I ran a survey and some one-on-one interviews of 30 or so engineers at my workplace to get some real data about the impact of slow tools. IIRC, the results were something like this:
* Most engineers can maintain focus on a task for up to 10 seconds waiting for a slow tool. However a couple of engineers (myself included) will get derailed at only about 3-5 seconds.
* A tool that runs for more than a minute will cause just about every engineer to switch task while it is completing. (This means they stop working on their highest-impact work and likely spend time on lower-impact things).
* A tool that runs for more than 15 minutes will make any engineer have to start deliberate multi-tasking where they are trying to work on two major work items at once.
Also, I wouldn't have read the article or posted this comment if it weren't for the slow CI pipelines at my workplace.
* Most engineers can maintain focus on a task for up to 10 seconds waiting for a slow tool. However a couple of engineers (myself included) will get derailed at only about 3-5 seconds.
* A tool that runs for more than a minute will cause just about every engineer to switch task while it is completing. (This means they stop working on their highest-impact work and likely spend time on lower-impact things).
* A tool that runs for more than 15 minutes will make any engineer have to start deliberate multi-tasking where they are trying to work on two major work items at once.
Also, I wouldn't have read the article or posted this comment if it weren't for the slow CI pipelines at my workplace.