🚀 Another insight from the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey: When asked if they are happy at work, 80% of software engineers did not confirm that they are! It turns out beanbags, foosball tables, hybrid offices, flexible working hours, and even some of the highest average salaries are not the holy grail of happiness after all.
Visual representation of developer dissatisfaction in the workplace
What the survey says about developer job satisfaction
The survey asked professional developers how satisfied they are in their current role (Stack Overflow, 2024). 32% even explicitly say they are not happy at work, 48% call themselves complacent, and only 20% feel happy at work. 20%? Statistically, you might be happier playing roulette than finding a job in IT that makes you happy.
It looks a little better for people managers, where 26% are happy at work, than for individual contributors, where it's 19%.
But what is happiness? The infamous Don Draper once said: “Happiness is the moment before you want more happiness.” We could write an essay on the definition of happiness, but let's look at what the report says frustrates developers instead.
What frustrates developers at work
The report states: “Technical debt is the top frustration at work for professional developers according to 63% of respondents, regardless of whether they are an individual contributor or a people manager.”
Sure! The people who worked on the code before me were incapable. The client had WRONG requirements, and management set toxic deadlines and didn't invest in tests and reviews! Right?
Listen, there are always two sides to the same coin. Ask yourself:
- “What did I contribute to change this?”
- “How did I, as an expert, make my concerns heard regarding feasibility of requirements and deadlines?”
- “How did I fight for my craft to produce high-quality code?”
Further down the same list, 27% name tracking their work as a frustration and 20% name showing their contributions.
The report only asked about challenges like these. Lack of recognition, poor career growth, poor communication, isolation, toxic culture, and health issues weren't on its list, but the same goes for them. Again: It's easy to blame external circumstances and see yourself as a victim.
Instead, ask yourself:
- “What did I do to be seen?”
- “How and where did I place my contributions?”
- “How fast did I give up?”
- “What did I do to break isolation and silos?”
- “What is my contribution to culture and my efforts to improve the situation?”
- “Am I doing enough for my physical and mental health?”
What makes developers satisfied
The survey also asked the opposite question. Developers got 100 points to spread across the parts of their job that satisfy them most. The top four, by average points:
- Improving quality of code and developer environments: 21 points
- Learning and using new tech: 19 points
- Building environments and architecture: 16 points
- Driving strategy for my team: 14 points
Happy, complacent and unhappy developers all put improving code quality first. Put that next to the top frustration: what satisfies developers most is improving code quality, and what frustrates them most is technical debt. So for many the question is how to get the time for work they would enjoy anyway, and that starts with getting refactoring ideas out of backlog hell.
What you can change yourself
People hugely underestimate their own influence on others, on the company, and on themselves. Look around you. You will see many people who are happier, healthier, more influential, and have better careers. Why is that? Because they keep winning the lottery of life? Please! If you want something you've never had, you need to do something you've never done! You can change a lot more than you think.
The guide to soft skills for software engineers offers a framework for improving job satisfaction and influence.