A recent study by Stanford University showed that there is a growing concern in the field of software development about ghost engineers — programmers who hold jobs but have very low productivity.
A recent study by Stanford University showed that there is a growing concern in the field of software development about ghost engineers — programmers who hold jobs but have very low productivity.
According to the research, about 9,5% of software engineers fall into the category of «ghosts». They fill vacancies in their companies, but show surprisingly low productivity — less than 0.1 times that of the average programmer.
Basically, they do almost nothing of substance to their teams while still getting paid. Many of these professionals successfully perform their duties without raising significant alarm bells, blending into the organizational structure and avoiding close attention.
One explanation for these results could be the practice of overemployment, where people work multiple jobs at the same time. By dividing their attention between multiple tasks, ghost engineers exert minimal effort in each individual position, effectively gaming the system.
The study notes that employees who work remotely are more prone to this (14%). In the hybrid mode of operation, the number of «ghosts» decreases to 9%, and in the office they are only 6%.
Researchers call counting the number of code commits one of the methods of detecting ghost engineers. While it’s an imperfect way to measure productivity, it can indicate employee inactivity, they say. About 58% make more than one commit per month, but the remaining 42% make trivial changes such as editing a single line or character, i.e. only creating a mock of the work.
According to the researchers, assuming that large tech companies have 9,5% ghost engineers, then firing them could save them billions of dollars.
«If each company were to add these savings to their profits (assuming no additional costs), the impact on the market capitalization of the 12 companies that would lay off unproductive engineers would be $465 billion — and that’s without reducing productivity!» the author of the study said.
We will remind you that earlier Patrick Singe, co-founder and CEO of Metrickal, a business process outsourcing and remote recruiting company, discovered that one of his employees was working on another job at the same time. The CEO believes that this employee acted unethically.
