The success of a software development project does not only rely on technical support but also depends on human and social factors. The human side of software development has been ignored in the past decade or so, which calls for increasing our efforts to understand this side of software engineering. Human knowledge and creativity is the cornerstone for software development. However, this human knowledge has lesser or no value when it is isolated or individualized; hence knowledge sharing becomes critical for the success of software projects. The dilemma with knowledge sharing is that there are many impediments to it. One such impediment can be occupational stress which has increased after the globalization of software engineering. In the context of Global Software Development (GSD), the objective of this paper is to highlight the impact of software engineering occupational stress on knowledge sharing. To highlight this important relationship a thorough literature survey has been conducted and the results of the survey are presented in this paper. © 2011 IEEE.