Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

usehaystack.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 308 posts

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#201

Post by mateo411 »

abc_lisper wrote: post #190
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.

Yes. 130 people is sufficient for a good sample.

If we use a 95% confidence interval and we have a sample size of 258 then the margin of error is around 4.5%. If the sample size is 130, then the margin of error will be around 6.5%. That's a little high, but probably still good enough.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#202

Post by [deleted] »

abc_lisper wrote: post #190
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.

Yes. 130 people is sufficient for a good sample.

[deleted]

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#203

Post by danenania »

mateo411 wrote: post #201
abc_lisper wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. 130 people is sufficient for a good sample.

If we use a 95% confidence interval and we have a sample size of 258 then the margin of error is around 4.5%. If the sample size is 130, then the margin of error will be around 6.5%. That's a little high, but probably still good enough.

The sample size you need also depends on variance and the presence of confounding variables. It’s impossible to say whether n is “big enough” in the abstract; it depends completely on what you are measuring and how you measure it.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#204

Post by eeZah7Ux »

pmoriarty wrote: post #118
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…

"For me, burnout means not only being tired of your job, but also inability to ‘burn' outside work." "burn outside work"? What does that mean? Burnout is feeling great distress at doing your job, due to factors such as overwork, disillusionment, and depression. Sometimes that adverse feeling is so intense the employee is psychologically unable to continue. As much some people would like to fancy themselves as coldly…

> As much some people would like to fancy themselves as coldly logical automatons

If anything, seeing oneself as a logical, emotionless automaton is one of the reasons for burnout and depression.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#205

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

But that's the point. Burnout is not one of those things about the people's opinion is the fact. People often are completely wrong about they being stressed at the exact moment you ask them, and burnout is about the kind of long-term experience that people are really bad at measuring.

Besides, even "do you like chocolate" is a very bad question to ask if you want to take any actionable conclusion from your data, or even if you want to sum your anecdotes up. You can't go asking people "do you like chocolate" and expect to know how much chocolate they will decide to eat, for example.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#206

Post by stcredzero »

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…

This is such a great example of bullshit studies.

Lots of social science seems to be confirmation of stuff that people have been suspecting. Not to take away from such things: It's important to verify with data.

However, the really interesting question: Where does the burnout come from? Is it possible to specifically characterize the source? By starting to break it down like that, we start toward finding a solution.

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#207

Post by dragontamer »

arcticbull wrote: post #178
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 !!

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?

When we get into "total population" statistics, we kinda leave the realm of statistics lol.

There's 15 documented adverse events, but we don't really know how many adverse events there were in total. If we simply study those 15 adverse events, then your population study is only those 15 events (with a hell-of-a-lot of selection bias).

----------

But I'm mostly thinking about how one person I know thinks: "Did you hear about these 15 cases and even one of them died! Clearly J&J is unsafe to take!!!!"

For that kind of conclusion, its like they've focused their mind entirely on 15 cases, as if their "population of study" was 15. Its obviously bad logic, but maybe I wasn't very clear in my original post that I was referencing some bad logic there.

---------

But there's plenty of 50-person or 200-person studies that ARE properly done, and the science is solid. Especially when we're looking at say Phase 1 / Phase 2 style trials of safety and/or efficacy (the earlier stage trials before a Phase 3 trial is conducted).

Its not a big enough sample to be "certain" of the results, but its a big enough sample to "provide evidence", possibly in conjuction with other studies.

----------

In many cases: having 5 or 6 studies with 50-random people each and performing a meta-study across them (especially if all 5 of those studies were of high quality sampling) would lead to a more robust conclusion than just one 1000-person study done slightly incorrectly (ex: the 1000-person "study" is a voluntary telephone survey or some other low-quality study)

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#208

Post by [deleted] »

abc_lisper wrote: post #190
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.

Yes. 130 people is sufficient for a good sample.

[deleted]

Re: Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

#209

Post by v1l »

I think one of the biggest factors for dev burnout is processes and lack of ownership/input devs are subjected to.

Most teams look at developers as just ticket takers and rarely involve them in the product or the decision making. Eventually you just tire of implementing the same stuff over and over like a code monkey.

Post reply on HN