Correlating costs with programmer motivation and happiness

Question

We have project activities now and then where a few of the employees agreed upon at the last project activity set something up, like a bowling night, board gaming night, movie night or, for that matter, jujutsu test practice which we actually had once. The costs for these things tend to range around 10-15$ per person, 5$ more if you count food. At the moment, everyone pays their part of it every time.

I don't like this situation. Management continuously encourages us to set these kinds of things up but they don't want to contribute any money at all to it, saying that there's no budget for this at all. During the year we will get a bonus of around 2000$ since the company has been doing so well, btw.

Basically, I want to show a few of the managers how to correlate the company taking care of their developers with a considerable increase in code quality, resulting in a more efficient project and, in the end, saving multiple times what the original investment was.

I can imagine the sort of investments we'll be talking about would be getting to pick your own keyboard and mouse, your own screen configuration, desk chairs, offices, group activities, etc. What the investments actually are can be discussed later, but first there needs to be some money for it.

On to my question: I am looking for some kind of statistics, reports, blog posts (not from Joel or Jeff, already reading those) showing a correlation all the way between costs and happy, motivated developers. I don't want a discussion and mostly external resources, unless it's a very good and long answer relating to personal experience on the subject.

NOTE: I have noticed that some of these questions get closed due to non-relevance to SO and some don't, but haven't seen a clear correlation. This is, however, the best place I can think of to ask such a question, but I am aware that it may be toeing the line. Also, I don't know if this should be in the wiki since I don't know the criteria for that.

EDIT: I will close this question for now and get back to the subject once I've read Peopleware and a couple of other books. Thanks for your answers.

Answer 1

Is it anymore your responsibility to show a manager how to take "care of their developers" than it is for your manager to show YOU how to take care of the managers? Managers either get it (managing people) or they don't. BUT the same can be said for employees...they either get it (understanding business needs, budget constraints, etc) or they don't.

Instead of trying to show your manager how to take care of you, why not work on developing a better working relationship with these managers overall? Find out what would make their lives easier. Find out how they think you could better come in under budget and on time. Or, here's a thought, how about you guys pool some money together and take your manager out to lunch? shock and awe

The relationship between managers and the people they manage is a two-way street. It can be a mutually beneficial relationship and not just one-sided.

Answer 2

I'd suggest that the very fact that you are asking this question means that the lack of participation by management in supporting the activity is having a negative effect on employee satisfaction, which may affect productivity. As far as the research is concerned, there doesn't really seem to be any support for the notion that these activities actually increase performance. There are, however, many resources that show that good tools (multiple monitors, adequate memory & cpu) and practices will increase performance and attention to ergonomics may save money on healthcare expenses.

Answer 3

See Steve McConnells book "Rapid Development", which discuses exactly the motivational issues you describe and contains lots of references and statistics.

Answer 4

You might also want to check out Peopleware. It talks about what makes programmers productive ( but it does not mention any of the things in your list).

IE - decide if you want to understand productivity, or if you want to get management to pay for your bowling night.

Answer 5

Take a look at Herzberg's two-factor theory . The management activity you think may boost motivation may in fact only affect 'hygiene'. In my opinion, the motivation that leads to happiness comes from something entirely different. This motivation is intrinsic and mostly a byproduct of the level of individual and team effectiveness in solving challenging problems. Remember that effectiveness is a function of the professional trust in teams. If these activities you want management to support represents the best way to increase this trust then show them how trust increased after they spent the money. Trick is measuring trust.