I love building software! Building software is fun! The process is an amazing experience when a new product or feature is built and released into the hands of users, it is a buzz like none other.  

This excitement also comes with a large amount of work, which is required to get the product out the door. From an outside perspective - this sounds fun and enchanting, but it can be highly stressful for the team actually building the software on a day-to-day basis.

Employee burnout is a common problem in the workplace, and this issue has been exacerbated by COVID-19’s global impact. Software developers are critical in the development of new applications and products, but they experience burnout at times, and that hampers the completion of their software projects. This pervasive burnout—and its residual effects—is, in large part, because of the intensity and criticality of software development.

In a highly competitive world and regardless of professional seniority, software engineers constantly feel the pressure to prove themselves, and to develop innovative products. Younger software engineers are susceptible to burnout as well, as they take their job personally and want to get a great product out the door by nature. Adding to this pressure is that building software is non-linear, as, in the process of building a new feature, various bugs and issues can arise that take the developer on a tangent. This can be really stressful and results in longer than planned hours and slipped deliverables and timelines.

Avoiding burnout is key to maintaining an effective software development team. Luckily, there are ways that you can help your team ward off this detrimental workplace phenomenon. Before considering such methods, first understanding the basics of burnout will empower you to manage your team more effectively.

What is burnout?

Software developers typically love the challenging nature of their jobs. They love to solve complex problems and deliver exceptional products with innovative features. However, there is a real chance that, over time, your software engineers will develop some level of burnout. This feeling of exhaustion negatively impacts a developer’s ability to enjoy their work and contribute to software projects.

Recovering from burnout can take weeks or even months, and there are a number of factors that cause it. Software work that demands continuous cognitive and emotional input, for example, is more likely to cause burnout than other forms of work throughout your organization. But no matter the cause, managers should be deeply concerned if their engineering team develops burnout.

Developer happiness directly affects both productivity and the quality of code. Employees that are burnt out do not have the energy and the mental capacity to perform at their highest level—leaving your end-users to suffer as a result.

The organizational impacts don’t end there, there are other examples of how burnout can affect both the teams and the project they are working on:

• Burnout can also prompt valuable team members to quit the organization. This increases labor costs, as replacing a high-performing software engineer is no easy task.
• Burnout results in missed deadlines and poor-performing software products, creating consequences that ripple through your organization.

Organizations that prevent software developer burnout have a distinct advantage over their competitors for the reason that their engineering teams will develop better products that allow their businesses to win more market share.

Shockingly, 83% of software developers experience some level of burnout, according to a study by Haystack Analytics. 

The computer scientist, Junade Ali, who led the study had this to say, “The results show that developer burnout is far worse than I imagined when I designed this study. Given the ever-greater role, software plays in society and the high rate of concern developers have for software reliability in their workplaces, this raises serious concerns about the quality of software that plays an integral role in our everyday lives and critical national infrastructure.”

The same study mentions also that 81% of developers also believed the COVID-19 pandemic made them feel more burnt out.

Software Development is Different

All workers have the potential to suffer from burnout in their roles. However, software-based roles are especially susceptible to burnout. There are multiple reasons why this occurs. Many new startups and businesses are focused on creating software products that are the core of their business. This makes software development jobs more stressful, as the entire business relies on the product’s functionality. The importance of software engineering means that there are often no boundaries in place.

Additionally, the complex nature of software development puts great stress on engineers. Software development is hard to quantify, and the work is not always linear. Problems arise that delay product timelines and create massive headaches; this leads to engineers underestimating the time required for certain projects. Likewise, this leads to companies delaying software shipment.

While many of these potential burnout issues are inherent to software engineering, there are additional burnout situations that organizations create themselves. Managers and executives should be aware of these potential pitfalls.

Burnout Situations

Level of Planning

Software development projects should be planned out in advance. Planning is key to the success of any software development project. Improper planning results in higher chances of developer burnout. Projects become more stressful when developers are forced to diverge from the initial plan. Research conducted by Barbara Wisse and Ed Sleebos has shown that feelings of uncertainty and change can lead to employees feeling more stress.

Nothing causes more stress on a development team than an executive asking to change the software—without understanding the effects it has on the software development team. Sticking to the general timeline and plan reduces burnout. When there are software changes or problems come up during the development process, it affects the stress level of the engineering team. Engineers have to scramble to ensure that products ship out in time, resulting in longer work hours and burnout.

