Covid pandemic exacerbates overwork 83 percent of developers complain of burnout
Software development was one of the engines that kept the world going during the pandemic. For the programmers themselves, however, this meant an additional burden, as the market researchers from Survation have found for Haystack.
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The pandemic has led to a perceived higher risk of burnout among developers. (Image: @annatarazevich / Pexels )
In June 2021, Haystack Analytics coordinated a study to capture the mood among developers. According to the study, the risk of burnout increased during the pandemic, eight out of ten respondents reported a higher risk, with almost a third even talking about a high level and another 30 percent of moderate scope.
Overall, 83 percent of participants suffered from burnout symptoms. Two out of ten developers felt very burned out, a good third spoke of moderate signs and 28 percent spoke of a low burnout feeling. The remaining 17 percent were not able to detect any signs of overloading.
Haystack identified the generally high workload as the main reason (47 percent). However, inefficient processes (31 percent) and unclear goals and targets (29 percent) also gnaw at the psyche. When asked how Covid had played into it, two-fifths of respondents still spoke of increased workload, 39 percent spoke of general uncertainty in the pandemic, 37 percent worried about their future and a third complained of isolation from friends and family.
83 Percent of programmers were also concerned about the reliability of the tools available to them, and a fifth of those suffering from burnout were even very concerned. The head of the research, computer scientist Junade Ali, expresses concern: “The results show that burnout among developers is far worse than I imagined when designing this study.“
The survey results raise serious concerns about quality, given the increasingly important role of software. Haystack makes the results of the survation study “Impact of COVID-19 on Software Engineers” available to all interested parties.
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