[bstpierre]

I wouldn’t say it’s a large proportion, but I’ve seen this at multiple companies over the course of 25 years. It manifests in 2-3 different ways that I’ve seen.

Sometimes they can code, but slowly and their output is unacceptable. This creates a burden on the rest of the team to either try to review it into something good (this doesn’t actually work) or to fix/rewrite it after it’s committed (typical in shops that don’t have a review/PR culture or process). IMO this is the worst of the three types. In it’s worst form it’s also the most obvious and these bad hires tend to get managed out fairly quickly.

Sometimes they can’t seem to get anything done on their own. Questions from new hires are expected, yes, but the questions are supposed to wane over time. This group doesn’t have that curve. Having talked to coworkers after these people have left, I’ve later realized that these people have bothered a lot of people on the team with a lot of questions, to the point where most of their work has been done by other people. This is only slightly better than the group above, but it’s still a waste of a lot of productivity.

Sometimes they just hide out. I guess they dodge questions about output from managers? Or are otherwise very poorly managed? I’ve only observed this in environments with a very weak management system. Honestly if I had to choose a bad hire situation, this would be my preference. They’re leeching from payroll but they mostly don’t get in the way of work that I have to get done.