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One option: be extremely open to them doing something else at the company. Most people would have to drop acid to hit this level openness. “Put him in marketing

One option: be extremely open to them doing something else at the company. Most people would have to drop acid to hit this level openness. “Put him in marketing? But he’s a software engineer!” Well, apparently he’s not, or least not the kind you want. And don’t half ass it and have them split time or do the old role on the new team. The easiest way would be to look down a list of open jobs and seriously consider them for like 30 seconds each. It’ll be a brutal 10 minutes of focus, but only 10 minutes. I’ve almost never seen this job switch in a company work, but I’ve almost never seen it attempted. I have seen it work many times between companies. Everyone who switches careers does it. I think there’s a hang up around “incompetence”. Maybe it’s something inherent to the person, but you don’t have much evidence for that. The evidence is the person/job pair. So, switch up the job if the person seems good. Sometimes when I’ve struggled with a role that doesn’t feel right and I start blaming myself I think “Not everyone can do this. What if some super smart, healthy, well adjusted person was in this role but was this bad at it. What would he do?” I imagine some baseball player, marketing genius, or renowned writer and that he ended up in this job instead of that one. I guess he’d leave? I’ve actually struggled to come up with an answer but it feels important.

gerad 4y ago
Or do the obvious: move them into management. This sounds snarky, but I'm not being sarcastic. Part of management is making people feel happy and supported, and you don't need the same level of competence in management that you do in IC work (or rather you need a different set of competencies, which they may have).
- akiselev 4y ago
  That's the idea behind the Dilbert comics [1]! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
  - edmundsauto 4y ago
    The Dilbert comics assume people moved to management due to incompetence will remain incompetent in a leadership role. This is a big leap - people management is a separate skillset, and in fact it's less likely a 10x programmer will also be a 10x manager. For the same reason that Shohei Ohtani is a unicord - it's hard to find someone who is a superlative performer in 2 sets of skills compared to just 1.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  This right here. I personally know several examples; people who were not really incompetent, but were not up to the generally expected level of work of an IC. They became excellent managers.
- qsort 4y ago
  Promoveatur ut amoveatur, a time-tested strategy.
- clnq 4y ago
  It does not sound snarky, it sounds right. Promoting a stereotypical fantastic engineer into management is a great way to waste their talent. Promoting a people person into a management role will make them happier and the team happier. The only thing that saddens me about this approach is that middle managers can earn more than senior engineers in tech companies, and sometimes becoming a manager or a lead is seen as a natural career progression path.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  That can actually be a great solution. It's way better than management with no technical skills whatsoever.
- icedchai 4y ago
  You don’t want too many incompetent people in management. This will result in your competent ICs becoming incredibly frustrated, leaving you with only the incompetent remaining. Good luck fixing that.
moonchrome 4y ago
I think your framing makes it seem like the negative impact of failure comes just from the judgement of others - I'd say it's much easier to build a positive self-image if you remove yourself from the environment in which you were found to be unfit.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  I’m not sure what you mean. Is it that these people wouldn’t have a positive self image if they were in a role that’s a bad fit? Sometimes I’ve thought of that and realized how it would be wrong to label them as incompetent when they’d be a star at something else. Other times I imagine they’d somehow still have high self esteem and handle this situation super well and I try to figure what that would look like.
paulddraper 4y ago
> but I’ve almost never seen it attempted The vast majority of people don't want to have a different job than the one they signed up for. If you sign up for engineering, you don't want sales. And vice versa. 99% of the time.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  People also don’t want to be fired. I think there’s a lot of value left on the table from people getting fired from jobs and getting similar jobs somewhere else that they’re also not great at because they can’t break out of a self image.
  - paulddraper 4y ago
    You'd think so, but not really
    - travisjungroth 4y ago
      More engineer than salesman, I see
      - paulddraper 4y ago
        More empiricist than theorist.
        travisjungroth 4y ago
        It was a joke that your reply wasn’t exactly persuasive.
        paulddraper 4y ago
        Fair
- pge 4y ago
  This has not been my experience - I have known a number of people that were in engineering and were asked to try sales and really enjoyed it. I've known fewer (only one that I can think of) that went the other direction. The best CEO I ever worked with had a real talent for getting people into the right jobs where they could be successful (which solves the "incompetent but nice" problem because "incompetent" is a function of the job they are being asked to do), which was sometimes a very different role than they originally signed up for. People stayed longer and were happier when they were in roles where they could be successful. It is unfortunate that many managers are hesitant to move people into different jobs than they originally signed up for. If the alternative is firing them because they aren't competent, finding a place where they can be successful is a much better option.
Pxtl 4y ago
Agreed. People who are "technical-enough to understand software but don't have quite the right mindset to write it well, but everybody likes working with them" are often excellent in developer-adjacent roles like business analyst. They grok the system well-enough to be able to talk requirements and work with both developers and stakeholders, and can go to bat for their team and win the stakeholders over when it's a case of "okay the developers think they have a neat way to meet your needs but it's not exactly what you asked for what do you think of this???"
- esel2k 4y ago
  I hate to admit that that’s who I am. I made a pretty OK career as Product Manager / Head of Product. And I can tell that beeing nice is super important here as I deal daily with anything from customer, CEO, difficult stakeholders, sales and co. So no I don’t think beeing incompetent but I had not the patience and grit for software development although I loved it. Edit: Typo
  - Pxtl 4y ago
    Nothing to "hate to admit" there. A good product manager is worth their weight in gold, especially one with enough knowledge of what's going on under the hood to understand the technical tradeoffs the developers are making in order to meet requirements.
  - dgb23 4y ago
    Patience/grit in a very specific way. I don’t know who I’m quoting. But being able to stare at a screen for hours is the key. Relentlessly technical? Stubborn hacker? It’s definitely not an intelligence thing. Being smart helps, but the amount of time you can passionately power through figuring out technical minutiae is often the limiting factor.
lostlogin 4y ago
Making a job for a person is something that should be done rarely surely? Getting a person for a job is better approach.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  If you’re “making” a job, it’s not going to work. Compared to a new candidate, you’re getting tighter ranges on their attributes and different means. Skill is more known and expected lower. Personal compatibility is more known and expected higher. You also save a one time cost of interviewing and onboarding. You should not usually do this. It’s just an option to consider.

