The Number One Productivity Killer for Devs? Finding Information!

Tech debt is no longer the main source of wasted time and friction for developers.

It’s also not testing or code reviews – it’s finding information, as per Atlassian’s State of Developer Experience 2025 report, based on surveys of 3,500 developers and managers worldwide.

Paradoxically, 68% of developers reported that they save over 10 hours per week thanks to generative AI tools – up sharply from 46% the prior year. Yet, half of developers say they still lose more than 10 hours weekly due to organizational inefficiencies, and 90% lose at least six hours to issues like poor cross-team coordination, unclear project direction, and difficulty retrieving information.

Coding is Just 16% of Developers’ Jobs

Atlassian’s report noted that this is where the question of whether AI tools are truly helping developers enters the equation.

These tools primarily support developers with coding tasks, which only make up around 16% of their working week. The remainder of their time is spent on administrative work, tool-switching, documentation, and context-switching.

Another source of developer frustration where AI tools are not much help (yet) is context and clarity on what they’re building. They report wasting time getting clarifications from other teams and understanding institutional knowledge.

Leadership Does Not Understand Developers

There is also a growing disconnect between software engineers and leadership. 63% of developers report that leadership doesn’t truly understand their day-to-day pain points, up 19 percentage points from last year. The study argues that engineers experience friction firsthand, and leaders are more likely to see productivity gains on a dashboard and accept them as a sign of progress.

Without alignment on what the pain points really are and what investments in developer experience actually make developers’ lives easier, investments in AI tools risk becoming superficial solutions that fail to ease real friction.