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Engineering Happiness

Engineering Happiness

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

Given at Monitorama PDX 2015

Laura Thomson

June 16, 2015
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  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"
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    25000"
    2008'03"
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    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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