Item — HN Reader

> the goal is both a happy team and well functioning software.

software first. team second.

team happiness is important as a miserable team will hamper productivity and quality. but the team’s happiness is secondary to their overarching reason d’être — the software.

if there were no need for the software, the team wouldn’t need to exist. so that goal should take precedence.

YMMV

2 comments

You should really look at studies on how happy employees are much more productive than unhappy ones. And the trend continues way above the bare minimum of not being miserable.

not sure why you've equated the team's happiness is less important than the software to make the team unhappy. that's an incredibly binary perspective.

there's usually more than two priorities. and i agree with you that a team's wellbeing is important. it should be up there in priorities.

i'm just pointing out that a team that accepts being <some imaginary figure that's not 100% like 70% or 80%> happy, focussing on the software as more important than their own happiness might do better than a team who are trying to focus on their happiness at the same level of priority as the quality of the software.

Companies come and go but humans and relationships can stay for a lifetime, often through multiple companies.

You may have it backwards.

OP wasn't asking how to ensure their team members have relationships that extend beyond the time they spent working in that team.

it was about the trade-off between team happiness (getting to use tools how the team wants to) versus the results (problems with the produced software because the team are using the tools how the team wants to).