AI writes half the code for 42% of devs, but hours don’t shrink
The early narrative around AI coding tools was simple: write less code, free up time. The data from BairesDev’s Q3 2026 Dev Barometer tells a more complicated story.
What the survey found
The quarterly report drew responses from 705 software developers across more than 60 countries and 41 CTOs from Fortune 500 and mid-market organisations. It compared those results against data collected a year earlier. The headline number: 42% of developers now say AI writes at least half their code, up from 12% in the Q3 2025 survey.
Average time saved on coding rose to 13 hours a week, nearly double the seven hours reported a year earlier.
Where the hours actually went
Only 21% of developers said they now spend more than half their week writing new code from scratch. The rest of the week filled up fast: 67% report spending more time reviewing AI-generated code, and 52% say they spend more time fixing problems AI introduced. Developers also averaged nine hours a week learning AI tools and new technologies, up from four hours in the prior survey.
BairesDev CEO Darren Shimkus put it directly:
“Developers nearly doubled the time AI saves them in coding, to 13 hours a week. Not one of those hours came back. Reviewing check-ins. Fixing what the model broke. Learning next quarter’s tool. A year ago we read the first seven hours as capacity, and we got that wrong. The time mostly moved up the stack, into work that takes more judgment than the coding it replaced.”
The accountability gap
78% of CTOs reported increased spending on code review, quality assurance, and validation specifically to support AI-generated work. Only 7% of developers said the decision to ship code had been entirely delegated to AI without human input. As Shimkus noted, one engineer is now accountable for far more code than before.
There is also a mismatch between what gets funded and what gets rewarded. Among developers who received pay rises, AI tool fluency was the top factor at 29%, followed by system design at 20% and human skills (communication, mentorship, cross-functional collaboration) at 15%. But only one in four CTOs said they were actively investing in human skills development. Budgets remain concentrated on AI tool fluency and data infrastructure.
The operator implication
If you run a software team or hire developers, the productivity calculus has shifted. AI coding tools are not reducing headcount or working hours in a straightforward way. They are redirecting labour toward quality control, oversight, and continuous retraining. Gartner forecast worldwide AI spending at $2.59 trillion in 2026, up 47% year on year. The BairesDev data suggests a meaningful slice of that inside engineering teams is going toward checking machine output rather than shipping new features.
Since 2025, BairesDev’s Dev Barometer has collected responses from more than 5,200 engineers across more than 75 countries.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
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