Employees who can choose their Operating System are happier, use less Windows

Date:
Fri, 03 Mar 2023 04:40:55 GMT

Description:
Based on a survey of over 6,000 nerds.

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Most of us have worked for a company which mandated that we use a specific (often highly locked down) computer Operating System. More often than not, a version of Windows.

You hated it, right? Yeah. Me too.

But how prevalent is that actually ?

And, as a follow up question, what correlation is there (if any) between a persons reported level of general happiness and whether or not they can
choose the OS they use in their job?

Also what is the difference in commonly used Operating Systems among people who can (or can not) choose their OS?

Lets find out!

The following data was obtained from polling done between January 22nd and February 9th, 2023 . A few details about the polling conducted:

6,022 people answered the questions.

This is significantly larger than the vast majority of national polls conducted during Presidential Elections in the USA (most of which have less than 2,000 respondents).

The poll was presented to audiences of several shows and news sites in order to obtain a large, diverse sample of computer nerds.

The questions were wide-ranging, 100% optional, and no personal data was collected.

Ok. First, the big question: What percentage of nerds can choose the Operating System they use for their job?

Turns out a slim majority of those who took the poll (over 6,000 nerds) can, indeed, choose their own OS.

54.7% can choose their OS

45.3% can not choose their OS

And this appears to be a very good thing. Because, as we also found out, there is a noteworthy correlation between the ability to choose your work Operating System and your reported level of general happiness.

Nerds who stated that they could choose their own work OS reported to have 7.1% higher levels of general happiness than people who could not choose
their work OS.

Does that prove that the ability to choose your work OS directly improves
your happiness?

No. No, it does not.

But its a noteworthy correlation . And it does seem somewhat reasonable to assume that increased levels of freedom in your job (such as choosing your
own OS) could lead to overall feelings of happiness.

It would be interesting to do a study of computers users at a company which does not allow employees to choose their Operating System. Implement a new policy where they can choose their OS, and measure their reported happiness level both before and after the change.

Until such a study is conducted, it is difficult to do much more than make an assumption based on the strong correlation as noted in that chart above.

See also: The least happy computer users: Those running Arch Linux & Firefox


Which brings us to another thought:

Is there any difference in what OS people use regularly (meaning they use a given OS at least once per week) when they can (or can not) choose what OS they use at work?

Turns out oooohhhh, yeah. In a big way. Check this out.

If you can not choose your work OS:

You are significantly more likely to use Windows.

And slightly less likely to use both Linux and macOS.

What this data appears to suggest:

If people have the freedom to decide what OS they use at work they dump Windows and start using a more Linux (or, to a lesser extent, macOS).

It also suggest that, by and large, people who want to use Linux or macOS are going to find a way to do it throughout their week even if their job forces them to use Windows.

Note that the only Operating System to see a significant drop when it is not forced on users is Microsoft Windows .

Which, I am going to assume, many of you saw coming.

Just the same, its interesting to have data which backs that up.

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Link to news story: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/employees-who-can-choose-their-operating


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