How Software Engineers and Leaders Spend Their Time
3 Minute Read
When I coach software engineering executives and leaders one of the concepts we talk about is how they budget and spend their time. I ask them to allocate 100% of their work-focused time to four categories—IN, ON, AROUND, and AWAY—defined this way:
IN: everything the team does to deliver and manage software systems. For example: designing, planning, coding, testing, deploying, configuring, operating, etc.
ON: improving the skills and capabilities of individuals and teams. For example: 1on1 meetings, designing team processes, conducting retrospectives, writing standards, planning a team outing, etc.
AROUND: influencing the context in which the team operates. For example: meeting with other team leaders, defining organizational standards, contributing to business strategy, managing expectations of executives, etc.
AWAY: improving personal skills and capabilities, and thinking about how to use time ON and AROUND the team. For example: learning how to communicate more effectively, considering strategies to improve project planning processes, considering personal development goals and team objectives, etc.
By “work-focused” I mean any time they are spending for their employer. If they are sitting on a dock with a fishing pole, thinking about how to help one of their team members get ready for a promotion, that counts as work-focused time.
Although I have had this conversation with many leaders, I don’t normally capture the numbers. In part, that’s because I don’t think there is a “correct” proportion. But mostly, it’s because the process of thoughtfully and deliberately budgeting and spending time is far more important and useful.
That said, I am still very curious about how engineering leaders spend their time and about how the allocation changes as they advance in their role. So I created a survey to learn more.
Here are the results based on 65 responses.
Role n IN ON AR AW ----------------------------------- Engineer 6 68 18 7 7 Senior Engineer 11 57 15 17 11 Princpal/Staff 0 .. .. .. .. Manager 16 38 27 24 11 Middle Manager 12 18 28 40 14 Executive 17 19 31 39 11
As expected, Engineers and Senior Engineers spend most of their time IN and ON. I was surprised to see Engineers say they spend more time ON than Senior Engineers do. The change from Engineer to Senior Engineer seems to bring a shift toward significantly more AROUND , and AWAY. (NOTE: There are no responses from Principal/Staff Engineers yet.)
The progression from Engineering Manager to Middle Manager to Executive is also interesting. I expected IN time to trend toward zero for Middle Managers and Executives. So far the responses show upper management spending a lot more time IN than I expected. ON time trends up as expected, and the same for AROUND. The AWAY time trend is puzzling.
Keep in mind that the answers are self-reported estimates, the sample sizes are small, and the standard deviations are large. So precise numbers aren’t really meaningful, and there isn’t a “correct” allocation of time. Until there is more data, I intend to use the results to spark conversation and thought. In the second post of this series I will share how people believe they SHOULD spend their time to provide the most value in their current role. Hint: it’s not the same as how people say they DO spend their time.
How DO you spend your time, and how SHOULD you spend your time? Please take 2 minutes to fill out the survey if you haven’t already responded. It is completely anonymous.
This post is Part 1 of a multi-part series:
IN, ON, AROUND, AWAY: How Software Engineers and Leaders Spend Their Time (This Post)
IN, ON, AROUND, AWAY: How Software Engineers and Leaders SHOULD Spend Their Time
