How have your developers been affected by remote working?
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One of the most challenging things that all of us have suffered from is not having that indicator of the end of the day. Before it used to be, "Oh, it's rush hour. I need to start prepping,” or, “Once rush hour is done, I have to leave." All those cues have disappeared and we're all in the same place. One of the things that I miss is listening to audiobooks while I'm stuck in traffic. I think I have stopped learning because of that.
At the company I was working with last year, we found that because the developers were remote, there were less interruptions for them. They were more able to focus. So whilst we may have lost some ground in things like user acceptance testing (UAT) and activities like that, we found we made up for it in terms of the developers’ increased ability and the productivity of the developments.
Typically, once a developer gets into the zone, not having interruptions is great for their productivity. But at the same time, it isn’t actually great for them because it leads to a higher spike in burnout. They were coming to me every couple of weeks asking for days off and I think it's because they're just on all the time now. There aren’t any interruptions to get them to stop or have separate blocks of time in their day.
Another challenge is that developers are starting to wear a few more hats. Because they understand the code and process so well, a lot of them—at least in the go-to-market space—are being pulled into conversations with the business, which is taking up some of their time as well.