AI has the potential to fix the developer experience – here’s now to make it happen (www.techradar.com)

New research—framed by Atlassian’s DevOps leadership and reported on TechRadar Pro—argues that AI can vastly improve developer experience, but only if it’s aimed at real workplace friction instead of assumed pain points. The study uncovers a paradox: AI tools are already saving developers more than 10 hours a week, yet organizational inefficiencies (fragmented workflows, poor documentation, heavy context‑switching, tech debt) cost about the same amount of time. Developers spend just 16% of their time coding and lose at least six hours weekly searching for information; 68% say leadership doesn’t understand their day‑to‑day challenges. That misalignment means many execs are deploying coding assistants to accelerate work that isn’t the main bottleneck. Technically, the biggest ROI for AI lies in knowledge discovery, documentation automation, and workflow orchestration rather than raw code generation. Practical uses include auto‑writing and organizing docs, enriching context for search, and reducing tool switching; teams with easy self‑serve information are reported to be 4.4× more productive. The recommendation: leaders should pair direct developer engagement (retrospectives, surveys, skip‑levels) with targeted AI pilots and replicable case studies to close the insight gap. AI isn’t a magic wand—applied to the right friction points it can unlock sustained productivity and measurable business ROI.