Not every developer on your team is pulling their weight. Some are virtually invisible in your delivery pipeline: no commits, no tickets, no reviews. These contributors, often referred to as “ghost engineers” can quietly drain your team’s velocity and morale. They might not be doing anything wrong on paper, but their lack of contribution speaks volumes.
At Waydev, we help engineering leaders surface these invisible gaps before they become team-wide problems.
A ghost engineer is a developer whose output represents less than 10% of their peers’. They typically have little to no code contributions, pull request activity, or engagement with project work. While they might appear “active” in meetings or on Slack, they don’t contribute meaningfully to delivery.
“Engineering leaders don’t just need visibility into what’s being done — they need clarity on what’s not,” says Alex Circei, CEO and co-founder of Waydev. “Ghost engineers are the blind spots that silently drag team performance down.”
These underperformers aren’t always easy to spot, especially in remote environments where visibility is limited. But when left unchecked, they can disrupt team dynamics, inflate payroll costs, and create frustration among high-performing developers.
A landmark study from Stanford, which analyzed over 50,000 software engineers, found that roughly 9.5% of developers contributed less than 10% compared to their colleagues, while earning full salaries. Using an algorithmic analysis of developer activity, the study coined the term “ghost engineers” and exposed a hidden cost in engineering teams worldwide.
While the actual number may vary across organizations, the pattern is real. In distributed teams, where accountability is harder to enforce, the study found the percentage of ghost engineers could climb as high as 14%, compared to just 6% in in-office setups.
“In remote work environments, the gap between high performers and low performers widens. You need tools that help you see both,” says Circei.
Waydev makes ghost engineers visible — early and clearly.
Our platform analyzes engineering work across Git, Jira, CI/CD tools, and collaboration platforms. We highlight contributors with no recent commits, pull requests, or ticket updates, giving you a clear picture of who might be disengaged or underutilized.
“The goal isn’t to punish low performers, it’s to help engineering managers understand what’s really happening in their teams, and why.” Circei explains. “Sometimes it’s a motivation problem, sometimes it’s a lack of fit. But you can’t fix what you can’t see.”
The shift to hybrid and remote work has created more autonomy, and more ambiguity. While many engineers thrive in distributed environments, others fade into the background.
According to a study by Denisov-Blanch, ghost engineers are more than twice as common in remote teams. This doesn’t mean remote work is the problem, it just means leaders need better tools to evaluate outcomes over visibility.
Waydev’s remote-first analytics are built for this reality. We help you separate the silent high performers from the silent disengaged.
Not all activity means progress. That’s why modern engineering orgs are moving away from simple activity logs and focusing on outcome-driven metrics.
Metrics That Go Beyond Activity:
The SPACE Framework emphasizes that productivity is multi-dimensional: it includes satisfaction, performance, activity, collaboration, and efficiency.
“We never judge performance by raw commit counts,” says Circei. “We look at engagement, output over time, and contribution to delivery. The context matters.”
Identifying ghost engineers is only the first step. The next is implementing performance engineering practices that reduce disengagement and improve clarity across the board.
When leaders pair data with empathy, teams improve faster and more sustainably.
Ghost engineers are a hidden drag on software performance. They’re not bad people, they’re often just lost in the system. But their impact is real, and it compounds over time.
Platforms like Waydev give engineering leaders the tools to identify silent disengagement, take proactive steps, and build stronger, more transparent teams.
“Your best engineers want accountability. They want to know they’re part of a team where everyone contributes,” Circei concludes. “It’s our job to create that environment.”
By understanding the ghost engineer phenomenon and leveraging the right tools, you’re not just managing performance, you’re building a culture of trust, ownership, and impact.
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