Is software engineering a "low-stress" job?

College Majors Engineering Majors
41

<p>My distrust is based on math. yours is based in unquestioned belief. Im sorry but you forgot to source all of your words. How do I know what words you really mean, or if they are just your opinion of what they really mean. Surly a reference to some other source to back up your every word will certainly be more truthful. </p>

<p>Science either relies on experienced perception or empirical evidence. My opinion is always based on one of the two. My assumption that SE is a high stress job is based on my experience with the field and also based on how I see others handle the stress of the field. It is also based on empiricle findings.</p>

<p>If you want a great source from a actual published book, here you go
[Agile</a> management for software … - Google Books](<a href=“Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of ... - David J. Anderson - Google Books”>Agile Management for Software Engineering: Applying the Theory of ... - David J. Anderson - Google Books)</p>

<p>or here
<a href=“http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=99980[/url]”>http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=99980&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>“My distrust is based on math.”

  • What math? I assume you’re referring to “hundreds of thousands of people”. That’s a bandwagon fallacy. Furthermore, it’s not even a true bandwagon, because you can’t prove that statement any more than I can prove that will-o-the-wisps like chocolate. Show me a survey, a set of case studies, anything that says such a large number of people have “stressful” jobs in the software industry, and we’ll talk.</p>

<p>“yours is based in unquestioned belief.”

  • This smacks of hypocrisy. I am the one saying you need sources. I am the one saying that questions of fact exist and to answer them one needs evidence. You are throwing around “common sense” and personal stories without a shred of credibility to any of it. Furthermore, I’m questioning you and your beliefs, and in fact I don’t believe a word you’re saying. Published material is the best source for evidence, because the people whose business it is to know about it have seen it and thought about it. Then you have a single source you can read and evaluate yourself, and form your own opinions on. I fail to see how relying on actual sources translates into “unquestioned belief”.</p>

<p>“How do I know what words you really mean, or if they are just your opinion of what they really mean.”

  • Words have denotative and connotative meanings, and connotative meanings generally differ wildly between individuals. For instance, when I say “academic” and you say “academic”, we probably mean different things. Etc. I’m not really sure what you’re asking here, or if you’re just trying to be witty, although if that is the case I’m sorry to inform you that it’s lost on me.</p>

<p>“Science either relies on experienced perception or empirical evidence. My opinion is always based on one of the two.”

  • If by “experienced perception” you mean hearsay and by “empirical evidence” you mean unsubstantiated opinion, we’re speaking the same language.</p>

<p>“My assumption that SE is a high stress job is based on my experience with the field and also based on how I see others handle the stress of the field. It is also based on empiricle findings.”

  • You’re free to tell people that <em>you</em> have a stressful SE job and that others you know have stressful SE jobs, but it’s a non-sequitur to say that all - or even most - people have the same experience. And where are the empirical findings?</p>

<p>"If you want a great source from a actual published book, here you go "

  • If you don’t mind, I would actually love to see your evidence in the book you linked to, but it’s insulting to assume I’m going to read the whole thing. I’m not. If you can provide a page and paragraph, subheading, chapter summary, etc. please feel free to let me know.</p>
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<p>someone should take a chill pill gun and shoot you both in the face</p>

<p>what’s that? “where are my sources”?</p>

<p>source: **** you</p>

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<p>

Its basic probability. </p>

<p>

You just showed how you unquestionably believe in what ever source says. Whether the material was correct or wrong, you would believe it because it was a source. Earlier in this thread I asked you to look into the history of eugenics. So called scientific proof was used on the masses to promote mass killings of people. Hitler’s ideals were strongly based on the Science of the times. He used science to promote his ideals and oley because it was science and published papers people assumed it must be correct. If you want a source for this try Bertrand Russell’s, “The Impact of Science on Society”. It demonstrates throughly how belief on so called r sources as you call them are simply flawed, and our so called expert society is about as corrupt as possible. </p>

<p>

How many software engineering positions have you held again?</p>

<p>

Findings were provided. I cited 3 highly respect books which are about the de facto set of material on the discipline.<br>

i linked you to the exact page. But I think you may want to read the entire book, you again have little experience in the subject matter. </p>

