Ghost engineers… who are they and what is their impact on tech companies?

With increasing pressures to achieve growth in a volatile economic environment,… Companies They increasingly rely on new methods to assess employee productivity, raising debate about the fairness of these assessments and their impact on innovation.

The change reflects the sector’s desire to eliminate unnecessary costs and focus on high-performing employees who can deliver momentum Technological development.

Amid this situation, the recent period has witnessed widespread waves of layoffs as companies try to balance… Costs Operational with changing market needs. These processes have raised questions about the extent to which they affect employee morale and organizational culture as companies emerge Silicon Valley insisting on justifying these moves as necessary to stay ahead of the competition.

With an increasing focus on productivity and determining the true value of each employee, it seems that… Technology sector It is going through a phase of fundamental transformation that is reshaping the relationship between companies and their employees.

A Stanford University researcher has unveiled a new mechanism that seeks to identify underperforming employees in an industry Technology.

According to a survey of more than 50,000 developers at hundreds of companies, about 9.5 percent of developers are what the researcher called “ghost engineers,” employees who perform a minimal amount of work.

The research comes amid a growing focus in Silicon Valley on improving productivity and eliminating unproductive employees, according to a Business Insider report reviewed by the website Sky News Arabia.

The research was led by Stanford researcher Yegor Denisov-Blanche, whose team developed an algorithm that analyzes code repositories on GitHub to evaluate developer performance.

The algorithm is not limited to measuring the amount of code written, but takes into account criteria such as sustainability, solving complex problems and ease of implementation.

The algorithm found that 9.5 percent of developers were only 10 percent or less as productive as their peers. Blanche described software engineering as a “black box” because it is difficult to accurately measure an engineer’s performance using traditional methods.

He pointed out that current methods lack fairness, as they can favor large code changes, but of a simple nature, at the expense of changes that are small, but technically complex.

The research was not peer-reviewed, which raises some questions about its findings. Furthermore, the selection of companies to participate in the study was voluntary, which may lead to bias in the results.

In contrast, the study did not classify programmers whose productivity was between 11 and 12 percent of their peers’ average performance as “ghost engineers,” even though they may be very unproductive, meaning the actual percentage could be higher or lower than 9.5 percent.

• The research comes at a time when Silicon Valley is increasingly focused on weeding out poor performers.
• In September, I Combinator co-founder Paul Graham published an article endorsing a management style known as “founder mode.” This approach criticizes management traditions that leave employees to work freely, describing it as leading to the employment of “professional fraudsters” who destroy companies.
• At the forefront of this campaign was Elon Musk, who laid off 80 percent of Twitter (now known as X) employees after acquiring the company in 2022. Musk emphasized that the staff cuts did not affect the service, adding: “If the whole ship were to sink, it wouldn’t be Nobody has a job.”

The study also examined the impact of telecommuting on productivity. The results showed that the percentage of “ghost engineers” among remote workers was more than double the percentage among office workers.

However, research has shown that many of the top developers, who were five times more productive than their peers’ average performance, worked remotely.

In that context, Musk called for an end to telecommuting in the US federal government, saying: “If employees don’t want to come to work, taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for the privilege of staying at home.”

Denisov-Blanch’s research is an attempt to solve the dilemma of measuring the performance of software engineers, but its findings raise broader debates about fairness in performance appraisals and productivity standards. While the research reflects a shift in Silicon Valley toward increased efficiency, it raises questions about the impact of this approach on employee morale and innovation.

Continuous review

In this context, the research stands out as part of a growing effort within the technology sector to develop tools that help more accurately assess individual employee performance.

With its algorithm emphasizing the concept of “ghost engineers,” the research reflects a clear trend in Silicon Valley toward rooting out poor performers and reducing reliance on unproductive employees.

This coincides with widespread waves of layoffs at many large technology companies, which are seeking not only to reduce operating costs, but also to reshape their organizational structures in a way that ensures maximum benefit from available human resources. By linking such studies to ongoing layoffs, the sector’s vision of improving efficiency and achieving a balance between innovation and operational effectiveness becomes clear.

