10,008 research outputs found
Consequences of Unhappiness While Developing Software
The growing literature on affect among software developers mostly reports on
the linkage between happiness, software quality, and developer productivity.
Understanding the positive side of happiness -- positive emotions and moods --
is an attractive and important endeavor. Scholars in industrial and
organizational psychology have suggested that also studying the negative side
-- unhappiness -- could lead to cost-effective ways of enhancing working
conditions, job performance, and to limiting the occurrence of psychological
disorders. Our comprehension of the consequences of (un)happiness among
developers is still too shallow, and is mainly expressed in terms of
development productivity and software quality. In this paper, we attempt to
uncover the experienced consequences of unhappiness among software developers.
Using qualitative data analysis of the responses given by 181 questionnaire
participants, we identified 49 consequences of unhappiness while doing software
development. We found detrimental consequences on developers' mental
well-being, the software development process, and the produced artifacts. Our
classification scheme, available as open data, will spawn new happiness
research opportunities of cause-effect type, and it can act as a guideline for
practitioners for identifying damaging effects of unhappiness and for fostering
happiness on the job.Comment: 6 pages. To be presented at the Second International Workshop on
Emotion Awareness in Software Engineering, colocated with the 39th
International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'17). Extended version
of arXiv:1701.02952v2 [cs.SE
Happiness and the productivity of software engineers
Software companies and startups often follow the idea of flourishing
happiness among developers. Perks, playground rooms, free breakfast, remote
office options, sports facilities near the companies, company retreats, you
name it. The rationale is that happy developers should be more productive and
also retained.
But is it the case that happy software engineers are more productive?
Moreover, are perks the way to go to make developers happy? Are developers
happy at all? What are the consequences of unhappiness among software
engineers?
These questions are important to ask both from the perspective of
productivity and from the perspective of sustainable software development and
well-being in the workplace. Managers, team leaders, as well as team members
should be interested in these concerns.
This chapter provides an overview of our studies on the happiness of software
developers. You will learn why it is important to make software developers
happy, how happy they really are, what makes them unhappy, and what is expected
regarding happiness and productivity while developing software.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Rethinking Productivity in Software
Engineering, edited by Caitlin Sadowski and Thomas Zimmermann. arXiv admin
note: text overlap with arXiv:1707.0043
Women's experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and the postnatal period in the Gambia: A qualitative study
Objective: In sub-Saharan African countries, there are unique cultural factors and adverse physical conditions that contribute to women's experiences of pregnancy and birth. The objective of this study was to qualitatively explore women's experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, the postnatal period, and maternal psychological distress in The Gambia.
Design and methods: Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 55 women who had given birth within the previous year.
Results: Thematic analysis identified five themes: (1) transition to adulthood, (2) physical difficulties, (3) value of children in relation to others, (4) children as a strain, and (5) going through it alone. The results suggest that having a child is a defining point in women's lives associated with happiness and joy. However, women also described situations which could lead to unhappiness and distress in the perinatal period. A child conceived out of wedlock or a baby girl can be sources of distress because of negative cultural perceptions. The strain of having a child, particularly the additional financial burden, and minimal support from men were also a concern for women. Finally, women recognized the danger associated with delivery and expressed recurrent worries of complications during childbirth which could result in the death of them or the baby.
