Ask HN: How do you handle an employee who complies but never delivers?

An employee doesn't just suddenly go awol for no reason if they've been a model employee for over 10 years. This is burnout probably triggered by something big that happened in their personal life. Maybe a death in the family, a broken relationship, etc. It's no joke.

That's gonna make them really wonder about the meaning of life. If you haven't been paying him well or been providing increases to his salary, then that's gonna trigger an even more avalanche of existential thoughts.

The guy needs a break, let him have it. People aren't machines that are oblivious to external pressures outside of work. You can ask if everything's ok, but don't push it as it's people's personal lives. Propose he take a long vacation in your next 1:1, at least one month break. If he doesn't have enough vacation to cover, then just grant him special permission to take it under the table. He's been there for 10 years, he deserves a rest.

Don't be like shitlassian. https://shitlassian.com/ The fact that management is already considering firing this person for slipping after 10 years without any consideration to the person themselves, but can't because of some 'technical company rule' is pretty toxic IMO.

I’ll admit, I’ve shown some of the same symptoms you’re describing. Not out of malice, but as the end-state of long-term burnout and disengagement, at an old job, many years ago.

In my case, it was a slow, creeping decline. I started out hungry: shipping quality work, stepping up for projects well beyond my role and pay grade, even leading teams through fire drills and heroic launches. And the reward? A generic "atta boy!" and more work. Never the raise, the title bump, or real recognition.

My attitude over the span of years regressed considerably, shifting from a bright-eyed aw-shucks happy-go-lucky get-it-done engineer, and asymptotically approached, "dude, please leave me the fuck alone" whenever I heard a Teams ping or an Outlook inbox notification.

Really just smells like symptoms of extreme burnout, the input of which can only be determined by talking to this person. Could be 10 years is far too long in one job and they just want to coast now, could be personal reasons like a divorce or death of a close relative, could just be mid-life crisis, could be "I've got 1.8mm in my 401k, what're you gonna do, fire me?"

You are a bad manager.

It sounds like they have little skin in the game. Does your org reward hard work and hitting targets? Is the company doing mission critical work or feature farming? I dont think there's a company I've ever worked for where the status quo wasn't a full on regression to the mean average of the culture of the place. Conway's law? They were hired for a reason but no one can be firehosed with bullshit for long, before simply giving up if there's no compelling reason to continue striving.

So, have you spoken to them? Or, put them in a position where there failure to deliver will have real world negative consequences to people on the team they care about?

For me personally, I seem to only operate well under intense pressure and heavy load. Maybe they're bored. Maybe there's confounding variables outside of work they need to put time and attention into before they're unblocked and consistently in a high delivery flow state. (Or, perhaps, you need to tell them: we want you to try harder to fail.)

Edit: also, work expands to fill time. Intellectual and creative work accomplishes things in leaps and bounds or fits and starts IMO. Punching a time clock is terribly draining... Is there a shared team vision?

Figure out the root cause first.

- Burnout

- Family/personal issues

- Loss of interest in job/company

- Actual incompetence

Have they in the past demonstrated the skills that you'd want for someone in their position? "They've worked here for N years" means nothing. Plenty of people are experts at navigating company politics and showing value to higher ups during performance reviews while doing absolutely nothing day to day. Yes, even for a period of 10 years or longer.

If you truly do want to keep them around, make a plan to get them back on track. Give them work they are interested in. Set and monitor concrete targets.

Otherwise just cut your losses and show them the door. Of course the latter is more of a legal than an engineering question, so reach out to your HR department.

Very likely they are planning to leave. There’s a small chance that they have some family issues or burnout though. You will want to have a conversation about the latter. When people zone out, it usually is the former though, in my experience.

I’ve worked with several of these types over the years. Complaints to management yielded little. One guy did get put on a PIP but he had already found another job and left pretty quick. The problem is these individuals create additional work for the rest of the team, affecting morale.

> We can’t fire them easily as they're here for over 10 years they haven’t broken any rules or gross misconduct.

You don't have rules about, you know, actually doing the job reasonably well?

You're going to have to either fix them or get rid of them. You can't keep them as-is.

Fixing them may not be possible. You actually need them to fix themself; you can't actually fix them. But you can try to find out what's going on, and you can try to motivate and coach.

Getting rid of them will probably require a paper trail and a formal PIP process, and will take a while.

Disclaimer: I've never been a manager. These are just my impressions.

OP, are you my manager by any chance? /s

This resonates with me a lot, I can try to show you my perspective.

Been there 10+ yrs, started as “graduate” and never officially got a promotion but I’m now considered principal. This is mostly because I own responsibilities for a big chunk of the core technology. I used to put in 60+ hrs/week and implemented the shiny new products we’re basing our revenue. Salary wise I’m in a mid tier (lower bound) and thanks to our flat hierarchy I don’t have anywhere to go on my career path. More senior engineers to learn from left and we don’t hire juniors to mentor.

I used to be a 10x engineer, delivering 10x. I still am but now I work 1/10th to deliver 1. Pay isn’t great but it’s amazing for how much I work. I think I have golden handcuffs after all. You know, life gets in the way and all of a sudden pushing configs for a saas becomes way less important (and interesting) than, say, spending time with family.

Add all those useless bureaucratic wrapper around any process (I spend 50% of my standing desk time on meetings) and the infinite friction against any new proposal from my side. It’s like they want to kill instead of fostering innovation.

Sorry for the rant, but while looking for a way to sac the guy, you better look also at your organization.

ps the market is horrible at the moment, I’m not leaving just because it’s not that straightforward