As a developer, I find the great bang for buck is two monitors, with minor benefits for each additional monitor. Examples of use for extra monitors:
- code on main monitor (or more if I have multiple projects open)
- app I'm working on
- documentation
- Stack Overflow/Search/AI chat
- Team chat/Slack
- infrastructure/performance monitors, logs
- Mandatory reboot notice from the IT department shoved in a corner until I can reboot without losing work
Of course if you have a large monitor you can tile windows instead of having N screens. Virtual desktop also exist.