Survey: AI code speeds generation but debugging eats 42% of the week

A Coleman Parkes survey for Undo of 300 senior engineering leaders found that AI coding agents accelerated code generation but shifted the bottleneck to debugging and comprehension. Teams spend 16.9 hours a week debugging versus 9.8 hours writing code, or 42% of the work week.

• Debugging takes 16.9 hours a week versus 9.8 hours generating code
• 35% of AI-generated code reaches production before the team fully understands it
• 80% say coding agents struggle with hard problems in complex codebases
• 79% of engineering leaders say the overall release cycle is no faster