Happiness and the Productivity of Software Engineers

Abstract

Copyright © 2019, arXiv, All rights reserved. Software companies nowadays often follow the idea of flourishing happiness among developers. Perks, playground rooms, free breakfast, remote office options, sports facilities near the companies… There are several ways to make software developers happy. The rationale is that of a return on investment: happy developers are supposedly more productive and, hopefully, also retained. But is it the case that happy software engineers = more productive software engineers? [1] Moreover, are perks the way to go to make developers happy? Are developers happy at all? 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. 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 for their productivity while developing software.