I've been the person who wasn't performing to expectations, and I've been the Manager who has had to tell people that they haven't been performing to expectatio

I've been the person who wasn't performing to expectations, and I've been the Manager who has had to tell people that they haven't been performing to expectations. In my case, when I wasn't performing well, simple honesty would have gone a long way: it was simply a case of I didn't know. "Hey, Ian, you know, there's this python tool that you can run called pylint that makes sure that your python code meets community standards before you commit it," (it was my first real exposure to python) or, "spaces not tabs," (first real programming job @IBM before being rolled back to a hardware project). I was fortunate enough to have mentors and leaders who provided me with books, challenges, and guidance to make me a better programmer -- while doing so in a positive way (not a PiP: those are about as demoralizing as they come, yes, I'm looking at you, CollabNet) to make me a stronger programmer and a better person. When I was a leader, I tried to move it to a non-threatening setting: lunch or coffee. I tried to take the steps that were used on me that I thought were positive -- You are part of a team, and we don't want to leave you behind; here is $100 to spend on books, and here is a list of books that you should start out on. Here are some programming challenges to get you started out. Here are some internal mentors who can help you. Don't be afraid to reach out to any member of the team -- don't feel ashamed. We are a team. When one person fails, we all fail, but, when we succeed as a team, each one of us succeeds. Is this perfect? I don't know. Would this pass muster with HR these days? Probably not. I do have a heart.