Was the candidate informed about the expectations before or after being hired? Has anyone communicated to them that they are not meeting those expectations?
Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
71–80 of 231 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#72This is what the 'probation' period is for?
We don't have those in America. Mostly because your healthcare is tied to your job, so nobody would risk taking a probationary role that could land them out of work and without healthcare at the end of it...
There most definitely are companies that have a probationary period in the US. It may not be common but it does happen. My first dev job had a probationary period and I put up with it because it was a job that was willing to employ me as a dev without a CS degree or prior dev experience. I lasted about 7 or 8 months before I quit for somewhere better.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is just evil to both that person and your team. Just let the person go if they do not satisfy what they were selling them self as. Dont play evil and stupid games.
US is an exception in terms of at-will employment. In most other countries you cannot fire people just for reasons like this. In other countries people have to resort to backhanded ways like the parent comment mentioned if you want to get someone off the payroll.
You can in the probationary period.
If after several months you decide you no longer want them that's different, but if you hire someone, they're no good, you can fire them pretty easily, assuming you've specified the probationary period in the contract.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#74I'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…
Not knowing their side of the story, the OP makes it sound like they basically lied and practiced interviewing to score a high paying job. That sort of dishonesty shouldn't be tolerated, much less rewarded.
The rest of us work and learn honestly for years if not decades. If an employer asked me about my skillsets, I would be honest about my experience and deficiencies and negotiate honestly from there, and make plans to address the weaknesses accordingly.
Finding a good dev fit for any given project or team is already hard enough when people are honest and well intentioned. We have no good credential system or standard way to suss out ability. It's how we get endless whiteboarding challenges and leetcode that isn't relevant to the actual job. Allowing charlatans into the mix just makes it worse for everyone, both employers and other employees and prospective employees.
It's one thing if this person came in honestly and needed some specific remediation, maybe a particular technology or domain knowledge or whatever, but were generally competent. But that doesn't sound like what happened here. They lied to get their foot in the door, abusing the company's family-like atmosphere. They'll just drag everyone else down.
Let them go and have a better hiring process next time. Ask your other employees for better ways to evaluate candidate ability if you need to. They are often better able to evaluate whether someone can do their job or lead them. But show them that you care about fairness, not charismatic lying ability.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#75Let 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 relatively easy way to thread the needle between human dignity and corporate finance demands. A rarity.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#76Document the performance issues in writing, create an improvement plan for the employee that they sign, and if the employee cannot correct the issues, you fire them.
You need to do the same thing with all of the employees involved in the hiring process, or get them out of the hiring process if that isn't their primary role and they are otherwise competent.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#77This is very strange that you're asking HN how to handle the situation. Who are the "We" that is running your company? Of course, if you're just posting something to generate some chat on HN that's fine, but if you actually need to ask the opinion of the HN community about what to do in this situation, then you have bigger problems.
It is perfectly acceptable to seek advice and opinions from a community you respect - not a problem whatsoever, it is a sign of making attempts at being the best leader one can be.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#78Just do the right thing and don't waste time on it. The candidate is out.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
10 years ago yes, but nowadays that domain-specific knowledge can be solved with a $20 ChatGPT subscription (as it simulates very well pair-programming and spitting out explanations for you). It sounds more like legacy / messy systems with no dev/staging platform, or very bad documentation, or even a terrible onboarding process if you really need 9 months for someone to deploy code.
This is a joke, right?
It is very true, ChatGPT makes it very easy to learn all the “domain-specific” knowledge, and makes the learning-curve less steep.
Linux Kernel development is a fairly organized C software, it is no different than working on Chromium or Unity, or like any other large codebase.
It used to be easy to get lost.
However now, for only $20 you have an expert coder, sitting by your side (and this is what ChatGPT does), then your learning curve is certainly reduced from the 6-9 months, which seems gigantic.
Simulations, number manipulations, data analysis, etc, you have, thanks to ChatGPT, turnkey code solutions.
It was tough, when you had no internet, no GitHub, no AI, no documentation, no Wikipedia, no StackOverflow sites, but now the barrier for entry to be productive is much lower.
If you need one year to start deliver one basic feature, and you have ChatGPT on your side, then it means the onboarding process is broken.
Re: Ask HN: How to handle a senior hire turning out to be junior?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is just evil to both that person and your team. Just let the person go if they do not satisfy what they were selling them self as. Dont play evil and stupid games.
US is an exception in terms of at-will employment. In most other countries you cannot fire people just for reasons like this. In other countries people have to resort to backhanded ways like the parent comment mentioned if you want to get someone off the payroll.
That's "constructive dismissal", which is not allowed. Firing for "performance" is ok in the first year or two
(country specific)