In different phrases, Denisov-Blanch’s rivalry that much less code is a robust indicator of poor efficiency would possibly sign the other. In any case, 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 exhibits that “the highest 25% of engineers contributed about 50% to 60% of the output,” although that discovering could also be extra intuitively appropriate, given the 80/20 rule.)
Much less code could imply extra productiveness
Counting code commits, whereas an comprehensible method, is flawed. Sure, the method is a little more subtle than that, however not as a lot because the researchers appear to suppose. For instance, Nvidia Senior Engineering Supervisor Aaron Erickson factors out that the researchers would possibly discover “one other 10% of engineers who do add code, however it’s ineffective abstractions or vainness rework that provides detrimental worth and confusion.” Stanford’s analysis would say that these are beneficial 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 an alternative of committing worse-than-useless code. The analysis doesn’t account for dangerous contributions, by Denisov-Blanch’s admission. They only anticipate dangerous commits are resolved throughout overview.
All of this can be a good distance of claiming the analysis could 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 program engineering may gain advantage from transparency, accountability, and meritocracy and [he] is looking for an answer.”) That’s an excellent purpose, however what about all of the CEOs who may even see the headline and demand that their ghost engineers be fired? Utilizing code commits as the one metric might find yourself eradicating a few of an organization’s high engineers, not essentially their worst ones.