<p>Here are some more sources.
[California</a> Overtime employee programmer stress |LawyersandSettlements.com](<a href=“Overtime Stress Takes Toll on IT Workers: Lawsuits in California”>Overtime Stress Takes Toll on IT Workers: Lawsuits in California)</p>

<p>Or maybe this</p>

<p><a href=“Kyle R. Brady”>Kyle R. Brady;
**
and its references**
References
Fujigaki, Y. (1993, July). Stress analysis: A new perspective on peopleware. American
Progress, 6(7), 33-38.</p>

<p>Galinsky, Traci L., Roger R. Rosa, Joel S. Warm, William N. Dember. (1993). Psychological
determinants of stress in sustained attention. Human Factors, 35(4), 603-614.</p>

<p>Glass, Robert L. (1997, April). Practical programmer: The ups and downs of programmer
stress. Communications of the ACM, 40(4), 17-19.
Google. (2009). Top 10 reasons to work at Google. Retrieved April 30, 2009, from
[Jobs</a> ? Google](<a href=“http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/lifeatgoogle/toptenreasons.html]Jobs”>http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/lifeatgoogle/toptenreasons.html)</p>

<p>Snell, James L., Ph.D. (1997). Ahead-of-time debugging, or programming not in the dark.
International Conference on Software Technology and Engineering Practice, July.</p>

<p>Zawacki, R. (1993, November). Motivating IT people in the 90s: An ‘alarming drop’ in job
satisfaction. Software Practices, 3(6), 4-5.</p>

<p>How about a article from the acm
[The</a> ups and downs of programmer stress](<a href=“http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=248448.248452]The”>http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=248448.248452)</p>

<p>Acedemic article from MIT
<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Aeronautics-and-Astronautics/16-355JFall-2005/CB6064F5-04A2-4006-9761-A0DDD86DE419/0/cnotes10.pdf[/url]”>http://ocw.mit.edu/NR/rdonlyres/Aeronautics-and-Astronautics/16-355JFall-2005/CB6064F5-04A2-4006-9761-A0DDD86DE419/0/cnotes10.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>[The</a> Effects of Stress on Programmers’ and Groups’ Performance: OSCON 2008 - O’Reilly Conferences, July 21 - 25, 2008, Portland, Oregon](<a href=“http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/detail/2580]The”>http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/detail/2580)</p>

<p>[Job</a> Stress and Computer Programmers](<a href=“http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/mares.html]Job”>http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/mares.html)
<a href=“http://jisr.szabist.edu.pk/JISR-MSSE/docs/Sample_template.doc[/url]”>http://jisr.szabist.edu.pk/JISR-MSSE/docs/Sample_template.doc&lt;/a&gt;
[Helping</a> Programmers Cope with Job Stress](<a href=“http://www.coachingprogrammers.com/jobstress.html]Helping”>http://www.coachingprogrammers.com/jobstress.html)</p>

<p>Shall I keep going.</p>

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<p>It’s pretty obvious that Auburn is in denial. He/she is a comp sci major and seemingly doesn’t want to accept the fact that software engineering is a tough field.</p>

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<p>The first reference - the book - only talks about overtime’s effect on productivity. That the reduced productivity is related to stress is your invention. It could be related to any number of things, including fatigue or the fact that overtime hours are spent solving difficult (as opposed to easy) problems.</p>

<p>The second reference is much in the same vein. It says that bad management causes stress, at best; but you can have bad managers anywhere. If there are more bad managers in the software industry, you might be onto something.</p>

<p>The California overtime article is interesting, but probably says more about the highly competitive industry there (California) than about the industry in general. It also emphasizes bad management and reduced productivity.</p>

<p>I am tempted to dismiss out of hand the article by Kyle Brady because I can’t find what his qualifications are, and it does not appear his article is published. He looks like a good guy, but he’s not an expert and a quick read of his article shows that the evidence he sites deals with stress itself, not necessarily whether computing professionals are more or less stressed. He assumes that. Like I said, a great guy… but he’s still in school too, you know. In theory, he’s about as qualified as me to give professional opinions.</p>

