Challenges and Gratitude: A Diary Study of Software Engineers Working From Home During the Covid-19 Pandemic

[amoralesg001]

Challenges and Gratitude: A Diary Study of Software Engineers Working From Home During the Covid-19 Pandemic (2021)

Summary

This study looks at challenges and benefits of remote work for software engineers during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study had 435 software engineer participants who filled a survey every night for 24-weeks at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic -- more specifically, the start of the change to remote work during the pandemic. After 24-weeks, participants filled the survey twice a week.

Key Points

• Many of the respondents felt that changes of remote work brought too many meetings, a sense of being overworked, and physical and mental health. Their findings found that people were less likely to report being satisfied on days that they mentioned challenged related to ‘Overworked’ (-13%, p-value=.002),’Motivation’ (-21%, p-value=.0001), or ‘Focus’ (-14%, p-value=.003). That being said, when respondents reported no challenges, they were 24% (p-value=6.6e-11) more likely to report being satisfied.
• Respondents reported gratitude for family, increased flexibility, being employed and team support. Additionally, this study involved daily reflections for respondents. Many respondents had sentiments of gratitude during the challenging times of Covid-19 during their remote work. Factors of intentional daily reflection could have influenced a sense of gratitude. These feelings of gratitude could have influenced aspects of work that could benefit software developer’s satisfaction and productivity at work. Not to mention, the anonymity of the survey can help not only help to improve their well-being, but for managers and leaders to be aware of problems that occur. Challenges of remote work can be mitigated by addressing management, leadership and software engineers themselves when problems or situations occur. For instance, "During the study, the organization’s management used anonymized, aggregated data to create new programs (such as no meeting Friday) to address challenges being reported. Our follow up study found these had positively impacted the organization and helped people handle this difficult situation. "
• The study also found population differences with some of their results. They found that software engineers were more likely than program managers to report challenges related to “workspace” (19%, p-value=.005) and “Remote connection” (36%, p-value=6.1e-8). o Women tended to report more distinct forms of gratitude. More likely to report gratitude to “Comfort” (13%, p-value-.037) of remote work, or “Team”(22%, p-value=.003). I found this interesting, and a conversation manager should have as we look into the future. These results could be due to a loss of inclusivity and sense of comfort when working-in-person. This could possibly be due to the male dominant community within software engineers that lead women in the software engineering field to feel uncomfortable and less of being a part of the team.

[maherou]

Very interesting article. Lots of good stuff coming out of Microsoft Research on WFH topics.