Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: CODERS ARE INSOMNIACS

by Hazed

A new study of software engineers comes to the conclusion that a high proportion of coders suffer from "severe insomnia", and a majority have sleep problems of some sort. This could put their mental health at risk.

Researchers at the University of Mysore's Department in Food Science and Nutrition tested 91 software engineers working at a development firm in the city. No fewer than 20.9% had severe insomia, and a further 35.2 had a mild form. That means less than half the coders were sleeping normally. In the general population, around 77% get a normal night's sleep.

The study's authors say that the primary reason for this sleeplessness was high levels of job-related stress. They concluded that coders "need special attention since they are prone to develop sleep disturbances". An accompanying statement said, "mental and physical health... were significantly lower in subjects with insomnia than in other participants. The association between insomnia and poor quality of life was particularly strong for mental health."

Now, I can see a number of problems with this survey. First, restricting the survey to coders working at just one company in one city is not very representative. Who knows, there might be something particularly hellish about working in that building that causes extra stress, or maybe the company is particularly hard on its software engineers.

But it also doesn't answer whether the insomnia was caused by stress, or whether the participants were stressed because they had insomnia... or whether the insomnia dated back to before they became software engineers. In other words, which was the cause and which the effect?

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