RDEL #20: What type of work leads to the most burnout, and how can technology help?
In our final review of the DORA report, we look at what work causes burnout in engineering teams, as well as what teammates are more at risk. Finally, we look at how technology can fight burnout.
Welcome back to RDEL - each week, we pose an interesting topic in engineering leadership, and apply the latest research in the field to drive to an answer.
🔬 Throughout this month, we’ve asked questions that are highlighted in the DORA report’s research findings. In the final edition of our series, we think about a topic that’s top of mind for many individuals after a long year… burnout ☠️. This edition we ask two important questions: what type of work leads to the most burnout, and how can technology improve burnout risk on engineering teams?
Note: this month-long series contains a sample of the report that we found most useful to our readers. We’ve looked at how engineering team type indicates performance, the cost of improved documentation, and the impact of user-centricity on engineering teams. To dive deeper into the data, take a look at the full report.
The context:
The DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) team focuses on understanding the relationship between capabilities and outcomes. For almost a decade, the DORA team has assembled and analyzed data from over 36,000 professionals. The annual DORA report is a rich analysis of what factors contribute to high-performing engineering teams, and what actions teams can achieve great outcomes.
This year, the DORA research team focused on understanding the signs, characteristics, and risk factors of burnout. Given how much work environments have changed over the last few years, organizations are often looking for ways to understand and reduce burnout to avoid losing their best talent.
The research:
Researchers collected survey responses for thousands of respondents in technology roles, and ran an analysis of the data to determine correlations. They found clear evidence, as they have in many years prior, that improving employee well-being is foundational to a team’s performance. Various types of culture improvement impact burnout, but the most noticeable improvements in burnout come from Westrum’s organizational culture, organizational stability, job security, and knowledge transfer.
Researchers also noticed that certain categories of respondents reported higher levels of burnout than others. Individuals who identify as women, self-described their gender, or were underrepresented in any way reported being significantly more burnt out. Women and self-described genders were 6% more burnt out compared to male respondents, and underrepresented groups had 24% higher levels of burnout.
When they started looking into whether the type of work these individuals do impacts their burnout, they noticed an interesting trend:
Underrepresented groups reported doing 24% more repetitive work than non-underrepresented groups.
Similarly, women and self-described genders reported doing 40% more repetitive work.
Both groups reported doing more non-promotable work, or work that is not visible to their peers or aligned with their professional skill set.
Finally, researchers looked at whether certain technological processes or capabilities have an impact in mitigating burnout. They found that the biggest processes that improve burnout are code review speed and loosely-coupled architecture. Interestingly, AI had only a minor impact on burnout.
The application:
The DORA report’s focus on burnout is a fascinating review of how not all burnout is equal. Certain work, as well as certain work cultures, can contribute more heavily to burnout. The research offers a number of tactical actions that teams can take to recognize and improve burnout.
Audit the work your team does, and notice the distribution of repetitive or non-promotable work. Women and underrepresented groups have repeatedly been shown to shoulder more non-promotable work, which has rippling effects on career growth, burnout, and turnover (some of which we cover in our review of documentation). Distributing that work evenly across all teammates is an easy way to reduce that burden and ensure the team has equal opportunities to grow.
Set goals to streamline how code is written and reviewed. Code review speed and loosely-coupled architecture are the two most impactful technology practices to improve burnout. To start, begin measuring the code review experience (at a team level) to determine where bottlenecks may lie. Don’t forget to overlay this with a developer survey to understand how developers perceive this experience - you will quickly find ways to iterate on the code review experience to reduce burnout.
Know that improving culture improves performance. It can sometimes feel like improving well-being is at odds with improving speed, but the research overwhelmingly shows that healthy culture leads to improved productivity and better business outcomes. Moreover, teams that prioritize speed over well-being see numerous challenges with organizational and team performance (which we cover in an earlier RDEL on team types).
With that, we conclude our month-long overview of the annual DORA report. There are so many powerful takeaways that can improve team outcomes, and we hope these lessons can help you build a more enduring, high-performance team.
—
Lizzie
From the Quotient team