6 ms·

At my work, here is a typical breakdown of time spent by work areas for a software engineer. Which of these areas can be sped up by using agentic coding? 05%:

by zkmon 1y ago

At my work, here is a typical breakdown of time spent by work areas for a software engineer. Which of these areas can be sped up by using agentic coding? 05%: Making code changes 10%: Running build pipelines 20%: Learning about changed process and people via zoom calls, teams chat and emails 15%: Raising incident tickets for issues outside of my control 20%: Submitting forms, attending reviews and chasing approvals 20%: Reaching out to people for dependencies, following up 10%: Finding and reading up some obscure and conflicting internal wiki page, which is likely to be outdated

sandos 1y ago
Very similar to my job, although its very variable: some weeks I do write / debug code 80-90% of the time.
mhl47 1y ago
In theory, nearly all of them? Many of those things could be improved today without AI but e.g. raising Incidents for issues outside of your control could also give you a suggestion already that you just have to tick off. Not saying we are there yet but hard to imagine it's not possible.
- zkmon 1y ago
  Raising incidents is not about suggestions. Things like build pipelines run into issues, someone from Ops need to investigate, and maybe bump up some pods or apply some config changes on their end. Or some wiki page has conflicting information, someone need to update it with correct information after checking with the relevant other people, policies and standards. The other people might be on vacation and their delegate misguides as they are not aware of the recently changed process. It's probably messier than you think.
theptip 1y ago
In the short term, I think humans will be doing more of technical / product alignment, f2f calls (especially with non-technical folks), digesting illegible requirements, etc. Coding, debugging builds, paperwork, doc chasing are all tasks that AI is improving on rapidly.
libraryofbabel 1y ago
Really though? That’s only 2 hours per week writing code. It’s true to say that time writing code is usually a minority of a developer’s work time, and so an AI that makes coding 20% faster may only translate to a modest dev productivity boost. But 5% time spent coding is a sign of serious organizational disfunction.
- varispeed 1y ago
  Why would it be? I'd say it's the opposite. I someone keeps fiddling with the code majority of the time, it means they don't know what they are doing.
  - zelphirkalt 1y ago
    New requirements, new features, old bugs being fixed, refactoring code to improve maintainability, writing tests for edge cases previously not discovered, adapting code for different kinds of deployment, ... Many reasons to touch existing code.
    - varispeed 1y ago
      Depending on the workplace, refactoring or bug fixing is not something you just do. You have to create a ticket, meet with other members, discuss approach, scope, prioritise and only play when it is ready to pick up. The touching of the code is small fraction of that time. Still, to write few hundred lines, doesn't take a whole week.
      - zelphirkalt 1y ago
        A few hundred lines of CRUD, maybe not, a few hundred lines of algorithmic code or hard business logic (rare)? That can take more than a week.
- rwmj 1y ago
  It doesn't if you have to manually check all that code. (Or even worse, you dump the code into a pull request and force someone else to manually check it - please do not do that.)
blitzar 1y ago
1x dev - only adds up to 100%
rwmj 1y ago
We must have the same job! Generating code is a miniscule part of my job. We have the same level of organizational disfunction. Mostly the work part involves long investigations of customer bugs and long face to face calls with customers - I'm only getting the stuff that stumped level 1 and level 2 support. I actually tried to use Qwen3[1] to analyse customer cases and it was worse than useless at it. [1] We can't use any online model as these bug reports contain large amounts of PII, customer data, etc.
khalic 1y ago
How about you find out for yourself? Keep a chat window or an agent open and ask it how it could help with your tasks. My git messages and gitlab tickets are being written by AI for a year now, way better than anything I would half heartedly do on my side, really good commit messages too. Claude even reminds me to create/update the ticket.
- paffdragon 1y ago
  I find the commits written by AI often inadequate, as they mostly just describe what is already in the diff, but miss the background on why was the change needed, why this approach was chosen, etc, the important stuff...
  - khalic 1y ago
    Then ask it to write the commit differently, or you can explain why in the prompt. Edit: I start by creating the ticket with Claude+terminal tool, the title and descriptions gives context info to the llm, then we do the task, then commit and update the ticket
    - hansmayer 1y ago
      And in the time it takes to do all of that, the guy could have already written a meaningful commit message and be done with that issue for the day.
      - alwillis 1y ago
