DevOps.com

  • Latest
    • Articles
    • Features
    • Most Read
    • News
    • News Releases
  • Topics
    • AI
    • Continuous Delivery
    • Continuous Testing
    • Cloud
    • Culture
    • DevSecOps
    • Enterprise DevOps
    • Leadership Suite
    • DevOps Practice
    • ROELBOB
    • DevOps Toolbox
    • IT as Code
  • Videos/Podcasts
    • DevOps Chats
    • DevOps Unbound
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming
    • On-Demand Webinars
  • Library
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • On-Demand Events
  • Sponsored Communities
    • AWS Community Hub
    • CloudBees
    • IT as Code
    • Rocket on DevOps.com
    • Traceable on DevOps.com
    • Quali on DevOps.com
  • Related Sites
    • Techstrong Group
    • Container Journal
    • Security Boulevard
    • Techstrong Research
    • DevOps Chat
    • DevOps Dozen
    • DevOps TV
    • Digital Anarchist
  • Media Kit
  • About
  • AI
  • Cloud
  • Continuous Delivery
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevSecOps
  • Leadership Suite
  • Practices
  • ROELBOB
  • Low-Code/No-Code
  • IT as Code
  • More
    • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
    • Culture
    • Enterprise DevOps

Home » Blogs » Survey: Fixing Bugs Stealing Time from Development

debugging code ownership Linux bugs

Survey: Fixing Bugs Stealing Time from Development

By: Mike Vizard on February 16, 2021 2 Comments

A global survey of 950 developers published today finds more than a third (38%) of developers spend up to a quarter of their time fixing software bugs, with slightly more than a quarter (26%) spending up to half their time fixing bugs.

Conducted by the market research firm Propeller Insights on behalf of Rollbar, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to detect software errors, the report also notes that 88% of developers find traditional error monitoring tools are not meeting expectations.

DevOps Connect:DevSecOps @ RSAC 2022

Daniel Day, vice president of marketing at Rollbar, said the survey makes it apparent that continuing to rely on manual processes to surface errors in code is having a major downstream impact on both DevOps teams, in particular, and the business as a whole.

For example, nearly nine in 10 developers (89%) also noted that undetected errors take a big toll on the business. More than one-fourth (26%) of developers also said that their employers have lost a significant number of users due to errors in software. The same share (26%) said software errors damage their company’s reputation and its ability to attract investments, and nearly a fifth (18%) said that undetected software problems anger their company’s investors.

Nearly a third (32%) of developers said they spend up to 10 hours a week fixing bugs instead of writing code, while 16% said they spend up to 15 hours a week. Another 6% said they have to dedicate up to 20 hours a week fixing bugs instead of writing code.

More than half of developers (55%) said that if they didn’t have to spend so much time fixing bugs, they would have the time to build new features and functionality. Many of these errors are not addressed because current tools require them to manually respond to errors (39%); it takes too long to find all of the details they need to fix bugs and errors (36%); focus on system stability and not enough on code health (31%); make it difficult to detect errors (29%); and have an approach to error aggregation that is either too broad or too narrow (23%).

Nearly two-thirds of developers (62%) said they have found out about errors from users reporting through the application, while a quarter (25%) said that they have heard about errors from users sharing these issues on social media. Another 17% said media coverage clued them in about errors in their software, while more than a fifth (21%) said they heard about them from their CEO.

Nearly a third of the survey group (31%) said that manually responding to errors makes them feel frustrated, while more than a fifth (22%) said they feel overwhelmed when using manual processes to address errors in software. Nearly as many (17%) said it leads to burnout. More than a tenth (12%) said it elicits feelings of resentment, and 7% said it makes them want to quit their jobs.

Nearly two-thirds of all developers said they would rather do an unpleasant activity than fix errors, including pay bills (26%), go to the dentist (21%) and spend time with in-laws (20%).

Rollbar clearly has a vested interest in convincing developers to increase reliance on AI to surface errors in code. The productivity paradox holds that, the more application code developers write, the more time they spend fixing existing code than writing new code. Most developers have a lot better things to do with their time than manually combing through lines of code looking for those errors. In fact, the problem is, many of them simply don’t have the time required to catch all the issues before an application makes it into a production environment.

Recent Posts By Mike Vizard
  • TechStrongCon: Time to Build an Army of Citizen Developers
  • Buildkite Adds Analytics Tools to Identify Flaky App Tests
  • Survey Reveals High Cost of Application Modernization
More from Mike Vizard
Related Posts
  • Survey: Fixing Bugs Stealing Time from Development
  • Rollbar Rounds Out First Half of 2021 With Strong Growth and New Features
  • Technical Debt: When It Works and When It Doesn’t
    Related Categories
  • Application Performance Management/Monitoring
  • Blogs
  • Continuous Testing
  • DevOps Culture
  • Features
    Related Topics
  • application code
  • bug fixes
  • custom software development
  • Rollbar
Show more
Show less

Filed Under: Application Performance Management/Monitoring, Blogs, Continuous Testing, DevOps Culture, Features Tagged With: application code, bug fixes, custom software development, Rollbar

Sponsored Content
Featured eBook
The State of the CI/CD/ARA Market: Convergence

The State of the CI/CD/ARA Market: Convergence

The entire CI/CD/ARA market has been in flux almost since its inception. No sooner did we find a solution to a given problem than a better idea came along. The level of change has been intensified by increasing use, which has driven changes to underlying tools. Changes in infrastructure, such ... Read More
« Moogsoft Joins the Datadog Marketplace to Instantly Deliver Actionable Insights About IT Incidents
Evaluation Forms »

TechStrong TV – Live

Click full-screen to enable volume control
Watch latest episodes and shows

Upcoming Webinars

Continuous Deployment
Monday, July 11, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT
Using External Tables to Store and Query Data on MinIO With SQL Server 2022
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 - 11:00 am EDT
Goldilocks and the 3 Levels of Cardinality: Getting it Just Right
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 - 1:00 pm EDT

Latest from DevOps.com

Rust in Linux 5.20 | Deepfake Hiring Fraud | IBM WFH ‘New Normal’
June 30, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Moving From Lift-and-Shift to Cloud-Native
June 30, 2022 | Alexander Gallagher
The Two Types of Code Vulnerabilities
June 30, 2022 | Casey Bisson
Common RDS Misconfigurations DevSecOps Teams Should Know
June 29, 2022 | Gad Rosenthal
Quick! Define DevSecOps: Let’s Call it Development Security
June 29, 2022 | Don Macvittie

Get The Top Stories of the Week

  • View DevOps.com Privacy Policy
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Download Free eBook

The Automated Enterprise
The Automated Enterprise

Most Read on DevOps.com

What Is User Acceptance Testing and Why Is it so Important?
June 27, 2022 | Ron Stefanski
Rust in Linux 5.20 | Deepfake Hiring Fraud | IBM WFH ‘New No...
June 30, 2022 | Richi Jennings
Chip-to-Cloud IoT: A Step Toward Web3
June 28, 2022 | Nahla Davies
DevOps Connect: DevSecOps — Building a Modern Cybersecurity ...
June 27, 2022 | Veronica Haggar
The Two Types of Code Vulnerabilities
June 30, 2022 | Casey Bisson

On-Demand Webinars

DevOps.com Webinar ReplaysDevOps.com Webinar Replays
  • Home
  • About DevOps.com
  • Meet our Authors
  • Write for DevOps.com
  • Media Kit
  • Sponsor Info
  • Copyright
  • TOS
  • Privacy Policy

Powered by Techstrong Group, Inc.

© 2022 ·Techstrong Group, Inc.All rights reserved.