Happiness Debt
The Math Behind Being Nice
The Business Case for Compassion
In tech, we’ve ingrained the concept of “technical debt” into our vernacular. This model has extended to a metaphor to help with understanding other accumulated cruft, like the amount of buried functionality that clutters our product (product debt), etc.
However, when evaluating OKR’s, obsessing over NPS, and A/B testing every interaction, we often fail to focus inward. Imagine if you started tracking the NPS of your own employees? An easy analog would be asking, “how likely are you to refer one of our openings to a friend?” Sometimes the answer might surprise you.
The problem is, that while we work to balance being data-informed and data-driven in our decision making, we rarely factor in the human cost. I quantify this through a concept called “happiness debt.” Just like you weigh the cost of taking shortcuts in shipping product, so too should you worry about the human cost. Technical debt leads to the accrual of code that you’ll have to refactor and eventually pay down. We comprehend why technical debt is damaging and work to avoid it, and you need to treat your interactions with your team with the same level of scrutiny.
The Price, in Practice
For example, I had an employee who had to travel 2–3 hours a day to make it from upstate New York to the Financial District. This was not only a drag on her productivity from a business perspective, but had a demonstrable impact on her sense of happiness as an employee. The demands of her commute were causing her to bank a lot of happiness debt, and I realized I needed to help pay it off if I was going to keep her at the company and help her feel actualized to achieve her professional goals. After talking with her, it turned out she wanted to grow into a more effective product manager and explore transitioning from project management. I then successfully fought to get the funds to pay for her to take a class at General Assembly. Through this action, I was able to not only help her become a more experienced contributor, but she felt more fulfilled through work as I helped pay off her happiness debt. The financial cost to my P & L was more than offset by the reduction in happiness debt and increase in her productivity through an elevated sense of fulfillment.
The Cost in Context
Anyone who has the opportunity to directly affect the happiness debt that his or her employees incur has a responsibility to be cognizant of the burden they may force people to bear. Every time you ask too much or push too hard you need to remember that while you may get to the finish line, there still has been a cost. The tricky thing about happiness debt isn’t just that it grows, but that it compounds. This subtle yet critical nuance only exacerbates the problem. Additionally, one must be mindful that happiness debt is baggage that travels with you, so it is critical to ensure that new employees arrive with their happiness debt paid down. For example, encouraging a break between jobs, clearly ensuring that expectations are clear, and working in advance to have a crisp understanding of why exactly they chose to move on will help dramatically.
Remember, we live in a world where the problem is no longer about having access to data or even having the right data. Instead, as builders, we must determine what metrics matter most. So often we focus this analytical energy outwards towards our users (rightfully) but fail to realize that happiness is another critical piece of the fabric you’re weaving when you nurture your startup, and you can’t ignore how actions have consequences that linger.
Cutting corners in code will create technical debt; we’re trained to be cognizant of and to avoid contributing to this understood problem. What I’m advocating is to have an equal awareness towards the emotional impact that decisions and interactions have on employees' happiness, because the health of a company can be measured by its happiness debt, just like any other KPI.
Where We Go from Here
As a community, we need to work together to create a seismic shift in how we approach the expectations we place on ourselves and our teammates. We are fortunate enough to work in a field that is built on innovation and thinking differently. As startups scrap over who can out-perk the other, thoughtful approaches will outweigh these short-sighted priorities. In order to retain and incubate talent, we need to shift the conversation towards meaningful structures that support our teams. For example, Pinterest and Triplebyte are helping put employees first when it comes to equity. Buffer has long advocated for the importance of happiness and transparency. I think that we have a responsibility to not just innovate in the products we create, but also lead the discussion and set an example for how we go about building great companies.
