Using AI for customer service in your company is a definite method to save time and money. If you’re like most business owners, you’re constantly searching for fresh, creative ways to improve your enterprise. We’re here to inform you that improving AI customer service is a simple and rapid win.
If you have a team of software engineers and want to move them to Mac, you will need to consider a number of things before you do so.
How do you notice and prevent software developer burnout as a team lead or engineering manager? Burnout affects each person a bit differently. It often starts subtly and progresses incrementally. Developer burnout feeds into a vicious loop that can make your developers quit or even change career path. If not corrected, it can also lead to health consequences. The good news is that its onset can be identified, prevented, and rapidly alleviated. Let’s examine how.
The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledges burnout as an occupational phenomenon. It’s a common occupational hazard for software developers, but burnout impacts people in other professions, too.
As WHO defines it, “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed… Burn-out refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life.”
Managing stress is really important. As the American Institute of Stress asserts, the health consequences can be serious.
Also, as their article points out, stress can trigger the “fight or flight” mechanism – i.e. it can prompt developers to look for another job.
Though it bears similarities to conditions like depression, it is not a medical condition.
Many of the symptoms of developer burnout are vague and similar to symptoms of other conditions. So many variables can make it difficult for a team lead or engineering manager to identify symptoms associated with developer burnout. It also affects people in different ways (fight or flight) but there are a number of common symptoms.
| Original Normal or Healthy State | Trends Symptomatic of Burnout |
|---|---|
| Passionate about coding | Procrastinating more often, dreading the next day at work, struggling to do the minimum work. Working more hours but with steadily decreasing productivity and/or efficiency. |
| A motivated “can do” anything outlook | Complaining more frequently, skeptical about decisions and processes, increasingly non-committal to assignments. |
| Feeling like you’re making a “difference” | Feeling like nothing you do is appreciated, growing resentment with coworkers and customers. Sense of hopelessness. |
| Energetic and sleeping well | Persistent tiredness even after being well-rested. Insomnia, major changes in appetite (eating much less or more). General feelings of malaise. Depression. |
| Friendly, social, and constructive | Smiles less often, talks less, silent in meetings, becoming increasingly isolated and actively avoiding others. Either a progressive or abrupt negative change in personal appearance. |
Burnout is often a result of feeling trapped into doing work that you don’t like, under undesirable conditions, with no opportunity for relief or resolution. Take away any one of these and most symptoms associated with burnout will begin to dissipate.
In just about every job, there’s always something that you won’t like, that you wish you didn’t have to do. That’s normal, as long as there are other things about your job that you do like and you do look forward to doing. The dangerous tendency is that the “root cause” of burnout can overflow into everything about one’s job.
It may help to understand developer burnout as a continuous occupational hazard and constantly guard against it. Like safety and ergonomics, different environments require precautions. Hard hats and steel-toed boots are always worn on construction sites. Poor posture, lazy typing, and sitting in an uncomfortable chair for years can lead to back problems and carpal tunnel.
Software developers are prone to sitting in a chair and staring at a computer screen for hours on end. Software development itself is complex, has continuous deadlines, and errors can have major financial consequences. In short, being a software developer can be quite stressful.
If precautions aren’t taken, burnout can lead to “a random line of code frying the developer’s mind” – sort of like the straw that broke the camel’s back. This breakdown process can take months or even years. Everyone’s likely to experience some amount of burnout in the course of their career. The simple goal is to never let it get out of hand.
Team leads and engineering managers have many options at their disposal to minimize the potential of accumulating burnout with teammates. Many are simply common sense, but others address specific types of scenarios with an elevated risk of generating developer burnout.
Encourage exercise and healthy diets – to the extent possible. It’s not your role to be your developer’s fitness instructor. However, your company may provide club memberships or broker discounts to clubs and events.
If there’s an interest, consider starting a team sport. Though it’s good for everyone to have a complete break from work (and their teammates), developers can be kind of reclusive. Team activities outside of work can be a way of helping to introduce your developers to a wider social circle. Everything’s open – biking, hiking, rock climbing, scuba diving, bowling, basketball, baseball… pinball.
