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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

#181

Post by loonster »

bumby wrote: post #169
dragontamer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 !!

> There are plenty of scientific studies with just 50 or 100 people, but you need to keep the small numbers in mind. The converse also needs to be held in mind as well. Very large studies are more likely to display statistically significant findings. Your p-value is really just a test of your sample size, so as the study grows your p-value tends to shrink. Get a large enough sample and you'll almost always find stati…

The size of the sample depends on how rare of an event that is being studied. For something that happens 80% of the time, 300 is a very reasonable number. Something that happens 1/1000 or 999/1000 would need a much larger sample size.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#183

Post by mikehearn »

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…

Having a poll in the field for two days is pretty common, and n=258 is definitely enough for a representative sample.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#184

Post by lwn »

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…

I've had many trades as well, before ending up as a software engineer. My hardest, most exhausting job was in the food industry. Entering office live was easy, work a picnic. Plenty of energy coming home after work. With my previous attained 'work mentality' I could way more done! ... and last year I had an extreme burn-out event (hospitalised). In my experience burn-out is a combination of steadily (for a longer period of time) putting in more energy then available, not taking enough rest and most importantly: emotional disturbance (going against your nature/ will)

For example: Work hard, have a bad relationship at home or at work can easily lead to burn-out.

Furthermore, software engineering seem to have some unique combined traits which sets it apart: 1. Creative proces which is hard to manage and easily leads to misunderstandings and conflict with customer or employer. 2. Screen-working enables stretching concentration well beyond human limits. 3. Modern western society tends to personally identify oneself with work too much (which is an easy trigger for emotional disturbance) 4. Programming is fun! Devs are being treated so well! So why not endure those problems a bit longer ...

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#185

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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…

Sure, but that has little or nothing to do with life satisfaction. Which is related to suicide rate.

In fact, being spoiled can lead to dissatisfaction. It's part of the problem I imagine.

Somebody doing something really hard for a tangible benefit to people they know, have really healthy life satisfaction. Like the plow truck driver in winter, folks like that. For the obvious reasons.

We're all social animals. Suicide has to do with that. Not how easy your job is!

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#187

Post by throwawayswede »

mikehearn wrote: post #183
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…

Having a poll in the field for two days is pretty common, and n=258 is definitely enough for a representative sample.

- This was not a poll.

- Being common doesn't mean it's good or acceptable. In this case, it doesn't account for the effects of day of the week, or what sort of issues the person was having on that day specifically.

- n=258 is enough if it was sampled properly, and they provide no details to show that it was, so it wasn't. They provided nothing more than the engineers they surveyed were in the UK. Nothing on experience, age group distribution, family-size, years of work, company size, work change.

- As it stands, this provides 0 valuable information, and I can only assume it's intended for buzz.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#188

Post by bumby »

loonster wrote: post #181
bumby wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of scientific studies with just 50 or 100 people, but you need to keep the small numbers in mind. The converse also needs to be held in mind as well. Very large studies are more likely to display statistically significant findings. Your p-value is really just a test of your sample size, so as the study grows your p-value tends to shrink. Get a large enough sample and you'll almost always find stati…

The size of the sample depends on how rare of an event that is being studied. For something that happens 80% of the time, 300 is a very reasonable number. Something that happens 1/1000 or 999/1000 would need a much larger sample size.

Yes, I agree. But that’s to the same point. The p-value is still a measure of whether your sample size is large enough to capture a small probability event in the context of assessing the null hypothesis

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#189

Post by MattGaiser »

watwatinthewat wrote: post #166
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…

Coming from a bit different of a situation, I am at a government systems center that runs off customer funding rather than tax money, so we take clients. My group is being run short of people just as you describe. Almost every project I have been on has been understaffed. My project last year was one year of funding to research application of deep learning for a problem that had only some classical engineering algori…

I worked for a government agency funded by clients as my last job. Same issues.

A big issue with understaffing is knowledge. Like in my prior job and you in your current one, you are spread across so much tech. I know that even in my current job I have certain work that is little more than Google and assume the tutorial does the job.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#190

Post by abc_lisper »

p_j_w wrote: post #133
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 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.

Yes. 130 people is sufficient for a good sample.
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