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A Tale of Two Cities: Software Developers Working from Home During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Denae Ford, Margaret-Anne Storey, Thomas Zimmermann, Christian Bird, Sonia Jaffe, Chandra Maddila, Jenna L. Butler, Brian Houck, Nachiappan Nagappan
TL;DR
The paper asks how developers’ productivity changed during the abrupt pandemic shift from office work to working from home, and what benefits and challenges they experienced. Using two surveys totaling 3,634 responses, it finds sharply dichotomous experiences shaped by shared factors and personal contexts, while identifying improvements organizations can make. The study’s scope is limited to one company and pandemic remote work.
Problem
Prior studies did not capture large-company developers’ experiences during an overnight, pandemic-forced shift from mostly co-located work to working from home.
Method
The study uses two surveys conducted weeks apart, supplemented by thematic qualitative analysis and statistical analysis of reported experiences.
Results
Developers reported dichotomous experiences: the same factors, including flexibility, family proximity, and commute changes, could be benefits for some and challenges for others.
Takeaways & Limitations
Organizations can use these varied experiences and reported improvements to support developers working from home now or in future hybrid models.
Takeaways & Limitations
The findings come from a single company and are not claimed to represent all software engineers or companies.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core and has provoked an overnight exodus of developers that normally worked in an office setting to working from home. The magnitude of this shift and the factors that have accompanied this new unplanned work setting go beyond what the software engineering community has previously understood to be remote work. To find out how developers and their productivity were affected, we distributed two surveys (with a combined total of 3,634 responses that answered all required questions) -- weeks apart to understand the presence and prevalence of the benefits, challenges, and opportunities to improve this special circumstance of remote work. From our thematic qualitative analysis and statistical quantitative analysis, we find that there is a dichotomy of developer experiences influenced by many different factors (that for some are a benefit, while for others a challenge). For example, a benefit for some was being close to family members but for others having family members share their working space and interrupting their focus, was a challenge. Our surveys led to powerful narratives from respondents and revealed the scale at which these experiences exist to provide insights as to how the future of (pandemic) remote work can evolve.
1 INTRODUCTION
The pandemic abruptly moved many developers from co-located offices to working from home, exposing sharply different productivity experiences and benefits and challenges shaped by personal and work contexts. Two surveys examined these changes and identified organizational improvements for supporting remote work.
- Software engineering requires focused, uninterrupted work alongside coordination and collaboration, despite longstanding tools and examples supporting distributed development.
- Existing distributed-work studies often examined specific teams or system-trace outcomes rather than the overnight transition of large-company developers to pandemic working from home.
- The pandemic created a natural experiment in which some developers flourished at home while others did not fare as well.
- 3,634 responses from two surveys captured developers’ early and later experiences, including perceived productivity, benefits, challenges, and improvement opportunities.
- The same factors produced opposite experiences: flexibility, family proximity, and commute changes benefited some developers but challenged others.
- Organizations can support present or future hybrid remote work by recognizing varied developer experiences and acting on employees’ reported challenges.
2 BACKGROUND: DEVELOPER PERFORMANCE AND PRODUCTIVITY
Prior research linked developer productivity and perceived productivity to technical, organizational, environmental, and managerial factors. This study builds on that work while examining pandemic-specific influences such as children at home.
- System engineering activity metrics provide signals of developer activity and productivity, while performance and productivity are related organizational-behavior concepts.
- Developer productivity research spans technical factors and soft factors involving organizational culture and the working environment.
- Interruptions, context switches, work-environment quality, and manager effectiveness can shape developers’ perceived productivity.
- Earlier Microsoft research associated self-reported productivity satisfaction with job satisfaction, impactful work, autonomy, task completion, and work-environment quality.
- The present research revisits established productivity factors while allowing pandemic-specific factors, including children at home, to emerge.
3 METHODOLOGY
The study used two surveys to examine software engineers’ work-from-home experiences during the early COVID-19 pandemic, including productivity, benefits, challenges, and organizational recommendations. It combined open-ended responses, productivity ratings, and Lasso analysis while acknowledging survey, sampling, causal, and generalizability limitations.
