How much will your profit increase if you fire 10% of engineers

The term “ghost engineers” has recently appeared in the lexicon of the tech community, referring to an unexpected phenomenon in the information technology industry - employees who are formally employed by a company but do little to no useful work. The concept emerged from a Stanford study that drew attention to hidden productivity problems in the tech environment and sparked heated debate about the effectiveness of current models of hiring and evaluating developers.

Research methodology

Stanford researcher Yegor Denisov-Blanche developed a unique algorithm to measure the real productivity of engineers. The study covered more than 50,000 employees from hundreds of companies, and the methodology focused on in-depth analysis of code repositories on GitHub. The algorithm doesn't just count lines of code but also assesses the complexity of tasks, the quality of the code, its maintainability, and the ability to solve complex problems. According to the study, approximately 9.5% of engineers were classified as “ghost engineers” - in fact, those who produce less than 10% of the productivity of the average colleague.

Challenges of measuring productivity

Denisov-Blanche himself recognizes that measuring engineer productivity is an extremely difficult task. Traditional assessment methods are often unfair because they don't take into account the real complexity and impact of specific technical decisions. For example, a developer who changes one critical line of code can do much more than a colleague who has written thousands of lines of routine code. The study has certain limitations: first, it was not peer-reviewed, and second, only volunteer companies participated, which may distort the statistics.

The trend to find productivity disruptors

The study coincides with the latest trend in Silicon Valley - a scrutiny of employee productivity. A telling example is Elon Musk, who, after acquiring Twitter (now X), fired 80% of employees, claiming that it did not harm the platform. Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, also criticizes the common practice of “hiring good people and giving them freedom,” believing that in reality this often means hiring “professional wannabes.” This rhetoric underscores the growing concern among tech companies about hidden inefficiencies.

The impact of remote work

The Denisov-Blanche study revealed unexpected results regarding remote work. On the one hand, the share of “ghost engineers” among remote workers is more than twice as high as for office workers. On the other hand, many more ultra-high-performing engineers (those whose productivity is at least five times higher than average) also work remotely. This data complicates popular perceptions of remote work productivity.

Conclusion

The phenomenon of “ghost engineers” highlights the complex problem of labor valuation in the tech industry. It demonstrates that traditional approaches to measuring productivity are outdated and in need of radical change. At the same time, the study raises ethical questions about monitoring methods, privacy, and the fairness of employee performance evaluations. The future probably belongs to more sophisticated and fair evaluation systems that take into account the real complexity and impact of engineers' work.

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