The debugging bill just outgrew the writing bill. teams logged 16.9 hours a week on debugging…
the debugging bill just outgrew the writing bill. teams logged 16.9 hours a week on debugging against 9.8 hours writing code, per the oct 7 infoq survey, as ai code raises the comprehension gap.
the hourglass is now the bottleneck.
Context
InfoQ reported on Oct 7, 2026 on a survey by Coleman Parkes, commissioned by Undo, which asked 300 senior engineering leaders about AI coding agents. It found the work has shifted toward debugging, code comprehension and maintenance, creating a comprehension gap.
Debugly and Oossa report the same split: 16.9 hours a week debugging against 9.8 hours producing code, about 42 percent of the working week.
The 16.9 and 9.8 hour figures and the Oct 7 InfoQ date match the sources. The sample is 300 leaders on mission-critical codebases, mostly C/C++, and the survey was commissioned by Undo, a debugging vendor, so 'teams' here means that group, not all teams. Whether the same split holds outside that group was not seen in the excerpts read, so unsupported here, not refuted.
'the hourglass is now the bottleneck' is the author's opinion.
Related work
- InfoQ: Survey finds AI-generated code increases debugging and failure rates ↗Primary report.
- Undo 2026 research report (PDF) ↗The survey itself.
- Debugly: Debugging is now 42 percent of the working week ↗Summary of the figures.
Watch next
- Read the Undo report for how the hours were measured.
Sources
- InfoQ, Oct 7, 2026infoq.com
- Debugly, Oct 8, 2026debugly.dev
- Oossa, Oct 7, 2026oossa.com
Provenance
The note above is reproduced unedited from the original post, first published on Threads on 10 October 2026 at 21:17 IST. Sources are the papers and datasets the note draws on.
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