Fire immediately.
The other devs are going to be PISSED if they find out they're making less, and everything will start derailing.
There's loads of other good devs available instead.
Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
11–20 of 231 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#12Why it needs another 6-12 months to get them to be productive? Is it some system programming position? I can't imagine anything else that would require a year to get people into shape.
Kernel development, simulations, numerical methods, ML, graphics, database internals, compilers, infosec engineering, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#13I'm curious how much they're willing to invest in skills development for the sake of their future career.
I.e., what if you agreed to let them keep their current job title, but gave them the responsibilities and salary of a junior dev until the skill gap was closed?
Then (a) they have a way forward, (b) they avoid a career-limiting feature on their resume, and (c) you wouldn't be overpaying for their work.
That's the best balance of kindness and fairness I can think of at the moment.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#14>I guess in most companies this would be a no-brainer, but we're a small outfit with a focus on personal development, intrinsic motivation, good climate, and low turnover. Do you think there is any way to rescue this situation? Or should we make this (perhaps justifiably, after their misleading self-presentation) the first time we let someone go for performance reasons?
You have to fire. No hiring process is 100%. It is worse to have them stay. If your organization is unable to fire people because you have 'not firing people' as an objective, you're optimizing for things that aren't advancing the business, and essentially shooting yourselves in the foot.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#15Assuming your side of the story is true, can you downlevel them to a more junior position and reduce their salary? If they won't accept that, then the only reasonable option is to let them go. Other developers will notice and become disgruntled having a incompetent co-worker making more than them.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#16This is what the 'probation' period is for?
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#17It's not me, is it?
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#18It's only impostor syndrome if you're competent.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#19Your hiring process screwed up, so let them go, and figure out how to fix it next time around. There's really no salvaging the situation as you have described it. The engineer is unlikely to take the option of a role that has lower status and pay, especially given that you've already introduced them to the team as a senior.
At a large company they likely wouldn't recover from this situation either - but they have the financial and management resources to just sandbag him with the worst jobs until he quits, which I'm assuming you can't afford.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#20no offense (okay, maybe some), but how is this even a question lol... fire immediately. it's not something tangential like communication, but about someone lacking the core skill that you are paying for.