Are ‘ghost engineers’ real? Seeking Silicon Valley’s least productive coders

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{{ A Stanford researcher says data on programmer productivity suggests 14 percent of remote software engineers get barely anything done. }}

It’s not just remote workers. In person employees can be just as bad.

The last place I worked before I retired operated with a large crew of contract engineers and techs who could be dropped off the payroll as our manpower needs changed with time.

I had one manager remark to me, “That guy could make a full day’s work out of one 8-1/2” x 11" sheet."

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{{ “Everyone thinks this is an exaggeration but there are so many software engineers … who I know personally who literally make ~2 code changes a month, few emails, few meetings, remote work, < 5 hours/ week, for ~$200-300k,” Deedy Das said in an X post one morning last month.}}

Probably depends on what those 2 code changes a month do. If he’s keeping a multi-billion dollar network up and running, he’s earning his keep.

intercst

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A more recent phenomenon is a bunch of software engineers waiting on output as directed by their program managers. Many program managers were given power to speed or slow the projects, and they are ALWAYS waiting on someone else to do something. So they are waiting for the designers to produce a design so they can get specs written, so the software engineers can read and discuss the specs to implement it. Meanwhile everyone is waiting around for each step of the process. Then someone had the bright idea of iterating everything (“Agile”), so now everyone sits around for a few weeks, then works for a few days, then sits around for a few weeks, then works for a few days, ad infinitum or until “something” ships.

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Yep. That’s why Bill Gates favored small teams working 80+ hour weeks – less iterations.

intercst

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It’s also way better for the company to have small teams sitting around most of the time, but once or twice a year working really hard and focused for 6 or 8 weeks to ship something good. And those focused few weeks usually results in better software than the 18 month iterative schedules.

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