Conclusions: Further research is needed to identify women vulnerable to psychological distress so that health services and target interventions can be developed accordingly
Unhappy on the Job: An Unpleasent Experience Faced by Cashiers in the Banking Sector of Pakistan: Evidence from District Faisalabad
The study is aimed to depict the factors that affect the job satisfaction of cashiers in the banking sector of Pakistan and make them to feel unhappy on the job. For in-depth understanding of the concept under study, qualitative research strategy is applied. To achieve the objectives, MCB Bank Limited and Habib Bank Limited were selected as population of the study from city district Faisalabad, Pakistan. A semi structured interview technique is employed to collect the data from cashiers of study who provide the necessary information about their feelings at their jobs and its different facets. Nvivo-10 software is used to analyze the data. Different queries are run to explore the factors contributing towards unhappiness of employees. We find that cashiers feel unhappy on the job at banks due to low salary, limited benefits & opportunities for promotion, job insecurity, long working hours, imbalance in work & family life, lack of participation in decision making and nature of work itself. The findings are helpful to the HR departments of the banking sector as the findings reveal cashiers are unhappy on their jobs which may lead towards increased absenteeism/turnover. HR department of banks can make effective policies to change the feelings of cashiers to increase their performance and avoid turnover costs. A wide range of factors contributing to unhappy feelings of cashiers, but in the current study we explore not many factors. Furthermore the study is limited to only two banks of district Faisalabad with only 30 interviews
Answering Wicked Questions: Dealing With Opposing Truths as a Nursing Associate Professor
Nursing associate professors frequently are confronted with increasing responsibilities and fewer resources. These challenges commonly contribute to declines in job satisfaction and may result in departing academe. This article addresses these challenges by providing answers to four common “wicked questions” experienced by nursing associate professors: (a) How do I decline a request from a supervisor to take on additional responsibilities while continuing to support the mission of the school and advance my own scholarly productivity? (b) How do I handle the workload of multiple doctoral students with a variety of content areas that are different from my own and maintain my own level of productivity? (c) How do I handle expectations for more service, and leadership for the school, university, and professional organizations, yet the teaching and research responsibilities have not changed or have increased? and (d) What are some additional tips to being a more productive nursing associate professor
Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering
Get the most out of this foundational reference and improve the productivity of your software teams. This open access book collects the wisdom of the 2017 "Dagstuhl" seminar on productivity in software engineering, a meeting of community leaders, who came together with the goal of rethinking traditional definitions and measures of productivity. The results of their work, Rethinking Productivity in Software Engineering, includes chapters covering definitions and core concepts related to productivity, guidelines for measuring productivity in specific contexts, best practices and pitfalls, and theories and open questions on productivity. You'll benefit from the many short chapters, each offering a focused discussion on one aspect of productivity in software engineering. Readers in many fields and industries will benefit from their collected work. Developers wanting to improve their personal productivity, will learn effective strategies for overcoming common issues that interfere with progress. Organizations thinking about building internal programs for measuring productivity of programmers and teams will learn best practices from industry and researchers in measuring productivity. And researchers can leverage the conceptual frameworks and rich body of literature in the book to effectively pursue new research directions. What You'll Learn Review the definitions and dimensions of software productivity See how time management is having the opposite of the intended effect Develop valuable dashboards Understand the impact of sensors on productivity Avoid software development waste Work with human-centered methods to measure productivity Look at the intersection of neuroscience and productivity Manage interruptions and context-switching Who Book Is For Industry developers and those responsible for seminar-style courses that include a segment on software developer productivity. Chapters are written for a generalist audience, without excessive use of technical terminology. ; Collects the wisdom of software engineering thought leaders in a form digestible for any developer Shares hard-won best practices and pitfalls to avoid An up to date look at current practices in software engineering productivit
Female Gamers:
International evidence indicates that the number of females involved in video-gaming is increasing. Within the context of this increase, there is a need to explore the experiences of this group of gamers in detail. This study explored female experiences of playing video-games. Data were collected from an online discussion forum dedicated to video-gaming; the sample comprised of posts drawn from 409 discussion threads. Thematic analysis of the discussions suggests that gaming is a key element of the female gamers’ identity, with females discussing the integration of gaming into their daily lives on a number of different levels. Similar to previous research, social elements of gaming is highlighted with simultaneous difficulties with online interaction emphasised. These themes are discussed in relation to relevant research in the area, along with recommendations for future research and consideration of possible explanations for the themes observed
Daily questionnaire to assess self-reported well-being during a software development project
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