        And in the time it takes to do all of that, the guy could have already written a meaningful commit message and be done with that issue for the day. You only have to describe how you want commits written once and then the AI will just handle it. Is not that anyone of us can't write good commits, but humans get tired, lose focus, get interrupted, etc. Just in my short time using Claude Code, it generally writes pretty good commits; it often adds more detail than I normally would not because I'm not capable but because there's a certain amount of cognitive overhead when it comes to writing good commits and it gets harder as our mental energy decreases. I found this custom command [1] for Claude Code and it reminded me that there's no way a human can consistently do this every single time, perhaps a dozen times per day, unless they're doing nothing else--no meetings, no phone calls, etc. And we know that's not possible: [1]: https://github.com/qdhenry/Claude-Command-Suite/blob/main/.claude/commands/dev/git-status.md https://github.com/qdhenry/Claude-Command-Suite/blob/main/.c... # Git Status Command Show detailed git repository status *Command originally created by IndyDevDan (YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@indydevdan) / DislerH (GitHub: https://github.com/disler)* ## Instructions Analyze the current state of the git repository by performing the following steps: 1. *Run Git Status Commands* - Execute `git status` to see current working tree state - Run `git diff HEAD origin/main` to check differences with remote - Execute `git branch --show-current` to display current branch - Check for uncommitted changes and untracked files 2. *Analyze Repository State* - Identify staged vs unstaged changes - List any untracked files - Check if branch is ahead/behind remote - Review any merge conflicts if present 3. *Read Key Files* - Review README.md for project context - Check for any recent changes in important files - Understand project structure if needed 4. *Provide Summary* - Current branch and its relationship to main/master - Number of commits ahead/behind - List of modified files with change types - Any action items (commits needed, pulls required, etc.) This command helps developers quickly understand: - What changes are pending - The repository's sync status - Whether any actions are needed before continuing work Arguments: $ARGUMENTS
Lionga 1y ago
You can cut all of them in half by using agentic coding because afterwards 50% of your timer will be spend fixing prod issues from the "agentic code"
throwaw12 1y ago
"10% running build pipelines + 20% submitting forms" vs 5% making code changes? Are you in heavily regulated industry or dysfunctional organization? Most big tech optimize their build pipelines a lot to reduce commit to deploy (or validation/test process) which keeps engineers focus on the same task while problem/solution is fresh.
JimmaDaRustla 1y ago
Your place is work sucks Also, you're not making an argument against agentic coding, you're actually making an argument for it - you don't have time to code, so you need someone or something to code for you.
sannysanoff 1y ago
You should automate this, like i did. You're an engineer, no? Work around the digital bureaucracy. - Running build pipelines: make cli tool to initiate them, monitor them and notify you on completion/error (audio). Allows to chain multiple things. Run in background terminal. - Learning about changed process and people via zoom calls, teams chat and emails: pass logs of chats and emails to LLM with particular focus. Demand zoom calls transcripts published for that purposes (we use meet) - Raising incident tickets for issues outside of my control: automate this with agent: allow it to access as much as needed, and guide it with short guidance - all doable via claude code + custom MCP - Submitting forms, attending reviews and chasing approvals - best thing to automate. They want forms? They will have forms. Chasing approvals - fire and forget + queue management, same. - Reaching out to people for dependencies, following up: LLM as personal assistant is classic job. Code this away. - Finding and reading up some obscure and conflicting internal wiki page, which is likely to be outdated: index all data and put it into RAG, let agent dig deeper. Most of the time you spend is on scheduling micro-tasks, switching between them and maintaining unspoken queue of checking various saas frontends. Formalize micro-task management, automate endpoints, and delegate it to your own selfware (ad-hoc tools chain you vibe coded for yourself only, tailored for particular working environment). I do this all (almost) to automate away non-coding tasks. Life is fun again. Hope this helps.
logsr 1y ago
5% is pretty low but similar to what i have seen on low performing teams at 10K+ employee multinationals. this would also be why the vast majority of software today is bug ridden garbage that runs slower than the software we were using 20 years ago. agentic coding will not fix these systemic issues caused by organizational dysfunction. agentic coding will allow the software created by these companies to be rewritten from scratch for 1/100th the cost with better reliability and performance though. the resistance to AI adoption inside corporations that operate like this is intense and will probably intensify. it takes a combination of external competitive pressure, investor pressure, attrition, PE takeovers, etc, to grind down internal resistance, which takes years or decades depending on the situation.
- Too 1y ago
  > 1/100th the cost with better reliability and performance Cheaper yes. More reliable? Absolutely not. Not with today’s models at least.
joks 1y ago
Please name the company you work for so everyone can avoid it. That's insane, unless you're a lead engineer whose job is primarily to oversee things
stocksinsmocks 1y ago
If 95% of employee time is work coordination, then executive leadership needs to downsize aggressively. This is a comical example of Brooks Law. Likewise, your clients or customers should be outraged and demand proof that pricing reflects business value and $0.95 of every dollar they give your company isn’t wasted. There are so many problems in the world we need to stop cramming into the same bus.

