Happy Developers Write Better Code

Almost 10 years ago, I wrote a blog post under this title, which focussed on how tech companies incentivise and motivate their workforce. If you’re curious about what I originally wrote, see it here.

In 2023, amidst mass tech layoffs, a cost-of-living crisis and continuing austerity, that view seems dated, so let’s bring it up to date.

At least one thing is positive — since I wrote in 2014, our view of employee happiness is broader. As Neville Wilshire famously and frequently said in the BBC TV programme The Call Centre, “happy people sell”. The guiding principle of my original musings remains true — happy people are more productive, and that’s as true in 2023 as it was in 2014.

But the wider landscape is so much different 9 years on, so buckle up for some sweeping generalisations on what’s changed:

• The unrestricted growth of the tech sector has reversed — tech companies are laying people off. Call it what you will — downsizing, rightsizing, struggling — many tech companies, and especially the world’s largest, will have let people go over the last 2 or 3 years.
• We’ve got a cost-of-living crisis — rapid inflation, particularly of the basics such as food, rent and energy, means that what was a good wage a decade ago will not be close to adequate now.
• Tech companies — particularly venture capital funded tech companies — who might have been willing to make a loss over a short or even longer period are putting the squeeze on their teams to break even and turn a profit.

Some leaders — mentioning no names — have taken the opposite approach. More of a “the beatings will continue until morale improves” outlook on leadership. Even the most casual tech observer would suggest this may not be working as planned!

So sure, yes, free food and chill out areas and teambuilding still have their place, but Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs suggests we can’t even begin to motivate our team with perks and benefits if they’re worrying about how to pay their rent or heat their home (physiological needs) or whether they’ll have a job in 12 months’ time (safety needs). If we want a motivated work force, we have to start by asking our team “are you ok?” and being genuinely open to understanding the pressure they’re under outside of work and the part we can play in helping, because the safety nets they might otherwise have relied on (such as social security, friends, and family, etc) probably isn’t there.

That need for safety isn’t just about whether you’ve announced redundancies or not. For example:

• Vision — Do I, as an employee, understand my leaders’ vision? Do I believe it? Have I bought into it? Do I have the confidence they’re going to keep steering us away from the precipice?
• Health — does my employer offer me the flexibility if I am concerned about travelling into the office, or need to work from home to perform a short- or long-term caring role?
• Technology — as artificial intelligence gets (arguably) more intelligent, is my employer seeking opportunities to do more (making my job more secure), or to cut costs by replacing me with a robot?

Once we’ve covered those basic needs — physiological and safety — we move to esteem. Some elements of esteem come with “doing safety right” — does my employer value my contribution, have a clear vision of my role in the future, trust me to do my job wherever I’m physically situated and empower me to get on with it? For this to work, honest appraisals with each team member are a must.

Next up, we get to cognitive needs. Some of the value from chill out perks comes from giving us space to be creative, to problem solve and bring our best to work, much of which will be underpinning the findings I talked about back in 2014.

But a big new pressure in 2023 which was far less significant in 2014 is concentration. We are bombarded with communication — emails, messages, calls, co-workers dropping by for a chat, social media, app notifications. I’m sure I’ll talk further in depth on the subject, but lack of focussed time is a killer for productivity — are we meeting our employees’ cognitive needs by carving out time and space for them to concentrate?

So, sure, happy developers write better code. But to even think about being happy, developers have to have their underlying needs met — physiological, safety and esteem — and in 2023, we can’t get close to taking these things for granted.

So why kittens? Well, kittens are to developers what Lorem Ipsum is to designers — a convenient source of placeholders. As we seem to overuse them, perhaps they’re also a contributor to happiness. Ours come from placekitten.