For VPs & Directors3 min

Developer Time Lost Calculator

Calculate how much time your team loses to context switching, tool sprawl, meetings, and interruptions. See the true cost of productivity drains.

Your Development Environment

Tools & Apps Used DailyIDE, Slack, Jira, GitHub, email, etc.

Context Switches per DayTask-to-task transitions

Meeting Hours per WeekStandups, 1:1s, planning, reviews

Interruptions per DaySlack pings, taps on shoulder, etc.

Team SizeNumber of developers

Average Developer SalaryAnnual, fully loaded

Time Lost Analysis

Critical Impact

109% of time lost

Each developer loses 43.7 hours per week to productivity drains

Hours Lost / Week

43.7

per developer

Team Hours / Month

1891

10 developers

Annual Cost

$1637K

team total

Features Not Shipped

236

per month

What This Really Means

👥Your team loses 21,833.333 hours per year — equivalent to 10.9 full-time engineers working on nothing productive.

💸That's $1,637,500 in salary spent on context switching, tool overhead, and interruptions.

🚀With this time recovered, your team could ship ~2832 more small features per year.

💼You could hire 10 more engineers — or get the same output from your current team with better tooling.

Where Time Goes

Meetings27%

Context Switching44%

Interruptions14%

Tool Sprawl14%

How to Reduce Time Lost

•Batch similar tasks. Group code reviews, respond to Slack in batches, and protect focus time on your calendar.
•Measure and track. Use an engineering intelligence platform to identify bottlenecks and track improvements over time.

Research Behind This Calculator

Context switching cost: Microsoft Research found it takes an average of 23 minutes to refocus after an interruption.

Tool sprawl: Port's 2025 State of Internal Developer Portals report found developers lose 6-15 hours per week navigating up to 8 different tools.

Meeting overhead: Atlassian research shows the average developer spends 31 hours per month in unproductive meetings.

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