So here's one of the things I'm super interested in that's coming out of our recent pilot research with software teams: there's a big difference between "things that are hard, but we're good at solving them" and "things that are hard, in a way that absolutely kills our motivation."
I think there's a lot of talk in the industry about "developer experience" and easing friction and I get that and believe in that -- but I'm always struck by how, when you ask several hundred developers if they believe they can solve hard problems....they DO believe this! They solve hard problems all the time!
But certain kinds of "hard" are a killer--cascading demotivation for people.
A lot of what we've studied about motivation with *students* in school focuses on helping them get over that first kind of hard -- individual self-efficacy. But developers score REALLY HIGH whenever you ask them to answer self-efficacy measures!! This is wonderful to me. What a cool gift. What a cool feature of this community.
This also has implications for where motivation "lives" in the system of software engineering. Yes, individual self-efficacy is always a good thing to encourage. But I am not sure it's what software teams truly deeply NEED, as much as they need support and protection against the second kind of hard.
What's the second kind of hard? Well we're working on identifying that, but there are pretty clear trends.
Sneak peek from our pilot research: this "second kind of hard" seems to bubble up for people when they say, "I had to repeat all this work again because no one remembered a previous project." or "yeah I solved an amazing technical issue, and then I found out I was working on the wrong part of the code because someone had changed x and hadn't told me." It's core motivational stuff about whether you feel SUPPORTED.
There are many important things here but one I think is vital to see: people who are capable of solving IMMENSELY difficult technical challenges will still feel this type of friction as "final straw" stuff. If you ask people about what they imagine the riskiest kind of software project, really dig into it -- consistently, people say that burnout from dealing with hypocrisy is worse than not having the technical skills or even not having money
A lot of things matter but it's really interesting as a researcher to ask, "which kind of hard would you choose if you had to choose." At least so far in my research, developers will choose the 'first kind of hard,' will choose to teach themselves entire new languages, will find motivation inside of ALL kinds of hard stuff, as long as they feel protected from the second kind of hard.
