My Underperforming Developer Got Fired. Here’s Why This Is Healthy for The Team
What you can do to prevent the firing, but also what can happen if firing doesn’t happen
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What could I’ve done to make things better? What was the mistake on my part? What’s the modus operandi for working with those folks?
Well, this guy was doing the same work and got a bit stuck in a single line of work.
So any task for X module is assigned to him. And what happens after the task gets assigned? Chaos ensues.
The task takes weeks to see production. The correct and fully functional feature just isn’t there. And of course, “design is lagging behind”.
Design folks are only partially guilty.
But what design do you need for a few lines being rendered? Also for each task, the same story occurs. One can conclude, it’s not up to the design.
“Our design folks won’t have time to invest in this feature, deliver the feature in best effort.”
And it was a simple feature, so design wasn’t even necessary. Still, I got the same response from the developer: “We need the client to sign off “. And of course, this got stalled as well.
I’ve just shrugged it off and moved on. Finished up my part of the deal and that’s it.
The client noticed the delay in features. And asked for a replacement. So the teammate got fired.
Could have this been prevented? What to do with underperformers? How to stay professional?
Could more handholding help?
I know some might say he was undertrained. Or he didn’t know what needs to be done. Well, that wasn’t the case here.
I’ve prepared everything needed for the front end. A lot of guides, handholding, and help. But there’s a line to this as well.
I’ve repeated a single setup process so many times. So much that it even became a joke for the front-end guys. I still needed to handhold each time this process was needed.
This cost me a lot of time and nerves. As there was already a guide on how to do it, but the underperformer didn’t…
