout. It does point to a large, systematic problem in the industry (and society in general).

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#172

Post by Buttons840 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #70
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…

> I think asking for feelings of burnout exaggerates the issue of being burnt out by a huge factor. I kind of see where you are coming from, but I think this is an important question to ask. Asking someone's opinion on something is a REALLY good indicator of their opinion on that thing: do you hate your job, do you like chocolate, do you love your wife, etc. While the question "are you burned out" might not predict a…

Try "how can I be a better manager?" or "do you have any suggestions for me or the team as a whole?"

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#173

Post by codyswann »

antris wrote: post #52
codyswann wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the definition they're using, put it in the paper. Otherwise, it's just like asking someone if they feel "hot" at work. And if it can be tested for, why not do a study that tests for it? Otherwise, it's like asking people if they feel like they have cancer.

Studies aren't there to cater to your ignorance. Burnout is well defined, and generally quite well understood by even the general public, this is not news. You switched from "soft science is all subjective nonsense" to "I don't like how it's written". You don't have to like it.

Any serious professional or academic study contains a "Definition of Terms" section that explains how the researchers are defining key elements in their study.

https://www.slideshare.net/myotakustyle/definition-of-terms-....

https://www.mvorganizing.org/why-is-a-definition-of-terms-se...

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#175

Post by throwawayswede »

myWindoonn wrote: post #158
throwawayswede wrote: post #56

This is such a great example of bullshit studies. Yeah I'm gonna go on a limb and say this is a marketing campaign. It's an insult to science to call this a "study". From the pdf: > The fieldwork of this study was carried out at remarkable speed, from the 23rd to 24th of June 2021 Data was collected in 1 day. Is this a joke? No it's not! > The population sampled included Software Engineers aged 18+ living in the Unit…

Your arguments are specious; perhaps you're simply angry that you didn't understand an industry you've worked in for a while? Perhaps you're in management, or in the 20% who aren't burnt out, and you're embarrassed by proxy? Psychological experiments and surveys are often done in only one or two days. Why would a wider window of time help when taking a snapshot of a current situation? Hm, is 258 a small sample size?…

Your comment starts with a disingenuous sentence, and continues to show a level of bitterness I've seen before in people who believe themselves to be more knowledgeable/experienced than their surroundings (or they actually are), but never got a chance (or so they believe).

I didn't claim to know everything there is to know about statistics and research in general, but I think I know enough to tell that this is not a study, but a marketing campaign for whatever this usehaystack thing is.

> First, they should have tried to poll around 400 people (and perhaps they did!),

If you had read the article, you would have known that that's not what they did.

> By typical polling standards (95% confidence interval, random sample from filtered population), we expect that 77-89% of UK software developers are actually burnt out. That is still three out of every four people in the industry!

Do I understand correctly that you've worked on this? That certainly explains the hostility, but nevertheless.

> we expect that 77-89% of UK software developers are actually burnt out.

That's not what the link/study says.

> That is still three out of every four people in the industry!

This is absolutely wrong, without a shred of a doubt.

I recommend that you read: How to lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#176

Post by jedimastert »

antris wrote: post #140
jedimastert wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all have to extrapolate from a subset of the entire population. This only really works if you have a representative subset of he population you're extrapolating to. Is the distribution of experience roughly equivalent to the general population of "developers"? Age distribution? Company size? # of children? Home life? These kinds of demographics can have a big impact, and I see no discussion of how they were ac…

Getting a perfectly representative subset of the population, means surveying the whole population of the world. Also, accounting for every imaginable variable is always impossible, because we cannot ethically grow people in an isolated environment. Sure, a meta-analysis of several studies reveals more than one single study, but that doesn't make a single study bad or worthless - or as said in the parent - "a bullshit…

There are plenty of ways to account for not having a representative sample distribution, I'm just saying that I didn't see any kind of discussion about demographics or confounding variables in the actual study.

This was a pilot study, a way to open an avenue of discussion, and to be sure I think the study warrants more investigation. They even say so: "In future we would like to conduct larger studies over multiple countries."

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#177

Post by _moof »

seriousquestion wrote: post #87
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.

I build wooden, hand-riveted boats in my spare time and it’s an absolute joy.

One day on the computer when I was fighting with a stupid custom-made build system, I muttered to myself, “anyone who says a good carpenter doesn’t blame their tools never had to use an exploding hammer.”

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#178

Post by arcticbull »

dragontamer wrote: post #146
p_j_w wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your criticism of the sample size is unfounded. You absolutely can have meaningful results with only 258 people provided you have good sampling. If you want to criticize their sampling, then by all means do it, but that's not what you've done here.

A lot of the COVID19 stuff only has a population size (NOT EVEN sample size) of like, 15. Ex: J&J's blood clot issue. People make conclusions off of tinier sample sizes. There are plenty of scientific studies with just 50 or 100 people, but you need to keep the small numbers in mind. As long as sampling was done correctly, then small sample size won't matter much !!

I agree with you broadly, though would the J&J sample size not be about 21.4 million? 15 is just the number of adverse events right?

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#179

Post by c7DJTLrn »

Recently I've been feeling more and more detached from work. I thought about taking annual leave but I'm covering for my boss who just went on paternity leave. My employer also coerced (forced) us to take a big chunk of our annual leave already because of concerns there will be a huge clash later in the year. So I feel reluctant to use even more of it and then suffer later in the year. I also thought about asking for unpaid leave but I just moved to a new role and it might be a bad look when I have my review in 6 months.

I'm having a harder and harder time sleeping. Sometimes I only get 2 or 3 hours and I'm up at 4am with what feels like a high level of anxiety, worrying about many kinds of scenarios. Sleeping pills I bought over the counter seem to have no effect.

Would be great if my employer gave us a week to breathe like some companies have, but we're also a startup who just got acquired, so no chance of that either. I'm struggling.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#180

Post by decebalus1 »

sethammons wrote: post #83
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 do…

On the same logic, you can find tons of other 'easier' jobs that still experience burnout or boreout. What you're unconsciously doing is a form of the `fallacy of relative privation`. Sure, software engineering is an easier job than resident doctors or inner city math teachers or whatever. That doesn't mean it doesn't come with it's own baggage/challenges/frustrations/mental health issues and that engineers don't get to complain about them just because they're the least fucked in your view of what an 'easy' job is.

Software engineers are classified by the CDC wrt to suicide incidence higher than a lot of the jobs you're mentioning there (8th place out of 22). I guess being spoiled comes with the price of offing yourself more often than doctors, lawyers or teachers.

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