A Five-Star Mind Menu for Developers – A Diablog
What happens when you put two Rakettitiede developers and an expert from the Finnish Central Association for Mental Health into the same virtual room?
Sorry, no punchline, we’re actually curious.
Rakettitiede consultants Minna Wahlroos and Jari “Jartza” Tulilahti and Henna-Riikka Myrskylä from the Finnish Central Association for Mental Health discuss the IT industry and the makings of a mindful Mind menu for developers. And before you ask, we’re not (only) talking about food. Instead, we dig into workloads and sore points and try to find ways of coping with work-related stress.
Hors d’oeuvres: IT and the sore points of coping
In the IT industry, how are coping-related problems usually solved? Answer: By taking the easy way out, so that you won’t feel so stressed. No, wait, that’s not it, is it?
Jartza: Unrealistic expectations are a typical problem. The work we do typically involves creating something new, and it’s difficult to estimate, how long something’s going to take when you haven’t done it before. It took me ten years to figure out that I need to add some extra hours to my initial time estimate.
The client expects results within a given timeframe. This can be stressful – particularly when it comes consulting work. As a top professional, you want to do things properly which makes you work long hours. Like everyone knows, that can really mess with your head in the long run.
Minna: I have to agree. If the client requires a time estimate, I usually add a small buffer. It’s often impossible to say how long something’s going to take when the whole thing is new and there are bound to be surprises along the way. For instance, if the key contact person of your project is in India and difficult to get hold of, that’s definitely going to be a stumbling block.
Henna-Riikka: Do contracts usually have an escape clause, so that you don’t have to stress about losing money or worry about the project turning out unprofitable if the timetables don’t hold?
Minna: Contractually, the problem with such fixes is that they’re not normally solved with money but through some sort of personal engagement.
Henna-Riikka: If it’s an interpersonal and emotional problem, does the organisational culture have an effect on how stressful the situation becomes?
Jartza: I think that varies from project to project. In consulting, we’re usually part of the client’s organisation as if we’re working there. The expectations of a young and inexperienced company can be completely unrealistic. At present, I’m working at Suunto, which has decades of experience with product development. They know the realities and realise that you always run into problems when making a physical product. If our time estimate is three weeks and afterwards we say that we hit a snag doing X, Y and Z, nobody’s going to bat an eye.
Minna: It’s about not wanting to disappoint. When a client is disappointed, often the solution is to not continue the contract. But is that really such a big loss for anyone, other than an emotionally? Not necessarily.
Jartza: On the other hand, there are those who understand that the expectations were unrealistic to begin with and continue the contract for that very reason.
Another sore point concerns the quality I want to produce with my 25 years of experience. The client may be happy with my service and the code may work, but there are going to be problems when in a few years time another programmer is going to develop some new features and starts to wonder what the hell the existing code is supposed to mean. That means that the code isn’t as organised as it should be and that it doesn’t have all the necessary documents and commentary. I don’t want to be involved in creating something that someone else has to struggle with in a couple of years.
Henna-Riikka: Many people aim for perfection, but I think that a Minimum Viable Product, which you probably know from Service Design, is a really useful model: just make things good enough, perfection isn’t always necessary. There’s no point in being a constant overachiever.
Minna: I have to disagree on that even if I risk sounding overly critical. Aiming for an MVP may sound commonsensical, but in my experience thinking in terms of MVPs is just naïve.
Something’s gone wrong with communication if people believe that an MVP is a complete production system. It’s the consultant’s job to say that ‘you’re about to shoot yourself in the foot, and I’m happy to pull the trigger for you, if that’s what you really want’. But is it what the client really wants? As a consultant, you’re supposed to explain what is currently being done and that what you’re doing may never get finished if people lull themselves into thinking that an MVP is all that’s wanted.
Jartza: I have to side with Minna – although we may be tilting at windmills – that there shouldn’t be such an emphasis on MVPs in IT. If a client asks for an MVP, I always tend to ask them whether they’re ready to start with a clean slate when it’s turned into a product one day. If the client doesn’t want to scrap the MVP, I say that then we’re not making an MVP but a first version with limited features.
