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

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

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

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Metrics !4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Unhappiness, causes of !17

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!19 Not to be confused with

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!20 Not to be confused with Going into management

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

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

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Happiness, causes of !24

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

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Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory !26

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

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

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

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Work on things you are good at and enjoy !30

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

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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