How has development changed over the course of the pandemic?

#productivity #ai #news #development

Today, we're excited to announce the release of the 2023 Future of Work Report.

Our team has spent the past few months analyzing data from more than 400K software developers over the past three years. And in analyzing that data, we uncovered three key insights into how software development has changed, and what that means for the future of work.

Those insights are summarized below, but we hope that you will check out the full report, which includes stats on burnout, work-life balance, AI trends, the tradeoffs between remote and office work, and more.

What we found

We found that the developer experience has improved over the last three years, while productivity remains relatively unchanged. Developers are spending less time coding nights and weekends, reclaiming time from interruptions, and making better use of commute times. They are feeling less burnt out. While they are spending slightly less time coding, they are getting more efficient with their time, automating away repetitive tasks with AI and automation tools.

These are a few of the indicators we've seen that the shift to remote work has been, overall, a net positive for the global development community.

1. Developer experience is improving

With more flexible schedules, more work is getting done between 9am and 5pm (+5%). Developers are coding 9% more during morning commutes and less work is being pushed to late nights (-11%) and weekends (-9%). As a result of a better work-life balance, developers are feeling less burnt out.

2. Productivity is unchanged

While developers are spending marginally less time coding per day — 59.9 minutes in 2023 compared to 64.2 minutes in 2020 (-7%) — this change has been offset by a small improvement in efficiency. Keystrokes per minute coded, a proxy for focused work, increased by 4%. At the same time, an increasing number of repetitive tasks are being automated away with code completion and AI tools.

3. The effects of automation and AI are increasing

With the rapid adoption of AI and automation tools, like GitHub Copilot, developers are writing and editing code at a faster rate than ever before. From 2020 to 2023, the average number of characters inserted per keystroke increased by 41% and lines of code edited per minute increased by 39% — indicators of the increased usage of generative AI and code completion tools. The long-term impact of these tools on productivity and code quality remains unknown.

What has the impact been for you?

Global trends, however, are not indicative of every company. Even within engineering organizations, there can be radical differences between teams, projects, and locations. Most companies have only scratched the surface of understanding the long-term impact of remote work.

What has your team's experience been with remote or hybrid work over the last few years? We'd love to hear more stories from the community:

How has remote work impacted your work-life balance?
Are you more productive working from home or at the office?
Do you use generative AI tools, like GitHub Copilot?

If you're interested in this type of data, I'd recommend checking out our full findings, which includes more stats on AI-powered automation, improvements to work-life balance, and the shifting contributors to burnout.