Automated Test Failures in CICD – what is true cost?

I'm hitting a wall with our CI/CD pipeline, and I'm curious if this is just me or a universal struggle. We've got a pretty standard setup—a bunch of unit, integration, and end-to-end tests running on every commit. Lately, it feels like I'm spending more time debugging failing builds than writing actual code.

Just yesterday, I spent three hours trying to reproduce a failing end-to-end test that only occurred on the main branch. It passed locally and on the re-run, but the initial failure was a complete mystery. It's a massive productivity sink.

So I'm genuinely curious:

How much time do you realistically spend each week just debugging failed CI/CD builds? (And be honest—I'm not going to tell your boss.)

What's the absolute worst part of the process for you? Is it the context-switching, sifting through hundreds of lines of logs, or dealing with tests that pass locally but fail in CI?

What kind of a CI/CD failure is the most frustrating? Flaky tests? Environment-specific issues? That one random timeout?

If you could wave a magic wand and solve one thing about build failures, what would it be?

I'm hoping to hear some stories and maybe even learn a few tricks from you all. Thanks in advance for sharing!