- Study design: 1,369 responses came from Survey 1, while Survey 2 received 2,265 responses.Survey 1 was sent daily over five days to 5,000 employees; Survey 2 was sent weekly to 9,000 employees.
- Study design: Two anonymous surveys examined engineers’ pandemic work-from-home experiences, their prevalence, and effects on work.Survey 1 targeted Microsoft employees in King County; Survey 2 targeted full-time employees across the United States.
- Measures: The surveys measured productivity change with a five-point closed-answer scale followed by open-ended explanations.The productivity question compared work from home with working in the office.
- Analysis: Lasso analysis identified benefits and challenges most strongly related to productivity and examined interactions among explanatory variables.The method was selected for settings with many explanatory variables and uses variable selection to support prediction and interpretability.
- Limitations: The study does not claim that findings from one company represent all software engineers and companies.The researchers note that single-company sampling controlled some contextual factors but limits external validity.
- Limitations: Survey relationships are correlational, and the study did not include race, gender, or age demographics.The authors also note possible nonresponse and self-selection bias and limitations from measuring perceived productivity with one question.
4 CHANGE IN PRODUCTIVITY (RQ1)
The study compared engineers’ self-reported productivity while working from home with productivity in the office across two surveys. Most respondents reported stable or improved productivity, but substantial minorities reported declines, with lower productivity becoming less common over time.
- Overall change: 62%-68% of participants in both surveys reported productivity that had not changed or had improved compared with working in the office.This majority included respondents reporting either unchanged or higher productivity.
- Overall change: 38% of Survey 1 respondents reported lower productivity, compared with 30% in Survey 2’s final week.The decline in reported lower productivity suggests some participants restored productivity toward prior levels, though not all did.
- Change over time: Initially, 38% reported lower productivity versus 30% higher productivity; later, 37% reported higher productivity versus 32% lower productivity.The direction of the balance between higher and lower self-reported productivity changed between surveys.
- Subgroup differences: 32% of people managers and 35% of individual contributors reported being more productive, with no statistically significant difference.Software engineers reported 31% more productive, while program managers reported 40%, a statistically significant difference.
- Individual variation: At the individual level, productivity could decrease, remain unchanged, or improve depending on respondents’ challenges and benefits.The authors use this variation to motivate subsequent qualitative analysis of work-from-home experiences.
5 BENEFITS (RQ2)
Engineers reported diverse benefits from working from home, including time savings, flexibility, improved focus, greater control over their environment, and proximity to family. These benefits were generally associated with unchanged or improved productivity, although experiences and associations varied across respondents and roles.
- Benefits experienced: Commute time saved supported additional work, family time, exercise, sleep, and rest.Respondents reported an average daily round-trip commute of 67 minutes, with some reporting more than four hours.
- Benefits experienced: Schedule flexibility enabled respondents to plan work around chores, deliveries, exercise, and other non-work activities.Some respondents described switching briefly to household tasks and returning to work while builds ran or after cooking.
- Benefits experienced: Fewer interruptions, quieter surroundings, and greater control over interruptions helped some respondents sustain longer periods of focus.Respondents also described remote meetings and digital communication as easier to manage than in-person interruptions.
- Benefits experienced: Home work environments offered greater comfort, privacy, space, natural light, and control over temperature or decorations than offices.Respondents connected these environmental differences with improved mood, concentration, creativity, or productivity.
- Benefits experienced: 96% reported less commute time, while respondents also frequently reported saving money, flexible work hours, closeness to family, and more comfortable clothing.The five most prevalent benefits were less time on commute (96%), spending less money (84%), flexible work hours (81%), closer to family (81%), and more comfortable clothing (80%).
- Benefits and productivity: +42.6 percentage points was the highest productivity delta for better focus time, followed by +35.4 for fewer distractions or interruptions and +34.1 for better work environment.Almost all benefits had positive productivity deltas; more breaks had a nonsignificant −1.3-point delta, and less commute time showed no statistically significant difference.
