Calculating ROI on Unblocked

Dennis Pilarinos

October 28, 2025

After partnering with hundreds of engineering teams, we’ve seen Unblocked consistently drive measurable gains across three use cases:

Faster onboarding: New hires ramp up on unfamiliar codebases and tools more quickly, contributing value sooner.
Reduced support overhead: Fewer repetitive questions for senior engineers and subject matter experts, freeing them to focus on strategic work.
Greater team autonomy: Engineers spend more time coding and solving problems, and less time waiting for answers or digging through documentation.

Here’s what the latest industry data shows:

StackOverflow shows that 61% of developers spend 30+ minutes per day searching for answers, and another 30+ minutes per day answering questions from teammates.
Developers often consult outside their immediate team 10+ times/week.
Cortex reports developers lose 5+ hours/week to unproductive work - often context gathering.
Google found 65% of developer time is wasted without effective knowledge platforms.
Independent research estimates full onboarding takes (6 months) depending on system complexity.

Below, we model cost savings conservatively using these industry benchmarks for inefficiencies and standard assumptions about team composition.

Assumptions from industry data

Developers lose 30-60 minutes per day searching for information
Senior engineers spend about 4 hours per week answering repetitive questions
Average onboarding time = ~ 6 months

Fixed assumptions

New hires = ~ 10% of the total engineers
Senior engineers = ~ 20% of the total engineers
Average senior engineer salary = ~ 20% above average salary

Example: A 200-person org with an average salary of $160K

Search Time Savings
- 200 engineers × 30-60 min/day = 100-200 hrs per day previously spent searching for context
- At ~$76/hour = $7,600–$15,200 per day
- Annualized = up to $4,000,000/year
Onboarding Acceleration
- Average onboarding time = ~ 6 months (~$80,000 in salary before full productivity)
- Reducing onboarding by just 1 month saves ~$13,333 per hire
- For 20 new hires/year = $266,000/year
Reduced Support Overhead
- For 40 senior engineers × 4 hrs/week = 160 hrs/week
- At ~$96/hour = $15,360/week, or $768,000/year

Total annual ROI potential for 200 engineers:

Search savings: up to $4M/year
Faster onboarding: $266K/year
Reduced support load: $768K/year
Total: ~ $5M/year in recovered productivity

These figures are based on conservative industry benchmarks and reflect only measurable efficiency gains - excluding softer benefits like higher team morale, reduced burnout, and stronger retention.

When developers can instantly find why something was built, how it works, or who to ask, they move faster and make better decisions. That’s what Unblocked delivers: the right context, at the right time, in the right place.