Developers Tasks Performance during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, software engineers' daily life was disrupted and abruptly forced into remote working from home. Across one exploratory and one confirmatory studies (N = 482), we tested whether a typical working day is different to pre-pandemic times and whether specific tasks are associated with well-being and productivity. To explore the subject domain, we first run a two-wave longitudinal study, where we found that the time software engineers spent doing specific tasks (e.g., coding, bugfixing, helping others) from home was similar to pre-pandemic times. Also, the amount of time developers spent on each activity was unrelated to their general well-being, perceived productivity, and other variables such as basic needs. In our confirmatory investigation, we found that task satisfaction and productivity are predicted by task-specific variables (e.g., how much autonomy software engineers had) but not by task-independent variables such as resilience or a good work-life balance. Additionally, we found that satisfaction and autonomy were significantly above average when software engineers were helping others and lower when they were bugfixing. In contrast, autonomy was lower during meetings and when writing emails. We discuss implications for software engineers, management, and methodological implications.