Work environments & happiness (JS Party #169)

KBall, Amal, and Nick dive into key dimensions of what makes a developer work environment good – or bad. They discuss systemic factors, individual factors, what you can do about it, and a proposed scoring system for good work environments.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 4 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Raygun – With Raygun Error and Performance Monitoring you have all the information you need at your fingertips to quickly find and fix errors and performance issues across your tech stack down to the line of code. Get started with a free 14-day trial, head to raygun.com and join thousands of customer-centric software teams who use Raygun every day.
• Sourcegraph – Sourcegraph is universal code search for every developer and team. Easily search across all the code that matters to you and your organization: find example code, explore and read code, debug issues, and more. Head to info.sourcegraph.com/changelog and click the button “Try Sourcegraph now” to get started.
• O'Reilly Media – Learn by doing — Python, data, AI, machine learning, Kubernetes, Docker, and more. Just open your browser and dive in. Learn more and keep your teams’ skills sharp at oreilly.com/changelog

Featuring:

• Kevin Ball – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Amal Hussein – GitHub, X
• Nick Nisi – Website, GitHub, Bluesky, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• The Dispassionate Developer
• How to Stop Saying Yes When You Want to Say No
• Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Cal Newport
• A World Without Email
• Developer Happiness Index

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!