Engineers Hate These 10 Productivity Tools, Led by JIRA

An international survey of 30,000 software engineers ranks the top 10 most disliked productivity tools. Productivity tools designed to boost efficiency are instead blamed for delays and frustrations. Leading the list is JIRA, criticized for its complex interface, slow loading, and use as a management surveillance tool that pulls developers away from coding. Microsoft Teams follows, with frequent crashes and notification lags that disrupt team communication. Confluence ranks third due to sluggish page loads and poor search results. Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and AWS occupy the fourth to sixth spots, each facing issues such as plugin conflicts, slow pull request reviews, and confusing billing interfaces. Bitbucket, Xcode, GitHub Actions, and Windows round out the list, with complaints about slow repository loads, CI errors, long workflows, and unpredictable updates. The survey highlights the tension between software engineering and the tools meant to support it. Understanding these pain points can help development teams choose tools that truly enhance productivity and reduce project bottlenecks.