How do you overcome developer burnout? Pssst… Automation Tools!

Updated on 6th September 2024 by Hayley Brown

In the modern software development world with ever-increasing amounts of software solutions and product updates in development engineers, developers and coders are seeing an increasingly high workload. As a result, they are experiencing developer and engineering burnout. 

There are many helpful solutions for development teams to alleviate and spot the signs of software developer burnout. One is deploying an integration platform that provides automation tools such as iPaaS and embedded iPaaS solutions, but we’ll get to that.

Developer Burnout

Developer burnout or exhaustion occurs when there are excessive requests, projects to construct, gatherings to participate in, and individuals to be accountable to. 

This typically arises when there is an inadequate number of developers and a lack of comprehension regarding the magnitude of effort required, ultimately resulting in anxiety and decreased productivity. In certain cases, developers find solace by either resigning or assuming a different position.

Nowadays achieving success comes at a cost of increased demands and expectations. It entails an influx of requests, a greater need for time, the creation of more applications, the addition of additional features, a heightened requirement for support, and an overall increase in workload. 

In software development, upgrades are frequent and necessitate modifications, updates, and re-releases of existing projects, as well as adjustments to one’s tools. Some technologies may require these upgrades on a weekly basis, while others may only need a few upgrades per year. This constant need for improvement can contribute to the stress and exhaustion experienced by developers.

In many cases, this is all occurring while software developers and engineers are remote working with many organisations opting to allow employees to choose where they work. This can also result in an increase in feelings of isolation, reduced comprehension of product and team goals and a decrease in productivity. 

How do you alleviate developer burnout on your SaaS developer team?

To alleviate developer burnout you’ll need to use and implement tools, adjust expectations, delegate, introduce automation and potentially change company culture. 

iPaaS Platform

Integration, automation and low-code tools are typical features of an iPaaS vendor and are especially useful throughout the software development process. During each stage of the software development process, integrations can be built to automate many internal tasks, such as updating the product roadmap with the latest customer feedback or assigning tasks in project management tools like Jira or Trello. In doing so you’ll keep development teams up to date with the latest customer needs, what stage of the roadmap you are at and who is doing what tasks. As well as improve agility and productivity. 

An iPaaS platform helps your internal team with their processes but doesn’t help expand your product offering for your customers.

Embedded iPaaS Solution

However, an embedded iPaaS solution can, and it is useful to deploy if you have a tonne of product backlog items and requests from colleagues or customers. As it can help alleviate developer backlog by utilising and training other team members. These frameworks, low-code tools and cloud applications enable this pretty easily and by upskilling existing employees to become citizen developers/integrators you’ll achieve more without hiring extra developers and achieve some big rewards. 

This newly trained group of employees already know your product and customers, as they could be in sales, customer success, product management or support. They are then empowered to respond to customer requests and build the required integration flows rather than adding to a developer’s plate. As a result, the development team can focus on the core product features and updates.

This is reinforced by findings from DZone who note “the role of a citizen engineer is growing in importance as the amount of data that organisations collect continues to grow. Citizen engineers can help organisations gain value from this data by building applications that can process and analyze it in real-time.”

Company Culture

Obviously, these tools can only help to a certain extent. This is where your company culture will also play a key role. 

To get more from your employee you should implement team days with fun activities such as an internal hackathon, creative workshops or game competitions to break up the monotony of working life. As well as daily catchups or check-ins with team members to knowledge share. Finally, as an organisation, you should encourage employees to take breaks and use their time off to recharge so they will return refreshed. 

Not only does a shift in company culture benefit employees and other key stakeholders it can help with digital transformation strategies. 

The Modern Developer

Nowadays developers can accomplish more with less and according to DZone “the modern developer is an overarching term covering a large variety of different roles, responsibilities, and skills.” 

For example, the responsibilities of a developer have expanded to include tasks such as using a basic template, writing an intricate low-level programming language, and constructing complex applications with multiple layers. The scope and complexity of the work performed by developers have grown significantly.

But they now have a powerful arsenal of tools, a range of team members and a company culture that encourages innovation, collaboration and life outside of work to overcome burnout.