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@thisismissem@hachyderm.ioThere's an utterly ridiculous "study" out from Stanford about "ghost engineers" which are reportedly engineers who do nothing at companies.
Pray tell, what flawed methodology did this "study" use?
It assessed code changes made by these engineers, not by lines of code changed but by "simulating a panel of 10 experts to evaluate each commit"
This fatally flawed study does not account for:
- management & planning
- research to unblock work
- collaboration with other staff
- helping other staff
Like, once again, actually writing code is a small part of an software engineers actual job.
That's like assessing structural engineers on the basis of calculations done 
A lot of time is spent in communications, planning, and helping others.
Honestly a shame that a prominent software engineering podcast would actually run with this drivel.
Oh, it also goes on to claim with these absolutely terrible "metrics" that people who work from home are less productive than people who work from offices.. gotta love utterly flawed studies that may actually affect people's lives.
Ha, surprise surprise, this isn't actually a "pre-print" at all, but uses another pre-print's data by the same author(s), and even in that pre-print looking at Predicting Expert Evaluations in Software Code Reviews the data seems woefully flawed
@thisismissem I used to listen to a lot of tech podcasts. I have stopped listening to a lot of tech podcasts. Because of this sort of drivel. And “interviews” that are thinly veiled adverts.
@thisismissem I was once on a team where an absolute champion decided he would be the face of the team. He volunteered for every meeting (and there were so many meetings) so that everyone else could get things done. He was a leader.
They fired him. Not enough code committed.
@samir yeah, exactly. I've been fired before for not writing code fast enough (and then subsequently left tech for a year), which was on a mythical man month project with little to no design or feature documentation that I was expected to completely rewrite because the other engineers couldn't make heads or tails of it. I got 80% of the way towards a working application too.
@thisismissem It’s a classic story, isn’t it? I’m sorry it happened to you.
@thisismissem @samir oof, been there. I’m sorry 
@thisismissem @samir Metricization and KPIs do not reflect problems solved, but mix that with absolute arseholes of managerial disposition and you have the perfect recipe for HR bullshit.
@mekkaokereke @thisismissem I remembered a fun extra detail: everyone paired in that team! So even if he had written more lines of code, it wouldn’t have shown up half the time, because he would be coding on somebody else’s computer.
(Oh, and when pairing, you “submit” fewer LOC anyway, because there’s more editing before merging.)
I contracted a helpdesk gig where I made myself reportback liason and the client didnt renew me and the contractor wouldnt leave me alone for a year and I still talk to them every so often about Hospital/clinic placements
@samir In Germany it would be invalid to fire someone w/o a warning. So the moment I'd get that warning judging my none performance based on not enough code changes I'd maliciously comply and do lots and lots of commits just to teach everybody the meaning of Goodhart's law by example.
@thisismissem
@levampyre @thisismissem Everyone on that team was a contractor, so labour laws didn’t apply.
(Fortunately, everyone got paid a very good daily rate, so the guy was totally fine.)
@levampyre @samir not under Probezeit. Anyway, they fired the entire team I'd been assigned to a month later
@thisismissem Wait, are you/was the team employd in Germany? Because a mass reduction again has additional formal requirements that apply even if individual employees are on probation still. Anyways, if you or any of your colleagues needs advice on German workers rights and regulations, hit me up. I'm a works council member of 8 years and just dealt with that same shit in my own company. So my knowledge is as fresh as my thirst for blood. 
@samir
@levampyre @samir you're about 7 years too late for that, but I'm certain that the company would've "found" evidence to support their claim despite having me change my visa to them and go permanent from freelance but a month earlier.
@thisismissem Noooo! It's never too late to fight capitalist exploitation and abuse. Workers unite! 
@samir
By the same logic, they should have fired themselves ^^
@samir @thisismissem He sounds like he effectively became a project manager and a bullshit shield for the whole team. Those people are invaluable and really help to move things forward.
I'm sorry that this happened to him.
@tastapod wrote about this some time ago
https://dannorth.net/the-worst-programmer/
@thisismissem what a nightmare.
@thisismissem we saw productivity increases at my employer due to forced WFH. My branch office was closed so I'm WFH forever. The folks at the main areas are on 4 days per week and will go to 5 in the next FY.
We all know why. The company gets tax breaks from the local government for every butt in a seat in the world HQ building.
@thisismissem on top of all of those excellent reasons...is there actually an appropriate git repo in which to commit every line of code? *Most* of what I write at work never gets committed anywhere. We have no repo for the stupid little side scripts, the code you write to parse through performance metrics or to automate environment-specific maintenance...
@thisismissem @blogdiva ROFL the data from my dev team clearly demonstrated their productivity improved when WFH. Pre covid we tootled along nicely, then we went home & productivity doubled. My data helped our case for only a 2 day return to office later.
@thisismissem @blogdiva AND another benefit of WFH was the men started doing the afternoon school pickups.
@thisismissem seems like somebody has never heard of the concepts of pair or mob programming.
@thisismissem
These are ghost researchers. They wander around science-looking places and talk, but don't produce anything of value.
> like assessing structural engineers on the basis of calculations done
it's like assessing an architect on the basis of "nails banged into drywall"
@thisismissem I must admit, so many software development/engineering podcast has hosts that make me eye roll, and the main reason you listen to the show is because it's an easy way to keep up with news and sometimes they have a great guest.
"Those who can't, podcast" ?
[witchzard] @thisismissem Reminds me of a company I was consulting for. One day the CTO comes to me and complains about a (freelance) software engineer that she is charging so much and has only written 10 lines of code last week.
I asked him to show me the code. When he showed it, I asked him to explain the code to me and tell me how he'd have done it differently.
Needless to say that the software engineer had spent about a week thinking about the problem at hand and finding the most efficient solution, which consisted of adding about 5 lines and changing another five.
The product in question was an extremely complex product that even the CTO didn't fully grasp. That engineer was really the only one who could find and fix bugs within days in that product, but most of the time the actual code written/changed was just a few lines, because that code had to also be super-efficient (real-time high-performance data-processing).
My recommendation to the CTO: "Keep that engineer on your payroll even if she doesn't do anything at all, because she ain't here for coding, she is there for software engineering."
@thisismissem and honestly, writing code is the easy bit of dev work.
@thisismissem "simulating a panel of 10 experts" 
@recursive @thisismissem In Unreal Engine 5. :skeletor:
@thisismissem we could lean hard into this 'study' and argue for the abolishment of all layers of upper management, since they apparently contribute nothing of value at all. That's what they meant, right?
@thisismissem oh my God ........... This is like catnip to me rn not gonna lie