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.

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