9.5% Of Software Engineers Do Virtually No Work.

[@sotonin]

The problem is you can't measure engineer productivity. especially for senior devs who are in meetings / pair programming and digging into the hard bugs. A ticket is easily 99% finding where the hell to change one line. The code itself the end result is almost nothing. Did the engineer do nothing? No. But you can't measure it

[@vibovitold]

And that guy who rolls out his own 50 KLOC library as a replacement for an open source industry standard solution is not productive (severely counter-productive, in fact).

[@hopelessdecoy]

This just seems like a hit on remote work and "trim the fat" mindset which is becoming popular. I wonder who funded or bought the research.

[@offtheball87]

Even if you are in meetings understanding requirements, working with stakeholders, building understanding within the business, you may not be the person who writes the code. You may also spend a lot of time exploring possible solutions that don't ever get written, because you ruled that out and saved the business time and money implementing something that won't meet the requirements. This is so short sighted, and every engineer can immediately see the problem with it. The biggest problem is that writing code is the easy part. I haven't written code (at least any that will see a PR) in a week, and it's been really stressful because of the other stuff I have been spending my time doing. Someone who's raising a bunch of PRs is probably not being productive. It's more likely they're bored.

[@JohnMcclaned]

20% of the remaining 90% do everything.

[@Randorandom232]

😂

[@vibovitold]

Measuring productivity by lines of code makes about as much sense as evaluating football players by counting their number of footsteps during the match. (By that logic, the goalkeeper must be borderline useless.) Just like running distance is not the objective in a football match, and it's not directly proportional to the outcome, churning out a lot - or very little - of code isn't a sensible metric for actual productivity, Like Bill Gates once said. "measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." The number of useless software engineers may be higher than "9.5%" for all I know, but that's unrelated to the amount of submitted code. Software development is not a sausage factory.

[@suminshizzles6951]

I know a lot of sys admns do nothing but play games all day. Especially the ones in management or the ones who are solely in charge of systens, like those in small schools. They sit there and play wow till a problem comes up.

[@BryantSuiskens]

People, and especially managers, forget that any non-freelancer isn't paid for their output or productivity. Productivity is contignent on a dozen things, of which only perhaps 30% is in the hands of the worker; 50% in the hands of the org and 20% in the hands of god. If you wanted productivity, you'd gone for a contract but this actually requires a coherent specification and a legal protection for the contractor to rip you off if you specify it incorrectly, and this is a burden and risk most people don't want, primarily out of intellectual laziness. No, you pay a salaried worker for 3 seperate things; availability (When demands can be addressed), added capacity (The complexity and scope of the demands that can be addressed) and added concurrency (how many problem spaces can coexist). A shocking amount of labor is hired to try to cheat capacity with concurrency, or concurrency that only really is needed in a handful of peak moment which can be mostly helped with better scheduling.

[@Matthew-s5x7d]

Way higher in gov contracting. Don't need a study. I lived it 23 years. It's all about incentives there

[@minma02262]

Where can I subscribe to become a ghost software engineer?

[@JohnCodes]

🤣🤣🤣

[@nceryu]

I'm gonna be honest, haven't watched the video you mentioned about how that research was done. With that being said, I completely agree with you, but I also don't understand why this thing has become so popular lately. I'm in engineering since 2021 and I've heard about this right from the start, that in big companies, there are people who get away with not doing anything. So idk, for me these news are 4 years late really

[@romewillriseagain]

the corporate class is waging war on remote work

[@MrTubeyoucomment]

I just want to leave without writing any comment.

[@rightq3111]

Where’s the course link take my minimum wage income money I’d like to be one of those please

[@calholli]

Why am I just now realizing at 42, that I should have been a software engineer? I like this stuff

[@sweatshirt4974]

It is never too late to start, though trying to get a job currently has been a nightmare, even for engineers with many years of experience.

[@hopelessdecoy]

@@sweatshirt4974 Not if you aren't expecting a 6 figure salary. There are a number of lower paying positions out there but skilled engineers from a FANG company don't aim for a job with the state of Kansas as a data analyst or an entry web position at a crossbow company.

[@mattymattffs]

Get into the software space that relates to previous work experience. If you did retail, you could do CRM or ERP. If you were an accountant, finance software, and so on. That domain knowledge is invaluable. I'm in ERP and we've hired loads of warehouse people as devs with zero experience because the domain knowledge helps

[@BryantSuiskens]

I'd learn it on the sides for the next 2 years or so, currently the entire junior market shat teh bed so its best to stay on safe shores atm

[@sweatshirt4974]

@@hopelessdecoy Sure if you are willing to perpetuate the bad practices of the industry then you can find a job, like Oklahoma City Thunder hiring data science interns for $12 an hour. But you’re not getting paid your worth and you’re signaling to companies that they can keep screwing people over and get away with it. However, if you are looking for an actually sustainable job position, it’s hard to come by. You might as well go work retail at Target instead. If you’re crazy enough to consider it for the experience good for you, but you can gain that same experience through side project while getting paid more as a waiter or something. I realize I am mentioning mostly internships, but there are a number of full time positions with the same issue.

[@putnam120]

I don't think multiple jobs is illegal as long as you don't break any conditions in your different contacts. Oh and pay taxes

[@JohnCodes]

At almost all big tech companies, it's a violation of employment conditions. And it's usually a pretty bad look unless you can spin it as a legitimate moonlite gig that your current employeer has signed off on.

[@putnam120]

@JohnCodes from personal experience they only disallow you from working at a company that competes in an area they operate.

[@hopelessdecoy]

@@JohnCodes If you aren't coding or doing technical work it should be none of their business. I don't know why being a door dasher or a janitor on the side to make some extra money is bad. Especially if you are someone who does real work.

[@vibovitold]

​@@hopelessdecoy the point is that they pretend to be doing multiple jobs AT THE SAME TIME. (sometimes several jobs), essentially charging multiple hour rates for the same hour of "work".