255 - Ghost Engineers with Yegor Denisov-Blanch and Simon Obstbaum

In this episode I talk with Yegor Denisov-Blanch and Simon
Obstbaum about their Stanford research on developer productivity.
They share findings about "ghost engineers" (9.5% of developers
who do minimal work), discuss challenges in measuring engineering
output versus productivity, and explain their data-driven
approach to software engineering assessment. The conversation
explores how different developers contribute varying value, how
life circumstances impact work motivation, and their methodology
examining source code and Git metadata. The researchers highlight
the importance of quantifying engineering contributions and have
collected data from over 50,000 engineers in their ongoing study.