5 ms·

Ok, good advice, but what if someone is just not good enough? Firing someone, stopping a project, it is not the fault of the employee (not always at least). But

Ok, good advice, but what if someone is just not good enough? Firing someone, stopping a project, it is not the fault of the employee (not always at least). But I'm currently in a situation where I (for my first time) have to tell someone they work too slow and seem to never finish stuff properly. The guy is just not good enough and it start to annoy me because he is not taking steps to improve. I find it very difficult, it concerns an otherwise nice guy that I have coffee or beers with from time to time. I know it's best to just say: Hey this isn't working. But I want to find a job better suited to him, I don't want him wasting my time anymore when I ask him how he did something and it seems he never put it in our git repo.

sundvor 8y ago
Have you tried communicating these concerns to him? Break down the expectations, e.g. that everything must be committed in the repo, with covering tests etc? If he takes it on board, win! If he ignores it and takes offense, well at least you tried?
- teekert 8y ago
  I tried setting dead lines "Ok, lets make sure this is finished next week". But there is always an excuse, but it boils down to him being a poor programmer, he gets stuck and then he works on the other project he is employed in. The poorness is understandable in our circumstance and sort of ok (we were driven into this kind of work and I happen to love it, he happens to have no talent for it what so ever). I did offer other work (back to the lab in stead of doing the bioinformatics) but he does somehow seem to enjoy it. I know, time to be hard and honest indeed.
  - jrockway 8y ago
    Arbitrary deadlines rarely work. Psychologically they just encourage "student syndrome" where people feel like they can slack off until the deadline actually seems threatening. Then the deadline is missed. That is the nature of human psychology, not your particular employee. Avery talks it about a bit here (read the section where "student syndrome" starts showing up): https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712#13 https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712#13 Ultimately, your job as a manager is to keep your team unstuck. People get fired all the time because their manager is bad at management, as it's certainly a supervisor's privilege to fire people they don't like. But always remember that your assessment "this guy is lazy and doesn't like the field" could be completely wrong and you're just bad at management.
    - teekert 8y ago
      Thanks, this could certainly be it, the next conversation will be along the lines of "what do you need to finish things faster?" Don't misunderstand, this guy has sometimes been working on something for weeks, and then I decide to take it from him to do it from the ground up in 2 days. He seems to be allergic to git and complains about errors of others that don't even affect him. Still he seems unaware so a respectful inquiry seems best indeed.
      - watwut 8y ago
        Always be respectful. But, the complains about errors of others that don't even affect him might be just strategy to cover up (maybe even from himself) his own under-performance and insecurity. Good luck. He sounds like some people I worked with in the past, not as a boss but as a colleague, and it was no pleasure. Down to being sociable and nice at beer. Btw, the complaining about other people errors from someone like that whose own larger errors are seemingly never addressed can overtime turn the team culture pretty toxic.
      - jrockway 8y ago
