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 occasionally require attention, and you don’t want everyone else assuming they are one bad sprint away from unemployment.
In most of the US at least, start with a performance improvement plan. Ideally one crafted with HR’s help. It should lay out specific expectations for a Senior Engineer, and call for immediate and sustained improvement. Use that to initiate a conversation and clearly lay out that they are not meeting expectations for the level at which they were hired. Present meeting those goals as a requirement for continued employment. You may also present a severance option here if you want them to have an out.
This makes it clear to everyone that you treat all employees with respect, offer a clear warning, and then so long as you expectations in the PIP are clear, it’s a lot cleaner if you end up needing to part ways a week or four weeks later.
If the individual doesn't have the skills (or seemingly temperament) for a senior role, I'm not sure PIP is setting them up for success.
Versus demotion with possibility of promotion allows them to perform at their level of competence, leaving open the possibility for them to chose (or not) to aim for promotion.
I think it’s easiest to cut the relationship and let them start clean somewhere else.
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.
It’s a warning shot, and sometimes it only lasts a week.
BigCo HR can definitely make it take months, but the practice in general doesn’t have to be that way. We did this at startup size as small as 20 people, and I never regretted it.
I don’t think they’re meant to succeed. If you want to keep an employee, you give them feedback and coach them. A PIP is used to document evidence that an employee is incompetent and is incapable of improving despite your best efforts, as a precursor to firing them.
I kept someone for too long once and people on an adjacent team didn’t want to get stuck with that person during a re-org and were vocal about it. And that person bungled some important projects that set us back years on our ambitions.
Fire them and use this as an opportunity to address your interview process. The longer you keep them the worse it will be.
You should be looking for the employee to be making good general efforts, just without taking everything into account yet. And the employee should see evidence that you are serious about helping them master specifics of their new environment.
- a sheet of paper i found in a desk 20 years ago
It's probably fine to fire them, but also everyone involved should be open about the fact that the hiring and so also the firing is the direct result of their own failure. The morale implications of this could be lot more nuanced than you're implying.
Could they have also lied on the interview?
I would consider personality as a strong factor in keeping them, and if the company has room for a junior.
Lowering the salary is a hard requirement though.
Everyone lies on interviews. Especially interviewers.
I hate this rat race of being a performant engineer. The moment your performance declines, your managers will let you know and you’re under the radar now.
I don't think so. A company is under no obligation to handhold their employees. It should be a 2 way street, beneficial in both directions. If it's not beneficial for one party, they should be able to be honest about it and move in another direction. We're all adults here.