Minna: The developer may carry the mental burden even though the actual problem is somewhere else. If the expectations have been crazy high and the developer has been hired to do a two-month assignment in two weeks, the client’s representative who came up with the estimate will have to find a way to live with the unrealistic estimate, but the performance stress is on the developer.
Main course: workload management
The work keeps piling up, but how can it be made more manageable? What is the employer’s role in workload management?
Minna: Workloads can be managed by working more efficiently or by arranging the work into manageable chunks. Paying attention to physical well-being can also help. The bottom line is, no one is capable of giving a 100 percent all the time. Sometimes pushing the envelope is something you actually want to do, but even then you need to remember to balance things out. If used correctly, Agile methods, such as kanban and scrum, will help.
Jartza: One of the most important things to learn is ACE communication, recognising when you have too much on your plate. Now that everyone’s into Agile and task allocation is the way to go, you may be told that there’s going to be a month-long sprint and you’re supposed to do such and such tasks. If you give me six task, I will ask you to choose the top three most important ones. If there’s time left over in the sprint, you can always add tasks. If you’re responsible for too many tasks, you’ll never achieve a flow state, which is really important in coding.
Minna: The system can in theory be used so that everything’s done by the book, but in reality people handle multitasking differently and everyone has their own strengths. The make-up of the team dictates how the tasks should be allocated.
Henna-Riikka: The purpose of processes is to make things easier, not harder. Every now and then some process turns out to be a burden and you realise that it’s only done like that because “it’s just the way we’ve always done things”. That sort of thinking doesn’t benefit anyone.
The amount of stress each person can handle varies, but there’s cause for concern if you’re constantly stressed and unable to recover. This can lead to burnout, which isn’t a diagnostic disease but the result of slowly exhausting your psychological resources.
Jartza: Managers and team leaders are able to counter such developments by being interested in their employees on a slightly more personal level. Knowing everyone’s strengths and competences allows leaders to allocate tasks better.
Sometimes managers seem to assume that since you did a good job on this one thing, you probably know how to do this other thing as well. When that thing turns out to be something that’s completely new to you, the learning process increases your workload.
Henna-Riikka: It’s important that managers see an individual’s potential for growth and that they enable that growth while supporting the employee’s career and skills development. If there’s a constant need to learn new things, there needs to be a shared understanding about the employee’s wish to develop in that direction.
Second main course: work-life balance
“Just stop thinking about that work stuff.” Okay, would you like to tell me how to do that? Even my dreams are full of code.
Jartza: I’ve always said that coding is 80 % brain power and 20 % typing. Sometimes you just sit at your desk and listen to music on YouTube. At the same time, you’re thinking about how to write some code. Once you’re done thinking – and sometimes that can take the whole day – you may be able to write and finish the code in an hour. It’s difficult to tell your brain not to think about a particular problem. It can pop into your mind at any time of day.
Henna-Riikka: Coding and browsing through YouTube take place in roughly the same areas of the brain. If you’re aiming for more comprehensive well-being, though, it would make sense to activate different areas of the brain during the day, as it promotes mental recovery and good sleep.
Think opposites: someone who does a lot of thinking during the day should do something physical, someone who works in an office should spend some time outdoors, and if you normally do a lot of reasoning, engage in some intuitive activity.
Jartza: I have the advantage of living in the countryside in the middle of the woods and I’m also building a house. Every now and then, when I’m using the saw, I realise how a code should be written.
Henna-Riikka: The brain probably comes up with a solution easier when it has something else to think about.
Minna: About four years ago, when I became responsible for more things, I started experimenting with different ways of dealing with my rising stress levels. Short walks only seemed to distract me and made it more difficult to achieve any kind of flow. Short breaks, particularly the ones we had as a team, were okay, and I found our daily meetings really refreshing. I’m fine with all things that don’t distract me from my work and that somehow tie in with my routines. Going to the gym has probably been my best counterbalance to work.
