Happy Engineers = Productive Workers
How far does your company go to make its engineer’s happy? If you take a look at Google and why it’s the number one place to work, you will see the importance of happy engineers. A lot of companies have a lot to learn from such companies on how to keep their engineers happy.
Work Environment:
A happy office, with setups that promote communication and the sharing of ideas, can be invaluable to the productivity of your engineers. Having lounge areas, bean bags, great cube or desk setups lead to happy engineers. After all you spend the majority of your time at work, and it should be a place you look forward to going to.
Work Machines:
Apple, Dell, Windows, Linux, whatever your flavor it should just work. Most engineers I know view their computer setups as their own little environments, and have things setup in a very specific way. If you are familiar and comfortable with your work machine you are most likely to get more done and faster. Multiple monitors, the right keyboard and mouse, the right office chair, are all things that add up to having efficient and happy engineers.
Preventing Burn Out:
It’s one thing to give someone vacation time, but it’s another thing to be able to have employees leave for time off without them feeling like they are missing out on something, or getting behind, or having the team skip a beat. Aside from vacation companies like Google employee 20% time where engineers can work on anything they want for 20% of their time. This is a double side coin: while developers get to work on side projects that prevent burn out from their main focus, there is always a change that a new product or service comes out of this 20% time. What an idea!
Conclusion:
With talking to other engineer friends of mine I feel that not too many companies take into consideration the happiness of their engineers. In the long run it’s very important, you will have less turn over from employees getting burned out and quitting, you will have enthusiastic workers, and you have an overall better work environment. What unique things does your employer do to keep your engineers happy.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
We should start to demand this perks from our employers, ’cause if we don’t start to demand them they will never start to realize what we need to be a better worker.