I've seen this claim recently and it's rubbish.

Yes, if by "nothing" we mean writing next to no code, because they're busy either:

• architecting software solutions, as they're knowledgeable enough that they should be doing this instead of writing code
• understanding a lot of what is going on in components and/or the system so that when there's an issue they say "oh, this is likely because of X" and the resolution takes days instead of weeks.

I.e. yes, there is a percentage of developers who we pile other tasks on and they don't get to write code.

My experience is that the more knowledgeable developers get, the less code they write.

Then neurodivergent peeps are different - an Autistic dev might be super knowledgeable and happy writing unit tests because they don't enjoy the uncertainty of large problems, or an ADHD developer might have a large system-wide view but write what seem like small contributions.

It's possible to have a developer that does nothing. But that'll requires a project manager that does nothing and a manager that does nothing. And coworkers that are willing to put up with that shit. Everybody's running kanban or agile simply to keep this from happening.

Has an MBA ever contributed anything of value?

That rate seems high. But, I have done post-mortems on a bad developer's run at a company, and found they did very nearly nothing. No commits, no issues opened or closed, some comments, but that was almost their entire digital footprint.

Most developers I've worked with are obviously not doing nothing, though some of us (including myself) get stuck doing a lot of work on a project that never makes it into production due to shifting priorities.

There is a difference between productivity and activity, you can be 100% active at work all day, yet 0% productive. Imagine you work on a project for 6 months and then the manager decide to drop the project. You have been unproductive for 6 months, doesn't mean you were slacking off, but in the end when we calculate the productivity of developers, it is lower because of this.

Tldr the original article is all based off the findings of AI trying to evaluate the efficiency of code contributions. And from the little i looked at it, it seems to fall apart pretty quickly after that.

Sometimes I feel like I do nothing.

My productivity is pretty low since I got promoted to one of our “lead developers.” So much of my time is spent looking at other people’s code, answering questions, mentoring, etc. Task switching becomes a huge issue, where even if I have time I’ve been pulled back and forth and it takes me like an hour to get back into whatever I was doing. It can take weeks for me to close tickets sometimes. And sometimes even when I have busy days, I come away feeling like I did nothing.

It’s definitely giving me Peter Principle vibes sometimes. And though my manager always tells me I’m doing good work, I feel like he’s too disconnected from my day-to-day, and that surely my Scrum Master and Product Owner are trying to get me replaced.

It’s…not a great state of mind, even if I know it’s bullshit. They wouldn’t be giving me raises if they didn’t think I was worth it. But…still. I’ve never stayed at the same job this long, and part of me keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Imposter syndrome is a bitch.

obligatory Betteridge's law of headlines

As a previous so-called 'ghost engineer', it took three people to replace me, and four months for damage control when I wasn't there to keep things in top shape. There was documentation to keep things running, but since I wrote that documentation and "my contributions weren't necessary foe the team's success" Well. Why leave them?

I’m one of those who “do nothing”, if you’re measuring by commits and lines of code.

• as an architect, I spend way too much time doing diagrams and presentation
• as a point of engineering escalation, I spend a lot of time researching things no one can figure out
• as a stickler for code quality, I like nothing more than those days where my lines of code are negative

On the other hand, if you go by the amount of code I indirectly effect with best practices, code quality, appsec, and assisting developers, I affect all of engineering (hundreds)

No, but I want to be one.

Yet more bullshit probably aimed at RTO. Corporate media will keep pushing the same narrative.

If someone really does nothing, it's really obvious. You don't need statistical analysis to determine who it is, just ask their teammates. Developers don't work in isolation. Actually, it's a very collaborative job where you're in constant interaction with other people. If someone doesn't contribute their fair share, it's going to be obvious very quickly.

The problem is often a lack of mechanism to act on it. Sure everyone might complain about a coworker, but once a person is hired they become just a number and management doesn't typically care about individual performance, only that all the spots in the org chart are filled.

This is actually a pretty good analysis. I love that she clarifies it's not a research paper, but a "canva infographic." Spot on.

She doesn't mention that the MBA professor who authored the infographic also seems to contract with FounderPartners, a VC consulting firm.

So this is really an ad for his side gig; "Pay us lots of money, and we'll justify your layoffs with sciency mumbo jumbo.🌈😘📈"

I didn't watch this yet, but the title matches with the article this company published how their LLM model discovered this, but they (the authors) don't even fully understand how this was calculated. Basically, using AI for AI's sake.

Edit. Found it.

Edit 2. Here's the original Lemmy post, if you're interested. (I don't know how to bang-link a Lemmy post...)

If I had to put money one which an MBA or a software engineer doing jack shit at work. I’d lean pretty heavily towards the MBA.

I’m pretty sure the reason we don’t see the engineer side is because the engineers are focused on problems solving. The other groups are more focused on selling and conveying information. If that’s your job you are going to be much better at shifting attention scrutiny to other groups.

I knew a guy who worked at microsoft and basically did all of his work for the week in a couple of hours and then spent the entire rest of the week playing VR

I've seen a couple that have had like one or two trivial commits in the half year it took for them to get laid off. Idk what kind of manager did not solve whatever was going on there. I guess getting laid off is a solution, too.

I believe it, but in a different scenario

Imagine the worker does some work, but it takes ten hours more of other people's testing to find all the bugs, and ten hours of someone more competent to fix them. Even though he did twenty hours of work, if he never showed up the pace of the work, someone doing it better might not affect others by just being more correct and actually might save others work by organizing the code in a way that is easier to understand.

It is not obvious that people who do a lot of work are actually positively benefiting the overall effort. I've certainly had to go and rewrite terrible code before. If it wasn't there, I wouldn't need to read it to see if it needed to be rewritten in the first place.

People do something, but often it's the wrong thing, and essentially nothing, or worse than nothing

Not into software developing but....I got a project manager and project lead that basically took over my project under my feet because they thought I was working too slowly. Now they got a junior engineer who thinks he's inventing all the things I had to invent to solve a problem....like a painter who thinks he's designed the perfect home. Well they're finding out now where ideas come from and that its not in the paint can or the brush. I love watching them squirm when their shitty design can't pass DFMEA so then ...do they design something different? Nah! DFMEA's can't tell you that your design id dumb as fuck! Its you! You! The engineer has to realize how stupid their design in. Instead, they proceed to apply resources to the ton of action items. Surely the pig will fly if we crush all the bones and reshape him into a parachute! I'll be right here when you guys are done fooling around and getting monthly praises and recognition. Praises and recognition by the way is the best way to get engineers out of your way...they get promoted to project lead or management! Suddenly they cant invent your inventions anymore!