The productive software engineer with Dr. Tom Zimmermann Learn More

If you're in software development, Dr. Tom Zimmermann, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, wants you to be more productive, and he's here to help. Well, while productivity can be hard to measure, his research in the Empirical Software Engineering group is attempting to do just that by using insights from actual data, rather than just gut feelings, to improve the software development process. On today's podcast, Dr. Zimmermann talks about why we need to rethink productivity in software engineering, explains why work environments matter, tells us how AI and machine learning are impacting traditional software workflows, and reveals the difference between a typical day and a good day in the life of a software developer, and what it would take to make a good day typical! Tom Zimmermann: If you think of a typical software engineer at Microsoft, they spend about half of a day on development related activities, and the other half of the day is spent on other activities like coordinating with other people in meetings, sending emails… So, there's actually not that much time that they can spend on writing code, and the time they spend writing code, on a good day, it's actually only 96 minutes, and on a bad day it's, on average, 66 minutes. And half an hour writing code actually can make the difference between a bad and a good workday. Host: You're listening to the Microsoft Research Podcast, a show that brings you closer to the cutting-edge of technology research and the scientists behind it. Host: If you're in software development, Dr. Tom Zimmermann, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, wants you to be more productive, and he's here to help. Well, while productivity can be hard to measure, his research in the Empirical Software Engineering group is attempting to do just that by using insights from actual data, rather than just gut feelings, to improve the software development process. On today's podcast, Dr. Zimmermann talks about why we need to rethink productivity in software engineering, explains why work environments matter, tells us how AI and machine learning are impacting traditional software workflows, and reveals the difference between a typical day and a good day in the life of a software developer, and what it would take to make a good day typical! Host: You have a cool nickname. Why do people call you that? Tom Zimmermann: So, it goes back to when I started at Microsoft.