by zkmon 1y ago

sandos 1y ago

Very similar to my job, although its very variable: some weeks I do write / debug code 80-90% of the time.

mhl47 1y ago

In theory, nearly all of them? Many of those things could be improved today without AI but e.g. raising Incidents for issues outside of your control could also give you a suggestion already that you just have to tick off. Not saying we are there yet but hard to imagine it's not possible.

zkmon 1y ago
Raising incidents is not about suggestions. Things like build pipelines run into issues, someone from Ops need to investigate, and maybe bump up some pods or apply some config changes on their end. Or some wiki page has conflicting information, someone need to update it with correct information after checking with the relevant other people, policies and standards. The other people might be on vacation and their delegate misguides as they are not aware of the recently changed process. It's probably messier than you think.

theptip 1y ago

In the short term, I think humans will be doing more of technical / product alignment, f2f calls (especially with non-technical folks), digesting illegible requirements, etc. Coding, debugging builds, paperwork, doc chasing are all tasks that AI is improving on rapidly.

libraryofbabel 1y ago

Really though? That’s only 2 hours per week writing code. It’s true to say that time writing code is usually a minority of a developer’s work time, and so an AI that makes coding 20% faster may only translate to a modest dev productivity boost. But 5% time spent coding is a sign of serious organizational disfunction.

varispeed 1y ago
Why would it be? I'd say it's the opposite. I someone keeps fiddling with the code majority of the time, it means they don't know what they are doing.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  New requirements, new features, old bugs being fixed, refactoring code to improve maintainability, writing tests for edge cases previously not discovered, adapting code for different kinds of deployment, ... Many reasons to touch existing code.
  - varispeed 1y ago
    Depending on the workplace, refactoring or bug fixing is not something you just do. You have to create a ticket, meet with other members, discuss approach, scope, prioritise and only play when it is ready to pick up. The touching of the code is small fraction of that time. Still, to write few hundred lines, doesn't take a whole week.
    - zelphirkalt 1y ago
      A few hundred lines of CRUD, maybe not, a few hundred lines of algorithmic code or hard business logic (rare)? That can take more than a week.
rwmj 1y ago
It doesn't if you have to manually check all that code. (Or even worse, you dump the code into a pull request and force someone else to manually check it - please do not do that.)

blitzar 1y ago

1x dev - only adds up to 100%

rwmj 1y ago

We must have the same job! Generating code is a miniscule part of my job. We have the same level of organizational disfunction. Mostly the work part involves long investigations of customer bugs and long face to face calls with customers - I'm only getting the stuff that stumped level 1 and level 2 support. I actually tried to use Qwen3[1] to analyse customer cases and it was worse than useless at it. [1] We can't use any online model as these bug reports contain large amounts of PII, customer data, etc.

khalic 1y ago

How about you find out for yourself? Keep a chat window or an agent open and ask it how it could help with your tasks. My git messages and gitlab tickets are being written by AI for a year now, way better than anything I would half heartedly do on my side, really good commit messages too. Claude even reminds me to create/update the ticket.

