Stress and its consequences for software development

I've just scanned the article, and it does indeed look very worth reading.<p>I'm particularly interested in this (from the introduction):<p>&#62; But I also discovered that I was playing with fire. Whenever I got a team ready to be really useful, there would be a bizarre negative reaction from all sorts of other people who were employed within the same organizations, but were not part of the teams I was working with. Sometimes this effect was so strong it could become a workplace hazard, and it always grew until the teams themselves were no longer able to function.<p>I know <i>exactly</i> what he is talking about. I have seen it happen in very different contexts (including contexts not at all related to software development): when you get a group of people that is starting to accomplish things, people within the organization act in <i>strange</i> ways to shut it down.<p>It looks like this particular issue is addressed on the 7th page: "The Dreaded Jungian Backlash". (It also looks like you need to read the preceding pages to understand it all.)<p>I look forward to finding out what the article has to say.

<i>I also discovered that I was playing with fire. Whenever I got a team ready to be really useful, there would be a bizarre negative reaction from all sorts of other people who were employed within the same organizations, but were not part of the teams I was working with.</i><p>Have you ever been working in one of those organizations and your coworkers goad you into not working so hard? They say things like, "You're making us look bad." or "Take the day off early."<p>Little things like that. Some have more humor in them than others, but everyone wants to work as little as possible for as much money as possible. If a super team comes in and makes work look fun and easy and they actually accomplish a lot, it raises the bar for every other team and even individual in the organization. Like little self-organized unions who pressure other union members through psychological stress and booby traps.<p>This is the same problem afflicting our culture at every level, from kindgergarten to the board room to the white house. It has created the mess we are in right now.

Very interesting. I just noticed this comment, and I think the guy stumbled into something about why FP is popular in a certain population:<p>"The language requirement is because Native American languages are verb based. Hopi has no nouns at all. I argue that nouns are good for sorting objects into categories and associating responses with the categories. Verbs are better for describing processes and relationships. People using <i>verb based languages</i> are very likely to be a population that assumes juxtapositional thinking is available to them."<p>Update: The short version of the article is that your brain has two modes of thinking. The one programmers use he calls "Juxtapositional", and cannot be accessed when the chemicals associated with stress are present. He then draws the relationship in the above quote, where Native American cultures were less stressed, and used verb based languages.<p>Notice that many of the "weird" programming languages are verb based / functional? lisp, haskell, forth, etc. Maybe some of the power of these languages is related to the fact that only people who aren't stressed like using them?

I guess Frank Herbert was right, "Fear is the mind killer."<p>Profound perspective. I programmed for 13 years and was increasingly burnt out by shorter time lines and more controlled projects. I thought I had completely lost my coding mojo and took a leave of absence Nov. 2008. I may yet relive my hayday of coding wizardry!

Finding this essay made me glad I read Hacker News today! I don't think I would have found it any other way.

The article is mostly informed speculation, but its sweep is so large, the conclusion almost becomes trivial. If we accept that the entire culture is literally sick, there are deeper implications than just programming productivity.

I've followed the "Programmer's Stone" concepts off-and-on, almost forgot about them entirely. This is definitely the best iteration of them yet.

Interesting article. I don't doubt that stress can limit creativity, but from my own experience, some stress seems to make me more productive. At times, a little deadline pressure is a good motivating force, and I find it easier for me to get into and stay in "the zone" where I'm completely focused and able to work at a fast pace. Continual stress would likely make things worse, but a few weeks of deadline pressure can really make me work harder and better.<p>To be honest, I skimmed through parts of the article so I hope I'm not repeating or misrepresenting what the article says, but it seems like the best process for me is to have some stress free time at the beginning of a project to let things percolate, and then later on, have a looming deadline to help me focus and grind things out.

It seems he's let the Reciprocality.org domain expire, and only put some of it on the new domain. There was some interesting stuff there, including the original Programmer's Stone book. I wonder if I still have the .zip of it.

I had trouble following this. Anybody care to take a shot at explaining what it says, or what's good about it?