<p>The ACM article is from 1997. For some topics, that would be alright, but the job market has changed a lot since then. The computing industry is nothing like it was in 1997. I know enough to know that, member.</p>

<p>The articles cited have low relevance (Japan? 1979 to 1993? etc.) to the current industry. I’m not trying to be difficult, but I would love a post-2000, USA treatment.</p>

<p>I didn’t open the 12MB zip file from the OSCON presentation, but from the overview it doesn’t seem to address the question directly, so I can assume it’s a side note in it if it appears at all. If there is good, recent, relevant, and compelling evidence in there, let me know what it is and I will check it as necessary.</p>

<p>The article by Mares is probably your best. Still, it’s not published, and I can’t really tell at a glance when it was written or where the people are from. Canada? Also, it’s a collection of interviews, which while helpful, isn’t as compelling as some other forms of evidence I could imagine.</p>

<p>Yeah, Pakistan with the whole relevancy thing.</p>

<p>The last reference is intriguing but leaves me unsatisfied. You might have better luck reading a few of his conference papers and seeing which of those has the evidence you are looking for.</p>

<p>ALL THAT BEING SAID, thanks for at least making the gesture at trying to get some evidence. On the other hand, your attacking my character - when you can’t get through a single post without making hideous typing errors - is grating on my nerves.</p>

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<p>“It’s pretty obvious that Auburn is in denial.”

  • That is immaterial. I’m making a point - that it’s easy to say things like that, but it’s hard to prove them. Of course, if you would like to contribute intelligently, let’s hear it.</p>

<p>“He/she is a comp sci major and seemingly doesn’t want to accept the fact that software engineering is a tough field.”

  • I expect that it will be a tough field. If you bothered to read my first post, I acknowledged that (well, you may have had to extrapolate a bit, but…) by saying that anything worth doing is stressful. However, I think it’s unfair to say CS/SE is “more” stressful than other technical fields, and especially many non-technical fields.</p>

<p>In my opinion, it depends more on the individual than on the nature of the work when it comes to the stress one would get working at various jobs. This seems obvious to me, but it’s too broad to prove. I, for instance, would be more stressed at a job giving tours to people all day than at a job driving around all day. I would be more stressed at a job answering the phone all day than at a job writing newspaper articles all day. Etc.</p>

<p>It’s my hypothesis that the people who are stressed about their computing jobs are a highly vocal minority. It’s a hunch, a guess, but there you go. Something to think about.</p>

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<p>I provided the sources, unless you have valid sources to debunk their tellings, then they remain to stand. You are the one who wants to keep it all to sources. A court of law would hold you to that level of proof, and so will I. </p>

<p>Just a thought, the reason their may not be to many articles on the topic, is most likely because it is all together very common. Publishers like to publish new and cutting edge material, not well know thought.</p>

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<p>The burden of proof is on you, member. You’re making claims and I’m asking for proof. I looked at your proof, and evaluated it. You have my evaluations. I even said you might be on to something with the later sources, but as it stands, none of those sources stands up to scrutiny. They fail in authority, relevance, having to do with the topic, or all of the above. I can source the screenplay from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a 13th century Chinese scroll, or a a paper by Bill Gates on how to mend a fence, but those that doesn’t make them valid sources.</p>

<p>“Just a thought, the reason their may not be to many articles on the topic, is most likely because it is all together very common. Publishers like to publish new and cutting edge material, not well know thought.”

  • Possible, but then again we can all tell each other that will-o-the-wisps love chocolate and write blogs about it and get everyone to think that… does that make it true? You’re not the first person to tell me that computing is a stressful field to be in, and for what it’s worth, <em>I sort of believe it’s true</em>. But then again, some people find the opposite is true… Shatkins, for instance. What’s wrong with his work?</p>
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<p>If so, you should check out some of the positions available on [Akamai</a> jobs](<a href=“http://jobs.akamai.com%5DAkamai”>http://jobs.akamai.com) board</p>

51

<p>i thought pretentious losers kept to the chances board</p>