        I don't think it's possible to have an actual allergy to git, so some training in that area would probably help their productivity. Make sure he knows how to use git, and that he knows your organization's policy in regards to commits. You can set a policy like "just commit everything at the end of the day" and provide a shell script to do that. Don't make git the wedge that isolates you from your employee; make it a productivity tool. > take it from him to do it from the ground up in 2 days People that you employ to work for you will ALWAYS do things differently and probably more slowly than you. I have never had someone working for me, asked them to do X, and then gotten a changelist to review that was exactly what I would have done myself. Your employee is not a clone of you, he's an independently-thinking person with different assumptions and experience. (Certainly, if something is WRONG, don't accept it, but it's different... that's the reality of having more that one person working on a project.) Also... there is no really good way to estimate how productive someone is, including yourself. You could be way above average and nobody that works for you will ever be as fast as you. You also have to expect that someone with less experience than you is going to be slower. For you, 2 days is applying the sum of your domain expertise and X years of a software engineering career to a cookie-cutter problem. For someone that works for you, that could be a month of acquiring career skills necessary to solve problems in the future and some subset of your problem domain experience, and then 2 days of applying those skills. You do enough of those "my boss could do this in 2 days" projects over many months, and then you're the guy that does it in 2 days. That's what experience is. > complains about errors of others that don't even affect him Probably worth having a discussion about. I will point out that you're kind of doing this here and in a public forum, hoping that your employee never finds out.
avaika 8y ago
Those things are much (MUCH) easier if you provide feedback on things you don't like instantly. He didn't commit something -- tell him. He did something in the way you don't find the best -- tell him. You think he's slow -- tell him right after you found out. After a while if you decide that it won't work for both of you and things aren't improving, there should be already a good hint for the guy by that moment. If you just hold everything without sharing with him, for sure that would be very hard to tell him your concerns. Like apple. Way too hard to simply swallow. But it's ok to go bite after bite.
pc86 8y ago
Isn't finding a job better suited to him sort of his job? The issue seems to be less than he's "not good enough" and more that he's not taking steps to improve. If he was making slow but consistent improvement you'd probably be much more willing to stick it out for him, right?
scarface74 8y ago
The guy is just not good enough and it start to annoy me because he is not taking steps to improve. I find it very difficult, it concerns an otherwise nice guy that I have coffee or beers with from time to time. It took me awhile to learn, but I keep personal and professional especially with subordinates and supervisors strictly separate. I wouldn’t be grabbing “coffee and beers” with him. It makes it that much harder to do what needs to be done. Second thought, how does an experienced salaried employee ever “work too slowly” and not meet reasonable deadlines. If I think the deadline is reasonable, I didn’t push back, and there were no external factors , I’m going to work over to meet it - especially if it involves a new to me technology.
- namibj 8y ago
  In Germany you can expect to get fired within week as soon as HR learns about you working too much overtime. The issue is that they have criminal liability if they endanger your health (it might be limited to cases where it's done repeatedly/egregiously, but no employer wants to be on the bench having to pray that the judge sees it as not his fault that his subordinate happened to work too long despite him knowing about it.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I would hate that as an employee. I’ve been getting jobs that I was barely qualified for with the expectation that I would have to work extra hours to both meet deadlines and learn the tech stack. So if I spend 12 hours doing 8 hours worth of productive work and the other 4 hours reading, watching tutorial videos in between, should the employer be punished?
    - disiplus 8y ago
      well, the max hours you can work is regulated by law. and if you think about it, if a company hires a junior developer, he is greeting paid as a junior and the company is also spending hours on his training ans so on. if the company is switching stacks or wants you to do something completely new to the company the time spend learning is working, nobody is expected to learn that on its own time.

