A new study has revealed that being stuck in problem solving, time pressure, and bad code quality and coding practice are the main causes of unhappiness among programmers.
The study involved quantitative and qualitative surveys of 2,220 developers, yielding a “rich and balanced sample of 1,318 complete responses”.
The results were published in an academic paper titled On the Unhappiness of Software Developers.
The researchers said happy workers – including software engineers – are more productive.
“Psychological disorders such as job burnout and anxiety could also be reduced by limiting the negative experiences of software developers,” stated the study.
The results showed that software developers are a “slightly happy” population, but there was a need to limit their unhappiness.
What makes programmers unhappy
The researchers produced a list of 10 factors which the survey responses most often cited as the causes of unhappiness.
| Top 10 Causes of Unhappiness | |
| Cause | Frequency |
| Being stuck in problem solving | 186 |
| Time pressure | 152 |
| Bad code quality and coding practice | 107 |
| Under-performing colleague | 71 |
| Feel inadequate with work | 63 |
| Mundane or repetitive task | 60 |
| Unexplained broken code | 57 |
| Bad decision making | 42 |
| Imposed limitation on development | 40 |
| Personal issues – not work related | 39 |
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