Excess work

Speaking to Ektisad Sky News Arabia, the CEO of ADT Consulting and Technology Systems, Muhammad Saeed, points out that large technology companies are clearly suffering from excess workers, which is clearly visible in the large waves of layoffs that these companies have witnessed in the past year ( 2022-2024).

He points out that companies like Amazon, Meta and

Muhammad Said explains that this surplus of labor is due to two main factors:

• Increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic: During the pandemic, demand for technology increased dramatically with the recovery of e-commerce and remote work, prompting companies to hire large numbers of employees to keep up with this demand. As the pandemic ends and life returns to normal, this additional hiring has become a burden on companies.
• Increasing reliance on artificial intelligence: Artificial intelligence has begun to take over many roles performed by traditional employees, leading to a reduced reliance on the human element. This phenomenon was not only limited to large companies, but also spread to small companies that found artificial intelligence as a way to reduce costs.

At the same time, the impact of layoffs on business stability is highlighted, emphasizing that the impact of these operations varies between financial and technical aspects, namely:

• Financial: Layoffs contribute to easing the financial burden on companies, allowing them to improve their ability to face challenges such as monopoly issues and others.
• Technical: Laying off workers leads to the loss of experience gained over the years, which leads to a decline in the technical efficiency of some operations.

He concludes his talk by noting that layoffs represent an opportunity for companies to restructure and increase their flexibility to adapt to rapid market changes. But he also pointed to the negative side, because the instability caused by this business could affect the morale of the remaining employees, which represents an additional challenge for the stability of the business.

The main reasons for the waves of layoffs

A surplus or labor mismatch among employees is among the various reasons behind the expansion of layoffs in labor companies and operations that tend to cause widespread confusion.

In this context, an academic adviser at the San Jose State University in California, Dr. Ahmed Banafa, said in exclusive statements to the “Iqtisad Sky News Arabia” website that although large technology companies witnessed a significant increase in the number of their employees during the period of rapid growth , This does not mean that they are immune to the effects of layoffs, noting that there is a complex set of factors that cause these companies to sometimes resort to workforce reductions.

He adds:

• Technology companies operate in a sector characterized by rapid change and development. New technologies appear at an accelerated pace, and markets are constantly changing based on innovation and global competition.
• Skills and experience that were needed a few years ago may become unnecessary with the advent of new technologies. For example, with the increasing focus on artificial intelligence and cloud computing, traditional skills may become less valuable.
• Companies sometimes have difficulty keeping up with rapid changes in the market, which can lead to reduced operations or layoffs in some departments.

Financial performance

As for factors related to financial performance and market pressures, he points out that companies with huge assets may face tough times as a result of economic slowdowns or increased competition.

• Recessions reduce consumer and business spending, putting pressure on the revenues of big tech companies.
• The entry of innovative startups or competitively priced international competitors can put pressure on tech giants to improve their efficiency and reduce their costs.
• Even with high revenues, companies can face pressure from investors to increase profits, which can lead them to lay off workers and cut costs.

Restructuring factors also appear as part of long-term strategy for technology companies, as companies restructure their operations from time to time to improve efficiency or focus on new areas of growth.

• The reallocation of human and financial resources to new strategic projects, such as investment in artificial intelligence or clean energy, can lead to the abolition of non-priority departments.
• Companies are looking to improve productivity by consolidating processes and reducing redundancies, which may lead to layoffs in some roles.

At the same time, Banafa explains that advances in artificial intelligence and automation have led to a radical transformation in the way operations are carried out within companies, as artificial intelligence technologies reduce the need for the human factor in many areas such as customer support and data analysis. .

He adds: “Despite some layoffs, companies are creating new job opportunities that require advanced skills in areas such as machine learning and data engineering.”

He discusses additional reasons behind layoffs, including rapid and reckless expansion, in addition to a change in commercial strategy or mergers and acquisitions.