gerad 4y ago

Or do the obvious: move them into management. This sounds snarky, but I'm not being sarcastic. Part of management is making people feel happy and supported, and you don't need the same level of competence in management that you do in IC work (or rather you need a different set of competencies, which they may have).

akiselev 4y ago
That's the idea behind the Dilbert comics [1]! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_principle
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  The Dilbert comics assume people moved to management due to incompetence will remain incompetent in a leadership role. This is a big leap - people management is a separate skillset, and in fact it's less likely a 10x programmer will also be a 10x manager. For the same reason that Shohei Ohtani is a unicord - it's hard to find someone who is a superlative performer in 2 sets of skills compared to just 1.
KerrAvon 4y ago
This right here. I personally know several examples; people who were not really incompetent, but were not up to the generally expected level of work of an IC. They became excellent managers.
qsort 4y ago
Promoveatur ut amoveatur, a time-tested strategy.
clnq 4y ago
It does not sound snarky, it sounds right. Promoting a stereotypical fantastic engineer into management is a great way to waste their talent. Promoting a people person into a management role will make them happier and the team happier. The only thing that saddens me about this approach is that middle managers can earn more than senior engineers in tech companies, and sometimes becoming a manager or a lead is seen as a natural career progression path.
908B64B197 4y ago
That can actually be a great solution. It's way better than management with no technical skills whatsoever.
icedchai 4y ago
You don’t want too many incompetent people in management. This will result in your competent ICs becoming incredibly frustrated, leaving you with only the incompetent remaining. Good luck fixing that.

moonchrome 4y ago

I think your framing makes it seem like the negative impact of failure comes just from the judgement of others - I'd say it's much easier to build a positive self-image if you remove yourself from the environment in which you were found to be unfit.

travisjungroth 4y ago
I’m not sure what you mean. Is it that these people wouldn’t have a positive self image if they were in a role that’s a bad fit? Sometimes I’ve thought of that and realized how it would be wrong to label them as incompetent when they’d be a star at something else. Other times I imagine they’d somehow still have high self esteem and handle this situation super well and I try to figure what that would look like.

paulddraper 4y ago

> but I’ve almost never seen it attempted The vast majority of people don't want to have a different job than the one they signed up for. If you sign up for engineering, you don't want sales. And vice versa. 99% of the time.

travisjungroth 4y ago
People also don’t want to be fired. I think there’s a lot of value left on the table from people getting fired from jobs and getting similar jobs somewhere else that they’re also not great at because they can’t break out of a self image.
- paulddraper 4y ago
  You'd think so, but not really
  - travisjungroth 4y ago
    More engineer than salesman, I see
    - paulddraper 4y ago
      More empiricist than theorist.
      - travisjungroth 4y ago
        It was a joke that your reply wasn’t exactly persuasive.
        paulddraper 4y ago
        Fair
pge 4y ago
This has not been my experience - I have known a number of people that were in engineering and were asked to try sales and really enjoyed it. I've known fewer (only one that I can think of) that went the other direction. The best CEO I ever worked with had a real talent for getting people into the right jobs where they could be successful (which solves the "incompetent but nice" problem because "incompetent" is a function of the job they are being asked to do), which was sometimes a very different role than they originally signed up for. People stayed longer and were happier when they were in roles where they could be successful. It is unfortunate that many managers are hesitant to move people into different jobs than they originally signed up for. If the alternative is firing them because they aren't competent, finding a place where they can be successful is a much better option.

Pxtl 4y ago

Agreed. People who are "technical-enough to understand software but don't have quite the right mindset to write it well, but everybody likes working with them" are often excellent in developer-adjacent roles like business analyst. They grok the system well-enough to be able to talk requirements and work with both developers and stakeholders, and can go to bat for their team and win the stakeholders over when it's a case of "okay the developers think they have a neat way to meet your needs but it's not exactly what you asked for what do you think of this???"

esel2k 4y ago
I hate to admit that that’s who I am. I made a pretty OK career as Product Manager / Head of Product. And I can tell that beeing nice is super important here as I deal daily with anything from customer, CEO, difficult stakeholders, sales and co. So no I don’t think beeing incompetent but I had not the patience and grit for software development although I loved it. Edit: Typo
- Pxtl 4y ago
  Nothing to "hate to admit" there. A good product manager is worth their weight in gold, especially one with enough knowledge of what's going on under the hood to understand the technical tradeoffs the developers are making in order to meet requirements.
- dgb23 4y ago
  Patience/grit in a very specific way. I don’t know who I’m quoting. But being able to stare at a screen for hours is the key. Relentlessly technical? Stubborn hacker? It’s definitely not an intelligence thing. Being smart helps, but the amount of time you can passionately power through figuring out technical minutiae is often the limiting factor.

lostlogin 4y ago

Making a job for a person is something that should be done rarely surely? Getting a person for a job is better approach.

travisjungroth 4y ago
If you’re “making” a job, it’s not going to work. Compared to a new candidate, you’re getting tighter ranges on their attributes and different means. Skill is more known and expected lower. Personal compatibility is more known and expected higher. You also save a one time cost of interviewing and onboarding. You should not usually do this. It’s just an option to consider.