paffdragon 1y ago
I find the commits written by AI often inadequate, as they mostly just describe what is already in the diff, but miss the background on why was the change needed, why this approach was chosen, etc, the important stuff...
- khalic 1y ago
  Then ask it to write the commit differently, or you can explain why in the prompt. Edit: I start by creating the ticket with Claude+terminal tool, the title and descriptions gives context info to the llm, then we do the task, then commit and update the ticket
  - hansmayer 1y ago
    And in the time it takes to do all of that, the guy could have already written a meaningful commit message and be done with that issue for the day.
    - alwillis 1y ago
      And in the time it takes to do all of that, the guy could have already written a meaningful commit message and be done with that issue for the day. You only have to describe how you want commits written once and then the AI will just handle it. Is not that anyone of us can't write good commits, but humans get tired, lose focus, get interrupted, etc. Just in my short time using Claude Code, it generally writes pretty good commits; it often adds more detail than I normally would not because I'm not capable but because there's a certain amount of cognitive overhead when it comes to writing good commits and it gets harder as our mental energy decreases. I found this custom command [1] for Claude Code and it reminded me that there's no way a human can consistently do this every single time, perhaps a dozen times per day, unless they're doing nothing else--no meetings, no phone calls, etc. And we know that's not possible: [1]: https://github.com/qdhenry/Claude-Command-Suite/blob/main/.claude/commands/dev/git-status.md https://github.com/qdhenry/Claude-Command-Suite/blob/main/.c... # Git Status Command Show detailed git repository status *Command originally created by IndyDevDan (YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@indydevdan) / DislerH (GitHub: https://github.com/disler)* ## Instructions Analyze the current state of the git repository by performing the following steps: 1. *Run Git Status Commands* - Execute `git status` to see current working tree state - Run `git diff HEAD origin/main` to check differences with remote - Execute `git branch --show-current` to display current branch - Check for uncommitted changes and untracked files 2. *Analyze Repository State* - Identify staged vs unstaged changes - List any untracked files - Check if branch is ahead/behind remote - Review any merge conflicts if present 3. *Read Key Files* - Review README.md for project context - Check for any recent changes in important files - Understand project structure if needed 4. *Provide Summary* - Current branch and its relationship to main/master - Number of commits ahead/behind - List of modified files with change types - Any action items (commits needed, pulls required, etc.) This command helps developers quickly understand: - What changes are pending - The repository's sync status - Whether any actions are needed before continuing work Arguments: $ARGUMENTS

Lionga 1y ago

You can cut all of them in half by using agentic coding because afterwards 50% of your timer will be spend fixing prod issues from the "agentic code"

throwaw12 1y ago

"10% running build pipelines + 20% submitting forms" vs 5% making code changes? Are you in heavily regulated industry or dysfunctional organization? Most big tech optimize their build pipelines a lot to reduce commit to deploy (or validation/test process) which keeps engineers focus on the same task while problem/solution is fresh.

JimmaDaRustla 1y ago

Your place is work sucks Also, you're not making an argument against agentic coding, you're actually making an argument for it - you don't have time to code, so you need someone or something to code for you.

sannysanoff 1y ago

You should automate this, like i did. You're an engineer, no? Work around the digital bureaucracy. - Running build pipelines: make cli tool to initiate them, monitor them and notify you on completion/error (audio). Allows to chain multiple things. Run in background terminal. - Learning about changed process and people via zoom calls, teams chat and emails: pass logs of chats and emails to LLM with particular focus. Demand zoom calls transcripts published for that purposes (we use meet) - Raising incident tickets for issues outside of my control: automate this with agent: allow it to access as much as needed, and guide it with short guidance - all doable via claude code + custom MCP - Submitting forms, attending reviews and chasing approvals - best thing to automate. They want forms? They will have forms. Chasing approvals - fire and forget + queue management, same. - Reaching out to people for dependencies, following up: LLM as personal assistant is classic job. Code this away. - Finding and reading up some obscure and conflicting internal wiki page, which is likely to be outdated: index all data and put it into RAG, let agent dig deeper. Most of the time you spend is on scheduling micro-tasks, switching between them and maintaining unspoken queue of checking various saas frontends. Formalize micro-task management, automate endpoints, and delegate it to your own selfware (ad-hoc tools chain you vibe coded for yourself only, tailored for particular working environment). I do this all (almost) to automate away non-coding tasks. Life is fun again. Hope this helps.

logsr 1y ago

5% is pretty low but similar to what i have seen on low performing teams at 10K+ employee multinationals. this would also be why the vast majority of software today is bug ridden garbage that runs slower than the software we were using 20 years ago. agentic coding will not fix these systemic issues caused by organizational dysfunction. agentic coding will allow the software created by these companies to be rewritten from scratch for 1/100th the cost with better reliability and performance though. the resistance to AI adoption inside corporations that operate like this is intense and will probably intensify. it takes a combination of external competitive pressure, investor pressure, attrition, PE takeovers, etc, to grind down internal resistance, which takes years or decades depending on the situation.

Too 1y ago
> 1/100th the cost with better reliability and performance Cheaper yes. More reliable? Absolutely not. Not with today’s models at least.

joks 1y ago

Please name the company you work for so everyone can avoid it. That's insane, unless you're a lead engineer whose job is primarily to oversee things

stocksinsmocks 1y ago

If 95% of employee time is work coordination, then executive leadership needs to downsize aggressively. This is a comical example of Brooks Law. Likewise, your clients or customers should be outraged and demand proof that pricing reflects business value and $0.95 of every dollar they give your company isn’t wasted. There are so many problems in the world we need to stop cramming into the same bus.