6 CHALLENGES (RQ3)
Developers reported diverse work-from-home challenges involving connectivity, family proximity, distractions, workspaces, communication, routines, and physical activity. These challenges were generally associated with lower reported productivity, especially when interruptions, motivation, home environments, or childcare were major issues.
- Challenges experienced: Connectivity problems were among the most frequent challenges, involving remote desktops, special-access workstations, VPN tools, and internet bandwidth.Respondents described slow connections, disruptions, crashes, and disconnections affecting remote work.
- Challenges experienced: Family members, housemates, children, and pets changed work habits by creating interruptions and expectations that competed with focused work.Some respondents found it difficult to remain mentally focused while physically present with family.
- Challenges experienced: Communication became slower and more effortful because contacting colleagues required online chats or email instead of walking to their offices.One respondent estimated that standard communication, questions, and collaboration took about 2–3 times as long.
- Challenges experienced: Home workspaces introduced financial and space constraints, including improvised furniture, limited screens, and difficulty creating an ergonomic office.Respondents also described distractions and workspace setup as problems resembling those encountered in open offices.
- Challenges experienced: Lost transition time and reduced movement blurred work-life boundaries and contributed to prolonged sitting and longer working hours.Respondents described working into the evening and losing movement between physical meeting locations.
- Challenges and productivity: –36.5 percentage points was the largest reported productivity reduction for more distractions and interruptions, followed by –33.7 for lack of motivation and –32.6 for poor home work environment.All challenges were associated with lower productivity, and all but two differences were statistically significant.
- Challenges and productivity: People were 40.9% less likely to report unchanged or increased productivity when distractions and interruptions were a major issue.Other significant associations included lack of motivation (–26.4%), difficult communication (–13.1%), and connectivity problems (–11.9%).
- Challenges and productivity: The combination of less time to complete work and lack of childcare was associated with a 34.0% lower probability of reporting unchanged or increased productivity.Less time to complete work alone was selected by Lasso but had a nonsignificant coefficient.
7 IMPROVEMENTS (RQ4)
Respondents proposed organizational improvements focused on equipment, connectivity, communication tools, ergonomic workspaces, guidance, and continued remote-work support. Hardware, connectivity, and home-office stipends were the most frequently selected improvements in Survey 2.
- Survey 1 improvements: Hardware was the most frequently requested improvement in Survey 1 and was also identified as a key work-from-home challenge.Respondents requested larger or multiple monitors, more powerful workstations, and peripherals such as mice, keyboards, and headphones.
- Survey 1 improvements: Respondents frequently requested better internet connectivity or improved VPN access, although ensuring reliable home connectivity could be expensive.Multiple people sharing home bandwidth was identified as one constraint.
- Survey 1 improvements: A stipend or budget for home offices was requested to purchase equipment such as sit/stand desks, ergonomic chairs, monitors, and refreshments.This was the third most frequently selected improvement, with slightly more requests from engineers reporting lower productivity.
- Survey 1 improvements: Respondents proposed communication-tool improvements including whiteboard support, multi-person desktop sharing, split-window sharing, and developer-specific meeting features.These requests reflected reliance on communication tools for remote collaboration and meetings.
- Survey 1 improvements: Participants suggested ergonomic furniture, exercise-support options, and workspace guidance to address home-office limitations and reduced physical activity.Examples included ergonomic setup recommendations, stipends, and treadmill desks.
- Survey 1 improvements: Support for full or partial remote work after the pandemic was proposed, with some respondents reporting that working from home helped their productivity.Suggestions included designing technology stacks to support remote work regularly and offering equipment for both office and home locations.
- Survey 2 improvements: Among respondents reporting decreased productivity, connectivity improvements were selected by 45.8% versus 35.5% reporting increased productivity.Communication-tool improvements and work-from-home guidance were also more frequently selected by the lower-productivity group.
8 DISCUSSION
The discussion highlights divergent work-from-home experiences and cautions that organization-level productivity trends can conceal individual and collaborative difficulties. Pandemic-specific findings also have a limited geographic and organizational scope.
- 8 DISCUSSION: The study concerns engineers at a large multinational software company working in the United States during the pandemic.Its findings should therefore be read within that organizational, geographic, and pandemic context.
