Engineering Happiness

What makes engineers happy? How can you measure and monitor it?

Given at Monitorama PDX 2015

Transcript

1. Engineering
   Happiness
   Laura Thomson
   @lxt / laura@[laurathomson|mozilla].com
   !1
   

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2. Process
   Software
   System
   —Any Software Engineering 101 Textbook
   People
   !2
   

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3. Hypothesis - happy engineers:
   don’t quit, produce code, and don’t complain
   !
   (assumptions: competence, motivation, fit)
   !3
   

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4. Metrics
   !4
   

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5. Don’t quit?!
   Retention/turnover
   But turnover sucks as a metric:
   (Extremely) trailing indicator
   Compared to what? ~30% mean turnover in SV
   Changes (spikes) are notable, but too late to be
   actionable
   !5
   

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6. Where is turnover useful/actionable?
   Look for anomalies
   Local maxima point to specific problems
   Junior? Senior? Management? Technical?
   !6
   

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7. “People leave managers, not jobs”
   !
   Not only managers:
   Company/project/culture jumped the shark
   Stopped learning
   Burned out
   Better offer
   (Good manager can mitigate but not fully overcome these things)
   !7
   

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8. Productive?!
   Critical happiness metric at the micro level, per
   person (will come back to this)
   Less so as a macro measure of morale
   !8
   

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9. 0"
   5000"
   10000"
   15000"
   20000"
   25000"
   2008'03"
   2008'05"
   2008'07"
   2008'09"
   2008'11"
   2009'01"
   2009'03"
   2009'05"
   2009'07"
   2009'09"
   2009'11"
   2010'01"
   2010'03"
   2010'05"
   2010'07"
   2010'09"
   2010'11"
   2011'01"
   2011'03"
   2011'05"
   2011'07"
   2011'09"
   2011'11"
   2012'01"
   2012'03"
   2012'05"
   2012'07"
   2012'09"
   2012'11"
   2013'01"
   2013'03"
   2013'05"
   2013'07"
   2013'09"
   2013'11"
   2014'01"
   2014'03"
   2014'05"
   2014'07"
   2014'09"
   2014'11"
   2015'01"
   2015'03"
   Pushes&per&Month&
   Time&
   Pushes&to&hg.mozilla.org&
   Holidays
   FX10
   Firefox 4.0
   !9
   

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10. Complaints?!
    “If the worst thing they have to complain about is the
    art hanging on the walls…”
    !10
    

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11. Complaints?!
    “If the only thing they have to complain about is the
    art hanging on the walls…”
    !11
    

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12. Complaints?!
    Sentiment on internal channels (Slack, Basecamp,
    Yammer, etc)
    Silence
    Again: more about individuals than overall
    !12
    

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13. Leading indicators of morale?
    Hours worked
    Downtime or # pages/alerts
    Tech debt
    Stock prices / Market share
    Technology (TIOBE, HN, etc) in decline
    !13
    

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14. “Glassdoor Bingo”
    (What companies? What causes?)
    !14
    

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15. Technical debt is an energy vampire for good engineers.
    !15
    

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16. Analytics lead monitoring.
    Surveys:
    infrequent, qualitative
    standu.ps, tinypulse (etc):
    frequent, quantitative (graphite for humans)
    !16
    

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17. Unhappiness,
    causes of
    !17
    

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18. !18
    

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19. !19
    Not to be confused with
    

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20. !20
    Not to be confused with
    Going into management
    

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21. “Burnout is defined as a state of chronic stress and
    frustration that leads to:
    physical and emotional exhaustion;
    feelings of cynicism and detachment; and
    a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of
    accomplishment.”
    “Where do you fall on the burnout continuum?”
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/high-octane-women/201205/where-do-you-fall-the-burnout-continuum
    (Downloaded June 1, 2015)
    !21
    

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22. Burnout causes:
    long hours
    too many pages
    too much travel
    too much bullshit
    missing out on life/family/opportunities
    !22
    

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23. GSD/BS ratio:
    politics
    excessive meetings
    cargo cult process
    tech debt
    !23
    

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24. Happiness, causes of
    !24
    

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25. !
    Mastery
    Autonomy
    Purpose
    !
    Pink, Dan. Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
    !25
    

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26. Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
    !26
    

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27. Hygiene
    work environment - hardware, tools, snacks
    management / policies
    salary / benefits
    safety
    !
    Messing these up makes people unhappy.
    !27
    

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28. Motivation
    achievement / recognition
    interesting projects
    learning new stuff
    growth / advancement
    !
    Getting these right makes people happy.
    !28
    

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29. !29
    Motivation
    Hygiene
    Awesome
    Terrible
    Just a paycheck
    Early stage startup
    

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30. Work on things you are good at and enjoy
    !30
    

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31. What type of engineer are you?
    Senior / Junior
    Structured / Chaotic
    Team / Loner
    Purist / Pragmatist
    Starter / Finisher
    !31
    

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32. Upwards, to the right, and straight on ’til morning.!
    (Questions?)
    !32
    Get this print: https://www.etsy.com/listing/107306078/welcome-to-the-internet-hq-11x17
    

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