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Happy Developers Are Better Problem Solvers

posted by girlwhowaspluggedout on Tuesday March 11 2014, @09:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the i-thought-those-perks-were-meant-to-keep-us-at-the-office-until-dawn dept.

lhsi writes:

"Research done by the Free University of Bozen-Bolzanohas in Italy concluded that happy software developers are better at solving analytical problems. 'Even simple and short activities', the researchers note, 'may impact the affective states of software developers.'

Many large software companies have been providing various perks to developers, hoping that they will become more productive. Based on a study of 42 students from the Faculty of Computer Science, this research seems to validate that practice. Its findings suggest that 'the happiest software developers are more productive in analytical problem solving performance.' This is in contradiction to previous studies, most of which concluding that negative affective states foster analytic problem-solving performance.

 
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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by germanbird on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:53AM

    by germanbird (2619) on Wednesday March 12 2014, @02:53AM (#15000)
    I found Paul Graham's essay on Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule [paulgraham.com] to be very enlightening. His basic premise is that maker's need longer chunks of uninterrupted time to be able to get work done than manager's do. His analogy of meeting/distraction being like an exception really struck home with me. I realized that I have something of a startup time to get settled in and back into the flow of whatever I am working that I incur every time I get interrupted. Since then, I've tried to adopt aspects of his schedule, either by working from home or working late to get that uninterrupted time. Thankfully my managers understand this and have tried to consolidate meetings to one or two days a week. So I guess that doesn't really answer your question, but I'd say my number one thing that helps me get work done is an environment free from interrupts from other people (either interacting with me or others around me).
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