In different phrases, Denisov-Blanch’s competition that much less code is a powerful indicator of poor efficiency would possibly sign the other. At the least, it doesn’t affirm his and the opposite researchers’ finger-pointing at low ranges of Git commits as dispositive proof of builders “ghosting” their employers. Nor does it affirm his “don’t-quote-me-on-this” argument that the analysis additionally reveals that “the top 25% of engineers contributed about 50% to 60% of the output,” although that discovering could also be extra intuitively right, given the 80/20 rule.)
Less code might imply extra productiveness
Counting code commits, whereas an comprehensible strategy, is flawed. Yes, the strategy is a little more subtle than that, however not as a lot because the researchers appear to assume. For instance, Nvidia Senior Engineering Manager Aaron Erickson factors out that the researchers would possibly discover “another 10% of engineers who do add code, but it’s useless abstractions or vanity rework that adds negative value and confusion.” Stanford’s analysis would say that these are priceless engineers, however in actuality, they may be doing extra hurt than good. Their employers could be higher off in the event that they determined to ghost as a substitute of committing worse-than-useless code. The analysis doesn’t account for unhealthy contributions, by Denisov-Blanch’s admission. They simply count on unhealthy commits are resolved throughout assessment.
All of this can be a great distance of claiming the analysis might not say what the researchers consider. This wouldn’t be a giant deal besides that the headline is clearly meant to drive employers to revisit how they measure engineering productiveness. (Denisov-Blanch says he did the analysis as a result of he believes “software engineering could benefit from transparency, accountability, and meritocracy and [he] is trying to find a solution.”) That’s an excellent objective, however what about all of the CEOs who may even see the headline and demand that their ghost engineers be fired? Using code commits as the one metric may find yourself eradicating a few of an organization’s prime engineers, not essentially their worst ones.
