how do you think you can use this “joker”? i want some concrete usecase…

…

ok. We may think on how ‘ghosting’ affects its players - customer, company and developer.

For the first sight it may looks like developer and customer are cheated here but although this kicks off developer’s CV ‘ghosting’ is not too much evil for “developers” and “customers”.

CUSTOMER. Customer on the whole is interested in product quality and if it is good then no one even think of checking for ghosts and if it is bad then even people with 5-star CVs working on a project is not an excuse for a company. So “customer” (assuming he gets good product) looses nothing.

COMPANY. The main beneficiary party here is of course “company”. While getting a little risk of being discovered it gets several good pros:

• Being able to assign inexperienced developer in a project where customer wants (wants - not needs) guru one. This case is VERY common as almost all customers wants guru to add one small JSP to his site :). Also this case also often moves to fake resumes with developer’s real name.
• Seamless replacement of a developer in full-time development project where for some reason developer has gone. This is a case when for example developer is ill/left the company/fired and company doesn’t want (i bet it doesn’t) to loose money for a transaction period. After a new developer working under the name of another has studied the project enough he is often “replaced” with himself for customer.
• Anti headhunting - in this case you are not a pure ghost but you are working as devXXX so seems very similar.

DEVELOPER. As i can see in the post above main cons of being a ghost is impossibility to add the project to your CV… Well it is so but… do you know how many really interesting offshore projects are done w/o NDA? Not many and those that are do not require ghosting. Voila! Almost all of the projects you’re working on as ghost can not be added to your CV so relax. Moreover - the company also can’t add it to its success-stories. Ce la vie
And the most interesting part of the story - did you read what you signed upon hiring? it’s about 70% you can not disclosure any information (thus can not add anything to CV except for “working for company XXX as major JAVA developer”).
i think i’ve degraded CVs weight now let’s see the pros you’ve missed:

• ability to work w/o proper experience.
• no obligations. As you are a ghost you can switch to another project (this not only where “company” can hook the fish).
• you can still add the project to the CV as “large enterprise application”.