We are still fascinated with all the possibilities that working in IT has to offer. We hope that we can change the world for the better by creating the most useful and helpful application, or just create a service using the most advanced ML or AI technologies, and all those dreams are so close… But then we got hit by the reality of being stuck in a boring project working on another website or internal service that will not change anything.
I really can’t say how many times I’ve heard developers saying that the only thing they need at work is an interesting project – a sexy one as some recruiters say. So fruits, soy milk, young, dynamic team, or international customers are not required to make them more satisfied with their job. Not even a mystic 15k PLN net. Just an interesting project and maybe, if possible, no deploys on Friday after 4 pm.
Artykuł sponsorowanyWe are getting more and more satisfied
Before we move forward, let’s take a quick look at numbers: according to the research carried out by Randstad in March 2019, 79% of the Polish respondents are satisfied with their jobs and that was the highest result in the history of this research. At the same time, 66% of the audience admitted that they are not afraid of losing their job. The main reason for changing employers as indicated by the responders was the willingness to grow professionally.
To summarize, we are satisfied with our jobs but we are also open to new opportunities: not because of money, but because of the inner need to develop ourselves. So again, an interesting project comes to mind.
Then we have a pandemic gap that is still there. It has obviously influenced the employees’ morale all over the world, the stability of companies, and job security has become more important than other factors. At some point, we will get back on track and we will face the same problem again: if you don’t have an interesting project, I won’t work for you. To be honest, I already faced it again, and I lost a great developer.
Satisfied = Happy
Keep it all in mind and let’s move in a slightly different direction with the assumption that being satisfied with your work, means that you are happy with it. I really like this definition: “(…) happiness is related to an individual’s sensing of their own affect.” (after ResearchGate). So we are happy when we care about our work, our actions, and when we can see that we are able to do something meaningful and we have the power to change the current state of things. For the better, of course.
Keep it all in mind and let’s move in a slightly different direction with the assumption that being satisfied with your work, means that you are happy with it. I really like this definition: “(…) happiness is related to an individual’s sensing of their own affect.” (after ResearchGate). So we are happy when we care about our work, our actions, and when we can see that we are able to do something meaningful and we have the power to change the current state of things. For the better, of course.
Developer’s Voice
There is another truth relevant to all of this: Developers bring Value. Developer’s work brings Revenue, all beyond the Development Team is Waste.
Following another definition, “We consider a software developer to be a person concerned with any aspect of the software construction process (including but not limited to research, analysis, design, programming, testing and management activities), for any purpose such as work, hobby, or passion” (ibid). We can admit that the majority of developers care about what they do and they are not fans of half-measures or other shortcuts. All developers that I have already worked with hate: spaghetti code, not having the time for tests, technical debt and promises that they will have some time during the Sprint to pay it back.
According to the research that I have already shared here (What happens when software developers are (un)happy), the main reason for developers to be unhappy at work is frustration caused by not interesting tasks (sic!), lack of understanding of the work principles by the teammates, handling a broken project, bad code written by others, feeling that code must be restructured, and more.
Let’s give them the voice here and find out how they actually feel when put in such a situation:
“[the unhappiness] has left me feeling very stupid and (…) feel like I’m being forced to code to live as a kind of punishment”;
“I really start to doubt myself and question whether I’m fit to be a software developer in the first place”;
“[…] can lead to working long hours and trying to find shortcuts. I’m sure this does not lead to the best solution, just a quick one”;
“[…] I’m working at a really slow pace […] because I’m just not as engaged with the work”.
And, on the other hand, how it feels to work as a happy person:
“great pride in the work I’ve just completed”;
“I get more proud of myself”;
The sense of accomplishment when finishing something that actually works, is very rewarding”;
“This give you energy [which] feed your creativity and you come up [with] more crazy and wonderful ideas”.
Money and digital transformation
Remember those and let’s proceed to the idea behind every business that has been ever created. Money. Yup, this is it. We started to call it Revenue so it wouldn’t be so harsh. We keep falling in love with various ideas but if they don’t bring money and if profitability is too low they are simply useless from a business point of view. It does not matter if you work for a start-up company that develops its own product, or at a software house that only has exciting projects for cool customers understanding Agile, or for a professional corporation where all the procedures keep being updated all the time. In all those places you will, sooner or later, end up with a task that you don’t want to do and your team will break the national record when it comes to complaining during a daily meeting. And in the case of all these projects, it all started with money and plans for how to get more of it.
The digital transformation is an enormous venture and many companies have just started to consider it. They finally got the budget for this and they’ve been working so hard to make it happen because in most of these organizations the people with money to invest do not know a dime about IT and how software development works. Some of them still think that Scrum is something related to rugby. Some people responsible for gathering requirements on Customer’s site have never done it before and it’s hard for them to understand that someone tells them that what they want is impossible, or at least – a lot more expensive than they expected. Last but not least, a customer will ask why on Earth something takes so much time, and you will have to explain that a person that used to work on this solution before you, didn’t have a clue what was going on and right now somebody else has to pay for it.
Does it mean that we should tell them: sorry, you are not an interesting prospect for our Development Teams, see you like never?
No, it only means that we will have to work hard. Not particularly harder than the other teams, but in a different way.
Because we are also doing business and we need money. And not every company gives you the possibility to spend some of your time on personal development and you might not be the one to come up with another Gmail service. Does it mean that you should quit? I don’t think so.
It’s all about perspective
The IT industry is the only one that focuses on employees so much and companies try to outdo one another in terms of offered benefits, mentioned at the beginning of this article in a little sarcastic way, but still, nowhere else you will find so many perks as in IT. I used to work as a Project Manager in different industries before I joined IT and believe me, nobody asked me if I enjoyed my work on a weekly basis. Nobody was really concerned about losing anyone, myself included and I had to bring my own coffee to the office. Remote work? Forget about it.
But even the most friendly IT company was created to bring money and value to their customers no matter what, so we need to keep going and make our people feel happy even if the technology is not the modest one, or if a customer always asks to squeeze more features within the Sprint, or we got an old project previously developed by a bunch of students and our job is to bring it to life – I strongly believe that it is possible.
Because we can never think that doing what you love means not doing things you don’t love.
Senior Project Manager at SoftServe. Has been involved in project management for 10 years, and for the past 6 – only in the IT industry. She firmly believes in the principle “merge the people, split the software” and that good analysis can save several months of unnecessary development. At work, she focuses on asking questions and bringing to light problems swept under the rug. Certified Agile Coach and Product Owner – because it’s good to know more than one perspective. A philologist by education, she inherited her love of technology and production management from her Dad.