Agreed. This individual was a net negative. They could not get their work done, and thus required other engineers to pick up their "slack". Everyone pitched

Agreed. This individual was a net negative. They could not get their work done, and thus required other engineers to pick up their "slack". Everyone pitched in to help mentor the individual, without much success. Compared to other similarly skilled/experienced developers we'd hired around the same time - who became productive in a few months, this person made zero progress. Not firing this person was demoralizing to the team. Moving them off the team to another group seemed to upset people even more than keeping this person around (I'd moved on by this time, but kept in touch with the team). Rather than doing the right thing for the organization (firing them) - management decided to make it someone else's problem in the organization. Yes from management's perspective they 'solved' the team's problem but the optics of what they did created resentment towards management.