It’s hard to tell. I’ve worked on projects with 50 programmers and it seemed many did nothing and a few did negative work.
We went through a round of layoffs and I had to “finish” another programmer’s work. It was a java app with servlets and JSP and a bunch of web forms submitting back to a database. He had just copy and pasted the html into his JSP so it had the sample data and messages. Everything submitted and went to the next page, but nothing was posted or saved.
He did this like 20 times for all his modules. Maybe six months of “work” was like nothing done.
I like to work on small teams that collaborate enough so if someone isn’t doing anything then we know. And I don’t think anyone’s work in my immediate vicinity is performative.
That being said, it’s hard to know people’s process and what is productive to them. If you take a small sample you might not understand. And what you think is performative may be essential. This seems common when I was younger when I thought “I don’t understand it, therefore it’s not important.”
I’m currently thinking through a tough program and browsing HN at 10am and it’s an essential part of my workflow.