Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness, But Happy Developers Protect Money

If money “makes the world ’go round” — then today, software developers are the ones pushing and spinning the globe. Every day developers ensure that digital money (and other financial products and services) is securely routed around the planet as intended. And the happy ones do it best.

The financial services industry recognizes that developers are at the forefront of software security. What isn’t fully appreciated is the bottom-line benefit of happy developers. Happy developers aren’t bought with big salaries and ridiculous perks — though those never hurt. Instead, happy developers are made. How? Happy developers are more likely to work in organizations with maturing or mature DevSecOps practices. The influence of an organization’s environment was revealed in Sonatype’s seventh annual DevSecOps Community Survey.

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The 5,045 survey respondents came from 102 countries. The survey is the first to show a correlation between DevSecOps maturity, developer happiness, and software security. As DevSecOps maturity increases, developers become happier, and happy developers build more secure software.

The Bottom-Line Benefits of Engaged Employees

First, a quick reminder on the benefits of engaged employees in the workplace:

• Happy workers do more. “Engaged workers are more open to new information, more productive, and more willing to go the extra mile,” writes social psychologist Arnold B. Bakker in his research on workplace happiness.
• Replacing unhappy workers is expensive. Turnover can cost employers 33 percent of an employee’s annual salary, according to the Work Institute’s 2017 Retention Report. The same report, updated for 2019 (.pdf) shows that the work environment is a major cause of employee unhappiness and departure, up 53% from 2010.
• Happier workers are healthier. Beyond the quality of life metric, the business cost burden of health insurance is reduced when workers are healthy. The cost savings of good mental health is one component of (Read more...)