Henna-Riikka: People really stick to their routines. If you pick up a new routine that supports your well-being, it’s a good idea to add it to the beginning or end of an old one. If you suddenly start doing yoga for 20 minutes in the afternoon without having a regular time slot for it, it’s not going to work in the long run. But if you go make coffee and do a one-minute stretch while it’s brewing, it’s going to work much better than some random timetable you cooked up.
Jartza: I’ve noticed that, too. Our daily meetings are well-organised, since they only take about 15 minutes. It’s not quite enough to take my mind off work, though. After the meeting, I usually I pick up my bow and practice shooting arrows for about 20 minutes.
Henna-Riikka: That’s awesome! That combines leaving the workspace, letting your eyes focus on something in the distance, doing something physical and allowing your brain to focus on what your hands are doing.
Jartza: True, especially since my target is so small that if I miss my shot, I need to spend one or two hours looking for the arrows in the woods.
Going for seconds: exercise and nutrition
Developers have an unhealthy diet, and they don’t get enough exercise. A stupid myth or an unfortunate fact? Is it true that as long as you hit the gym and munch on some protein bars, everything will come up roses, including your coding work?
Minna: The only generalisable stereotype is that if you do coding for a living, you probably don’t hate what you do. As for the myth, I’m sure there are developers that don’t get enough exercise and who have unhealthy eating habits, just as there are developers who are the exact opposite.
Jartza: Myths are always just exaggerated versions of real life.
If I had never seen other work environments besides that of my current client, I would say that developers are sports nuts. Suunto produces sports watches, so their developers participate in marathons and ultra runs and go on 10K runs to test their products.
Way back, I was involved in the demo scene which organises annual meets in the Hartwall Arena. All the lights are turned off, and you get a 24/7 code-a-palooza of visual and audiovisual works. The crowd that you’ll find there is often a lot different from the sports enthusiasts.
So, I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum. I’m sure there’s some happy medium here. In other words, you can find examples of both extremes, but most people fall somewhere in between.
Henna-Riikka: Exercise and nutrition aren’t considered parts of mental health, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. When it comes to eating, I’d like to point out that it’s also a social event and eating with your friends and family promotes your social well-being. When it comes to eating, I really try to avoid sounding holier-than-thou. Just remember to listen to yourself and your body. Eat things that make you feel good.
People tend to misunderstand the meaning of exercise. All movement is beneficial, you don’t always have to give it everything you’ve got. In the office, change your working position throughout the day, that helps too.
Jartza: I think the myth is so popular because only the other end of the extreme attracts media attention. Events like Assembly are written and talked about, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an article on how physically active the staff members of Suunto or Polar are.
Minna: It’s true that demo parties get a lot of publicity, but they don’t give a realistic image of the work. These events are meant to create things in a short amount of time, but do they produce lasting results that can be used by the broader public. That’s a totally different thing and something that’s usually not mentioned.
Jartza: Demos are considered art, and art and product are two different things. My hunch is that writing a news piece on the sports fanaticism at some technology company doesn’t really seem that newsworthy or sexy enough. Writing about 6,000 nerds huddled up in Hartwall Arena with their computers is a lot more fascinating.
Dessert
What is your one takeaway from this conversation, something you will still remember tomorrow?
Henna-Riikka: Give your brain well-deserved breaks, remember to move your body and don’t miss meals. I would also like to mention leading by example: everyone needs to have the opportunity to influence their own work.
Minna: Coming up with a physical counterbalance, whether it’s archery or going to the gym. Regarding the work itself, having clear expectations helps with the daily grind.
Jartza: Remember to sleep.
Henna-Riikka: Exactly.
This year, Rakettitiede celebrates its 10th anniversary while keeping a keen eye on the future. We want to keep boosting our clients’ demanding software development projects in the decades to come, so we teamed up with the Finnish Central Association for Mental Health to see what we could do to improve well-being in the industry. We decided to start a countdown to a more mental health positive tomorrow and embarked on a journey to find ways to develop organisational cultures and promote employee well-being.
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Read the other parts of the series here:
Rakettitiede claims: The Primary Programming Language of the Future is the Mind
Hot or Not? Timelapsing through the World of Programming Languages
Rocket Scientists’ 10 Commandments for a High-Quality Coding Future