Offer choice of either downrank (and criteria to get back), or fire.
Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
171–180 of 231 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#172The real mistake is not correcting a mistake when you see you've made one. It's always hard to let someone go, especially in a small company with a focus on personal development and a positive work environment. However, if you don't address this situation: 1) The morale of the company will likely decrease. 2) The productivity of the team will suffer. 3) Employees may start questioning the leadership's decisions. 4) S…
At the same time I kept thinking if they did fire the dev those 4 points you listed would happen. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
Yea, I think it really depends on if the team's manager is getting comments from other devs on the team about the person getting fired. I had a QA get fired from one of my teams way back and while I liked them as a person, it was clear they weren't doing good work or having any real focus on what they were assigned, unlike their peers in the role, so it made sense.
I would add, a big point of the announcement should be "And we'll be expediting backfilling them". The worst sort of firings/quits is when management sits on their hands for weeks in replacing them.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#173I've usually had a probation period clause in my employment terms.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#174Does this employee have any positive traits?
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#175We had one of these. Excellent interview, couldn't even handle explorer.exe on the other side. We fired them within the week. No one felt bad about it. Just do it and move on. The longer you drag it out, the worse it will get.
Out of curiosity, did you ever figure out the disconnect that caused: > Excellent interview to turn into > couldn't even handle explorer.exe. I had to deal with a similar situation. The size and scale of my employer at the time meant the employee stuck around for multiple years. They never got worse but sure never got better. In our case, the problem was that our interview questions were based on algorithmic knowledg…
Our flaw was similar.
We were asking high level questions. At no point did we ask things like "have you ever used Microsoft Windows" or "have you ever used a desktop computer". It would seem we cannot take these questions for granted anymore.
The best strategy I've come up with is to build an intern program and source talent from that lower cost/risk pool. Pulling high level employees off the street was almost always a circus for us.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#176(Not an expert manager; just some thoughts based on things I've seen.) I can't tell from the description whether the candidate was outright deceptive, like claiming experience they didn't have, or candidate was just good at the normal interviewing rituals, and the real problem was mess-up on company's end (i.e., interviewers said "mediocre" but HR somehow heard "hire at all costs"). In any case, talk with appropriate…
> "Then, if the candidate seemed to be dealing in good faith, then probably talk with the employee, candidly, about the problem, and what options you're presenting." I'm not pro-HR by any means, nor have I had to hire/fire a bunch of people, but the minute you hint that an employee could be terminated, there's a chance that they could take retaliatory measures. Further, OP stated, "Essentially we had deficiencies in…
I'm not sure "custom-fit preparation" counts as not having good faith. If I was doing an interview process and was told the next step would involve a live coding exercise in a specific language/package that I wasn't already fresh on, I'd be cramming for it to a degree where my performance would mostly show how fast I can learn something and not my net level of skill in that language/package. If the hiring folks inferred the wrong thing from that, that's not my fault for studying based on the information and parameters they provided me.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#177Let them go. Provide a respectable severance, since it's the company's fault they were hired in the first place. One of the most cost effective and humane things you can do is extend their health benefits out further than their monetary severance. For example, a month's pay with 2-3 months health benefits. At least in cases where I've had to let people go, I've found they appreciate an approach like this. It's a rela…
It was a mistake to hire, but they misrepresented thrmselves and aplied for a position they must have known they didn't qualify for. To be considered they must have significantly embellished their resume. Fire for incompetence, no severence.
Opportunistic applications are totally normal, and yes I’m a hiring engineering manager. If those aren’t caught in the recruitment process, then it’s the process that’s flawed.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#178As you consider the decision to let them go, consider the impact on other people in your work place too. Other developers notice someone like that underperforming and getting overpaid, and it can hurt the good climate you aim for. It may feel bad to fire them, but it may be worse to keep them.
You absolutely need to consider how the rest of the team will interpret you actions. Most probably know this individual is underperforming already. Teammates usually have a sense before the manager does. But the way you handle it will also be observed. Others need to know you won’t just fire someone on the spot if performance doesn’t match expectations. Life happens, people have personal life issues that may occasion…
As a counter point to this, I’ve witnessed the practice of designing these processes to terminate someone creates a ton of burnout for the manager. Expect to spend at least 20% of your time managing the PIP. Documentation, one on ones, babying tickets being assigned, etc.
On top of that I’ve never seen anyone get through a PIP successfully (n=6).
Furthermore, it can also create a culture of just dismissing any candidates who don’t come from the right pedigree because the risk of a mishire is way too high.
Its worth asking if it’s worth your time to do this for the sake of following process. Larger companies that need to standardize management for hundreds of managers have a greater need than startups do.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#179We had one of these. Excellent interview, couldn't even handle explorer.exe on the other side. We fired them within the week. No one felt bad about it. Just do it and move on. The longer you drag it out, the worse it will get.
Out of curiosity, did you ever figure out the disconnect that caused: > Excellent interview to turn into > couldn't even handle explorer.exe. I had to deal with a similar situation. The size and scale of my employer at the time meant the employee stuck around for multiple years. They never got worse but sure never got better. In our case, the problem was that our interview questions were based on algorithmic knowledg…
at my $work we are doing hires in 2 phases, first is mostly talk, and second is "trial day". on the "trial day", the candidate gets simple task (with few requirements and optional bonus points), that we could manage to do in 1/2 or 1/3 time that the candidate gets. the task has to solve something similar that we were working on, so that we test how the candidate perform in real scenario.
in the past few years it worked quite nicely but that still is not bullet proof. and we had to refine our methodology further.
for example one candidate solved the task perfectly, but on the end of the "trial day" the candidate was unable to answer some of our questions regarding his code. so we think that he had access to the task details upfront, or someone else helped;
another example was with candidate that solved the task, answered our questions, but in the office was lacking everything that he presented to us in the "trial day". we suspect that the relative of the candidate helped here, as we found later that the relative has job in similar position in another company.
so the "trail day" is good way to test candidate, unless he has early access to the details of the task, or relative is helping with the task. it sorted a lot of candidates that were unable to follow the task details, or worse lacked team working skills
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#180Fire them. You are obviously paying senior money for a junior. Unless of course you tried to rip them off by underpaying them. Then I suppose it balances out. Evaluate the hiring process, how did you mess up so bad? Fix it.
I agree with the general consensus to fire them, but if by "senior" OP means 3-5 years and this is a junior with potential, people are so hard to find that I wouldn't worry about misleveling or the salary difference. But the key is someone with potential. If it's a mismatch, cut your losses.