Lots of Meetings

Sitting in meetings, whether virtual or in-person, is draining for software developers of all levels. Meetings take up a lot of time and are often rather unproductive. Organizations should consider if certain meetings are necessary. Increasing the amount of communication that takes place in writing can reduce the need for meetings, and in the process, this can lessen the chance of employee burnout.

Remote work has blurred the lines between work and home life, even though in many ways it has given a lot of time back to the developers: they do not have to commute and have other time saves. When developers are working from home they can easily be invited to meetings with the click of a button. Virtria Consulting conducted a study of more than 1,600 remote workers. The study found that:

63% of remote workers are participating in more meetings remotely

30% are spending 2-3 hours each day on camera.

This can lead to developers taking meetings late at night or early in the morning when they should be relaxing or focusing on other tasks.

The largest software organizations realize the importance of reducing the number of meetings that developers sit in. For example, back at the end of 2020, Google even had an entire week where employees were encouraged to cancel or move all meetings. Google understood how meetings drive employee burnout and subsequently took action to combat it.

Poor Daily Structure

The daily schedule of your engineering team impacts the chances of them getting burned out or not. Making time for fitness and other healthy habits is critical to maintaining longevity for software engineers. Unfortunately, engineering team members may find that they do not have the time to go out for a quick run or grab a bite to eat when they are in the middle of a project or on a deadline. Balance within the workplace should be encouraged. Even a break for a bit of socialization during the workday can improve developer energy and morale.

Managers may be tempted to prioritize software projects over their team’s more relaxing tasks and activities. However, your engineering team members need time for themselves. Their jobs are important, but living fulfilling lives will ensure they have the energy and passion to best tackle your software projects. Engineering managers should encourage developers to develop daily schedules that reduce burnout.

Burnout Affects The Brain

Burnout is not just a state of mind. This real phenomenon has health consequences for software engineers. Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden looked into how burnout affects the brain. This research suggests that brain structure is fundamentally different in patients who suffer from long-term burnout.

Patients who suffered from burnout over several years had a thinner lining of the frontal cortex. This group of patients had larger amygdalae and shrank in the caudate. Additionally, patients had significant reductions in gray-matter volumes in the hippocampus, caudate, and putamen.

What does this mean exactly?

These structural brain changes resulted in several changes to patient behaviors. Patients suffered from memory, attentional, and emotional difficulties. Researchers found that patients who suffered from clinical burnout had similar brain patterns to people who have experienced severe early-life trauma. Thankfully, there are ways to ensure that your team can avoid these long-term health consequences.

What Can Be Done?

There are certain steps that organizations can take in order to prevent engineering teams from burning out. Implementing these initiatives into your software development process will help you ship better products.

Open Collaboration and Communication

Software engineers should be able to feel that they can communicate honestly with the rest of their team. Management needs to ask engineers what they can do to facilitate an environment where developers feel comfortable collaborating and communicating with their team. This is much easier said than done.

Setting clear, achievable goals will ensure that engineers feel confident that they can meet all of their deadlines. Engineers should have autonomy and independence to work on their software projects. Managers can and should encourage team members to pursue projects that they believe are interesting, just as they should also keep a lookout for burnout. These managerial habits provide the foundation to take early action to reduce the negative impact of burnout.

“If you realize your developers are burning out, immediately talk to them about finding a balance between the business goals and their need to take some time off,” suggested Allan Wintersieck, CEO of Devetry. “Oftentimes, this looks like, ‘We have an important deadline in 4 days, so let's work together to make that happen, then go take a long weekend and disconnect.’”

Work Structure is Key

Creating a work structure where developers thrive is key to avoiding burnout. Management teams need to focus on creating repeatable processes that ensure your engineering team has the energy they need. A constant cycle of 1-2 week work sprints can easily burn out your team. Once developers are finished shipping out the product, they often have to jump right back into the planning phase. This is simply not sustainable in the long term.

A powerful product development methodology is Basecamp’s Shape Up. Developers work in six-week blocks of work to deliver the product. This amount of time ensures that engineers have the flexibility needed to address potential issues that arise during development. Developers are thus given trust and autonomy;  this environment puts the power in the hands of software engineers and allows them to feel empowered at work.

To sum everything up, reducing burnout in your engineering team results in shipping out better products and in better time. Multiple organizations have found that the aforementioned process greatly improves product development. Software organizations have an advantage over competitors when they avoid engineer burnout.