Time Warp: The Gap Between Developers’ Ideal vs Actual Workweeks in an AI-Driven Era
How developers allocate their time and where AI can help.
Software developers juggle a variety of tasks throughout the workweek, yet how they actually spend their time often diverges from how they would ideally like to. Identifying and addressing these gaps is critical for organizations looking to improve both productivity and developer well-being. In this paper, we present findings from a survey of 484 software developers at Microsoft. The goal was to understand key differences between developers’ ideal and actual workweeks. Our analysis reveals significant misalignments between the two, with a clear trend: as the gap between actual and ideal time allocation widens, both productivity and satisfaction decline. We examine these discrepancies across specific activities to assess their direct impact. With the growing adoption of AI tools in software engineering, we also identify tasks that are strong candidates for automation.
- Sukrit Kumar
- Drishti Goel
- Thomas Zimmermann
- Brian Houck
- B. Ashok
- Chetan Bansal
