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.
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