Productivity Measurement
Interrupt Load Measurement and Its Effect on Senior Engineer Output
Senior engineers absorb most interruptions while AI adoption leaves them behind.
Marcus Telford · September 30, 2026 · 11 min read
Section
4 stories in Productivity Measurement
Senior engineers absorb most interruptions while AI adoption leaves them behind.
Measuring onboarding by time to tenth merged PR shows teams improving ramp time by half.
Speed gains disappear when you measure what actually ships and breaks.
DORA metrics miss coordination overhead and dependencies that shape large engineering orgs.