Engineering Enablement

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2024-11-25 16:30:04

Welcome to the latest issue of Engineering Enablement, a weekly newsletter exploring the data behind world-class engineering organizations. If you want insights like this delivered to your inbox, subscribe here:

This week I read Identifying Factors Contributing to “Bad Days” for Software Developers: A Mixed-Methods Study, a new paper from Microsoft that dives into what disrupts developers’ workdays. In this study, researchers combined developer feedback with telemetry data to identify the factors that contribute to "bad days” for developers, and learn about the impact these issues have on productivity.

Microsoft researchers conducted a three-step study to identify what makes developers' days challenging and how it impacts their work. First, they used interviews and surveys to uncover common problems and their effects. Next, developers kept daily diaries to document their real-life experiences. Finally, the researchers analyzed telemetry data, focusing on metrics like code review and build times, to validate how these issues affected productivity.

In interviews and the survey, developers were asked to describe what makes for a “bad” day. Researchers analyzed their responses and ranked the issues from most to least common.