- 8 DISCUSSION: Work-from-home experiences diverged because personal contexts and work characteristics made the same factor beneficial for some engineers and challenging for others.Examples included focus, autonomy, work environment, meetings, childcare, and work-life balance.
- 8.1 The Yin and Yang of Working from Home: Focus, autonomy, work environment, and meetings each produced opposing productivity experiences among developers.Some developers reported more focus, motivation, comfort, or shorter meetings, while others reported interruptions, reduced motivation, poorer environments, or meeting overload.
- 8 DISCUSSION: Company-level engineering data showed no statistically significant productivity drop, with pull requests stable or slightly improved on average.The analysis examined pull requests and pull requests per developer across Microsoft regions.
- 8 DISCUSSION: Aggregate system data can miss collaboration, communication, visibility, planning, and creative-work limitations reported by developers.Respondents described reduced awareness of team activity and fears that supportive work could become invisible; the paper calls for longer-term study.
9 RELATED WORK
Related work shows that remote development can provide flexibility and distributed collaboration while creating challenges for trust, coordination, well-being, and home working conditions. Pandemic studies likewise report mostly stable or mixed productivity, with effects varying across developers and projects.
- 9.1 Working Remotely: Remote work offers flexibility and access to globally distributed perspectives, but trust and social capital require more intentional communication and relationship-building.In-person proximity supports unplanned interactions, whereas remote interaction can make trust harder to establish.
- 9 RELATED WORK: Some research found pandemic work-from-home productivity and well-being suffered, particularly for women, parents, and people with disabilities.The study connected well-being and productivity and recommended organizational support for internet, equipment, and employee needs.
- 9 RELATED WORK: Prior pandemic studies reported conflicting productivity patterns, including stable activity, slight increases, negative changes for large projects, and differences among developers.Findings varied across GitHub, Baidu, and other organizational settings.
- 9 RELATED WORK: Approximately 85% of developers in one study reported productivity about the same, while others were more or less productive.Higher productivity was associated with focus, flexibility, and saved transportation time; lower productivity involved home demands, self-discipline, and reduced collaboration.
- 9 RELATED WORK: Other studies found activity continued without significant interruption, while developers changed routines, spent less time in meetings and breaks, or worked longer days.Longer workdays were identified as a possible burnout risk.
10 CONCLUSION
The conclusion presents pandemic remote work as a disruptive transition whose benefits and challenges vary across developers. It argues that the study offers both quantitative associations and qualitative narratives to inform organizational responses, while recognizing that future hybrid models may differ.
- 10 CONCLUSION: Future hybrid work models are likely to introduce challenges and benefits that differ from those observed during pandemic remote work.The authors describe their study as only a start in understanding the pandemic’s implications for software developers.
- 10 CONCLUSION: The study characterizes pandemic remote work as a “tale of two cities,” with differential experiences even where developer and remote-work support existed.Its contribution combines quantitative insights about productivity associations with deeper narratives from developers.
- 10 CONCLUSION: The study’s recommended improvements provide organizations and managers with insights for supporting developers during disruptive changes in development work.The authors frame these lessons as part of a broader effort to understand the industry’s transition.
A CODEBOOK
The codebook defines thematic categories for analyzing developers’ open-ended reports about productivity, benefits, and challenges of working from home. Table 7 counts and ranks code occurrences across four Survey 1 questions, but those frequencies do not measure importance or productivity impact.
- A CODEBOOK: Codes covered work factors including collaboration, meetings, social connections, communication gaps, focus, motivation, productivity, connectivity, and work-life balance.The definitions distinguish formal from informal communication and describe focus, interruptions, and productivity as separate coding areas.
- A CODEBOOK: Codes also captured personal and household conditions such as family, childcare, pets, breaks, healthy habits, commuting, food, and housework.These categories include both benefits and burdens associated with working from home.
- A CODEBOOK: Environmental and equipment codes covered comfort, workspace, ergonomics, furniture, hardware, and access to natural light or privacy.The codebook distinguishes physical environment, ergonomic furniture, general furniture, and hardware.