Developer infrastructure choices significantly impact productivity, with options including local, remote, ephemeral, and shared remote environments, each having distinct tradeoffs in cost, speed, and quality. Local environments, preferred by 53% of tech leaders, offer cost-effectiveness but may struggle with production-like conditions and collaboration challenges. Remote environments, used by 7%, provide high-fidelity setups but are costly, while ephemeral environments balance cost and quality for realistic testing. Shared remote environments are budget-friendly but can introduce testing collisions unless well-managed. Blackbird enhances all these setups by providing tools for efficient API mocking, testing, and debugging, reducing development friction and improving productivity across different infrastructure choices.