As a developer, I see my boredom as a sign of gross mismanagement.
I'm not altogether lazy. I can always find something to do on my own that is at least tangentially related to the goals of the company. If nothing else comes to mind, I try to find and retire some technical debt, because there's always some technical debt lurking around somewhere.
So when I get bored, it is because I have been forbidden to do things beyond what I have been allowed or ordered to do. It is because I feel that any initiative will be ignored at best, or punished at worst.
Boredom is a subset of frustration. If there are any bored developers at your company, you need to take a long, hard look at how you allocate their time. And if the lead is bored--the person who should nominally have the most flexibility and autonomy on the dev team--I guarantee that some people lower on the totem pole already have their resumes out there.
I'm not altogether lazy. I can always find something to do on my own that is at least tangentially related to the goals of the company. If nothing else comes to mind, I try to find and retire some technical debt, because there's always some technical debt lurking around somewhere.
So when I get bored, it is because I have been forbidden to do things beyond what I have been allowed or ordered to do. It is because I feel that any initiative will be ignored at best, or punished at worst.
Boredom is a subset of frustration. If there are any bored developers at your company, you need to take a long, hard look at how you allocate their time. And if the lead is bored--the person who should nominally have the most flexibility and autonomy on the dev team--I guarantee that some people lower on the totem pole already have their resumes out there.