capital · May 16, 2026
Harness Report Finds 94% of Leaders Note Missing Metrics for AI Tech Debt and Burnout
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Harness released its State of Engineering Excellence 2026 report warning that AI coding tools are reshaping developer work faster than current engineering metrics can measure their true impact. The report surveyed 700 software engineering practitioners and managers across the U.S., U.K., India, France, and Germany and found that 89% of engineering leaders believe developer productivity has improved with AI while 88% see higher satisfaction. 81% note increased time on manual code review and 31% of developer effort is absorbed by untracked work like reviewing AI-generated code and fixing defects. Harness positions the visibility gap as a strategic risk for enterprises making multi-year AI investments and an opportunity for its AI Software Delivery Platform, with executives advocating for new metrics to track AI performance including code quality, validation time, cognitive load, and burnout.