sundvor 8y ago

Have you tried communicating these concerns to him? Break down the expectations, e.g. that everything must be committed in the repo, with covering tests etc? If he takes it on board, win! If he ignores it and takes offense, well at least you tried?

teekert 8y ago
I tried setting dead lines "Ok, lets make sure this is finished next week". But there is always an excuse, but it boils down to him being a poor programmer, he gets stuck and then he works on the other project he is employed in. The poorness is understandable in our circumstance and sort of ok (we were driven into this kind of work and I happen to love it, he happens to have no talent for it what so ever). I did offer other work (back to the lab in stead of doing the bioinformatics) but he does somehow seem to enjoy it. I know, time to be hard and honest indeed.
- jrockway 8y ago
  Arbitrary deadlines rarely work. Psychologically they just encourage "student syndrome" where people feel like they can slack off until the deadline actually seems threatening. Then the deadline is missed. That is the nature of human psychology, not your particular employee. Avery talks it about a bit here (read the section where "student syndrome" starts showing up): https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712#13 https://apenwarr.ca/log/?m=201712#13 Ultimately, your job as a manager is to keep your team unstuck. People get fired all the time because their manager is bad at management, as it's certainly a supervisor's privilege to fire people they don't like. But always remember that your assessment "this guy is lazy and doesn't like the field" could be completely wrong and you're just bad at management.
  - teekert 8y ago
    Thanks, this could certainly be it, the next conversation will be along the lines of "what do you need to finish things faster?" Don't misunderstand, this guy has sometimes been working on something for weeks, and then I decide to take it from him to do it from the ground up in 2 days. He seems to be allergic to git and complains about errors of others that don't even affect him. Still he seems unaware so a respectful inquiry seems best indeed.
    - watwut 8y ago
      Always be respectful. But, the complains about errors of others that don't even affect him might be just strategy to cover up (maybe even from himself) his own under-performance and insecurity. Good luck. He sounds like some people I worked with in the past, not as a boss but as a colleague, and it was no pleasure. Down to being sociable and nice at beer. Btw, the complaining about other people errors from someone like that whose own larger errors are seemingly never addressed can overtime turn the team culture pretty toxic.
    - jrockway 8y ago
      I don't think it's possible to have an actual allergy to git, so some training in that area would probably help their productivity. Make sure he knows how to use git, and that he knows your organization's policy in regards to commits. You can set a policy like "just commit everything at the end of the day" and provide a shell script to do that. Don't make git the wedge that isolates you from your employee; make it a productivity tool. > take it from him to do it from the ground up in 2 days People that you employ to work for you will ALWAYS do things differently and probably more slowly than you. I have never had someone working for me, asked them to do X, and then gotten a changelist to review that was exactly what I would have done myself. Your employee is not a clone of you, he's an independently-thinking person with different assumptions and experience. (Certainly, if something is WRONG, don't accept it, but it's different... that's the reality of having more that one person working on a project.) Also... there is no really good way to estimate how productive someone is, including yourself. You could be way above average and nobody that works for you will ever be as fast as you. You also have to expect that someone with less experience than you is going to be slower. For you, 2 days is applying the sum of your domain expertise and X years of a software engineering career to a cookie-cutter problem. For someone that works for you, that could be a month of acquiring career skills necessary to solve problems in the future and some subset of your problem domain experience, and then 2 days of applying those skills. You do enough of those "my boss could do this in 2 days" projects over many months, and then you're the guy that does it in 2 days. That's what experience is. > complains about errors of others that don't even affect him Probably worth having a discussion about. I will point out that you're kind of doing this here and in a public forum, hoping that your employee never finds out.

avaika 8y ago

Those things are much (MUCH) easier if you provide feedback on things you don't like instantly. He didn't commit something -- tell him. He did something in the way you don't find the best -- tell him. You think he's slow -- tell him right after you found out. After a while if you decide that it won't work for both of you and things aren't improving, there should be already a good hint for the guy by that moment. If you just hold everything without sharing with him, for sure that would be very hard to tell him your concerns. Like apple. Way too hard to simply swallow. But it's ok to go bite after bite.

pc86 8y ago

Isn't finding a job better suited to him sort of his job? The issue seems to be less than he's "not good enough" and more that he's not taking steps to improve. If he was making slow but consistent improvement you'd probably be much more willing to stick it out for him, right?

scarface74 8y ago

The guy is just not good enough and it start to annoy me because he is not taking steps to improve. I find it very difficult, it concerns an otherwise nice guy that I have coffee or beers with from time to time. It took me awhile to learn, but I keep personal and professional especially with subordinates and supervisors strictly separate. I wouldn’t be grabbing “coffee and beers” with him. It makes it that much harder to do what needs to be done. Second thought, how does an experienced salaried employee ever “work too slowly” and not meet reasonable deadlines. If I think the deadline is reasonable, I didn’t push back, and there were no external factors , I’m going to work over to meet it - especially if it involves a new to me technology.

namibj 8y ago
In Germany you can expect to get fired within week as soon as HR learns about you working too much overtime. The issue is that they have criminal liability if they endanger your health (it might be limited to cases where it's done repeatedly/egregiously, but no employer wants to be on the bench having to pray that the judge sees it as not his fault that his subordinate happened to work too long despite him knowing about it.
- scarface74 8y ago
  I would hate that as an employee. I’ve been getting jobs that I was barely qualified for with the expectation that I would have to work extra hours to both meet deadlines and learn the tech stack. So if I spend 12 hours doing 8 hours worth of productive work and the other 4 hours reading, watching tutorial videos in between, should the employer be punished?
  - disiplus 8y ago
    well, the max hours you can work is regulated by law. and if you think about it, if a company hires a junior developer, he is greeting paid as a junior and the company is also spending hours on his training ans so on. if the company is switching stacks or wants you to do something completely new to the company the time spend learning is working, nobody is expected to learn that on its own time.