Context Switch Calculator
Visualize the latency cost of interrupting a developer.
The High Latency of Human Hardware
In software engineering, we obsess over optimizing database queries and reducing network latency by milliseconds. Yet, we often ignore the most expensive bottleneck in the system: The Developer’s Brain.
When a computer switches contexts (CPU context switching), it must save the state of the current process, load the state of the new process, and flush the cache. This is computationally expensive. The human brain works the same way—but our “cache reload” time is shockingly slow.
The “Attention Residue” Bug
University of Minnesota researcher Sophie Leroy coined the term “Attention Residue.” When you shift focus from Codebase A to a Slack message, your brain does not completely disengage. A portion of your cognitive RAM remains allocated to the previous task. This “residue” reduces your processing power for the new task, leading to what we essentially call “Brain Fog” or Reduced Cognitive Throughput.
Why “Quick Questions” Are Expensive
A “5-minute question” is never just 5 minutes. As this calculator demonstrates, if a Senior Engineer earning $150k/year is interrupted 4 times a day, the organization loses nearly 2 hours of Deep Work continuously. This isn’t just lost time; it’s lost architectural integrity. Complex logic requires “Deep Loading” the entire system state into mental working memory. An interruption crashes that state, forcing a total reboot.
Engineering Productivity FAQ
Managers operate on hourly blocks; Makers operate in 4-hour “Deep Work” sessions. This tool quantifies the friction between those schedules, helping you justify “No-Meeting Days” or asynchronous communication policies to leadership.
This calculator relies on the seminal study by Gloria Mark (UCI), which found the average recovery time from an interruption is 23 minutes and 15 seconds. We combine this with your salary data to output the financial “Leakage” caused by open-office distractions.