Occupational well-being in software engineers

Abstract

Purpose. The article presents pilot research results regarding the current problems of IT companies — high staff turnover, low motivation and burnout through the analysis of occupational wellbeing. The aim was to analyze the components of occupational well-being in their relationship with burnout and self-assessment of job success. Study design. The study involved 60 IT specialists (software developers, data analysts, team leaders) mainly working in Agile development teams. The data were collected in October — November 2022 by the self-report method. We used Occupational well-being questionnaire (Rut, 2016), Russian version of MBI (validated by N. Vodopyanova and E. Starchenkova, 2009), subjective assessments of job characteristics and job success. Statistical methods included Spearman’s ρ-test, Mann — Whitney U-test and step-by-step regression. Findings. Agile work practices demonstrate high demands in team communications, speed and accuracy of problem resolution, multitasking and workload. The level of occupational well-being correlates with self-assessment of job success (p = .675; p < .01), emotional exhaustion (p = –.597; p < .01), reduced personal accomplishment (p = .707; p < .01) and depersonalization (p = –.430; p ≤ 0.01). However, the final regression model of well-being included self-assessment of job success, emotional exhaustion and reduced personal accomplishment and professional experience (R2 = .727, F = 49.7, р < .001). Value of the results. The results showed that the psychological risks for reducing occupational well-being in software developers are (1) lots of communications and related reduced personal accomplishment; (2) emotional exhaustion because of high workload; 3) misunderstanding of the career track. Originality. The results correlate well with the self-determination theory’ research and contribute to better understanding the interrelation between Agile work practices, job demands and occupational well-being.