Turnover has some correlation to the maturity of the company, team, and its work processes. As we discussed previously, tech startups can see turnover rates well in excess of 25%. Note also that turnover tends to be highest during the first 90 days in the new hire experience.
This gives us some extra insight into the root causes of burnout. No one likes chaos in excessive quantities – or when things are constantly changing. Changes lead to people doing something other than they thought they’d be doing. Change is stressful and it triggers fight or flight.
If a developer perceives they need the job or believe its long-term benefits are important to their career, they will likely do their best to abide feelings of discontent. However, software developers are in high demand and savvy enough to realize they have other options.
This may overly generalize, but good companies and engineering managers do understand that there’s a lot of competition to find and keep top talent. Good managers also realize that everyone has the potential to be a great software developer. Developing that potential is usually part of the manager’s job description.
As a manager, it can be very helpful to place yourself in the shoes of your developers and the role they fill in your team and company. Everyone has a different personality, set of experiences, values, and way of dealing with problems. Some people find it difficult to say, “No.” They may feel that not accepting the task may be construed as they aren’t pulling their weight, makes them less essential, perhaps it will contribute negatively to performance reviews.
They dutifully accept whatever you assign them, whether they have a choice or not. And when a task has little to do with their job, they may resent it. “Tough luck,” some may say, but you do have some options to create Win-Win or at least Win-Draw outcomes:
One person’s trash can be another person’s treasure. The best possible outcome is when there’s someone on your team that actually wants and enjoys the kind of task you’re looking to assign.
Someone on your team who knows how to do the task may volunteer to do it on a temporary basis – even if they don’t necessarily like doing it. The expectation is that the company will hire someone else to take it over. This is fairly common with startups, suffice that other functions also need to be done, too. These other functions get a greater staffing priority because… well, someone volunteered to take on that other duty. Their task ends up drawing out forever…
Few things generate burnout faster than when a developer realizes that, “The best of intentions pave the way to hell.” Not only will that developer never volunteer for anything else ever again, their burnout will likely prompt them to jettison any other tasks they can get rid of.
The following steps can help minimize burnout when assigning tasks to volunteers:
It may not always be possible due to the nature of the task, but outsourcing is often a budget-friendly option. From IT staffing agencies to freelancers on Upwork, there’s a good chance that you can find someone happy to take on the tasks that your in-house developers don’t like. Even small tasks requiring just an hour a day from a developer can cause burnout out of simple resentment. For the fully-loaded cost of one in-house developer (depending on your location), you can augment your team with 2-4 outsourced developers. Smaller tasks can be outsourced to freelancers according to your requirements – often at trivial rates.
Some trash is still trash regardless how nice you try to package it. And there may be reasons why you can’t outsource it. Though not every task of this nature is suitable for it, the Duty Roster is your last resort for a Win/Draw outcome. The job still gets done even if no one likes it, while burnout is minimized by sharing it with everyone. The task is set up on a schedule and the task is simply rotated across your team.
To Reiterate:
Burnout is often a result of feeling trapped into doing work that you don’t like, under undesirable conditions, with no opportunity for relief or resolution.
You have three variables to play with in addressing developer burnout:
Probably the most important task as a manager is interacting with and being available for your team. Performance metrics, retrospectives, and taking time to talk with your developers to see how they’re doing provides you three ways of spotting burnout.
You don’t have to be a mind reader. That would be easy, though not always so accurate. No, you’re an engineering manager. Not an easy job, but some parts of it don’t need to be difficult. Just ask – “How are you enjoying your work? Is there something that can make it easier for you?”
For more about managing developer burnout, we encourage you to check out:
Post updated: June 29, 2022
Using AI for customer service in your company is a definite method to save time and money. If you’re like most business owners, you’re constantly searching for fresh, creative ways to improve your enterprise. We’re here to inform you that improving AI customer service is a simple and rapid win.
If you have a team of software engineers and want to move them to Mac, you will need to consider a number of things before you do so.
Here’s what’s new in our January 2023 Release Notes:
* Tables Columns Sorting Improved
* Reconcile Commits Count Between KPI Card and the Table
* Efficiency Tab Improvements and Efficiency KPI Cards Align
