[manicennui]

I have never found this to be the case. It is almost always a combination of low ability to learn anything, needing to be told exactly what to do frequently, and eating up lots of other people's time, and none of this improves over time. The other situation I've seen is people who basically do little to no work and make no attempt to really hide it. I've never seen either of these situations resolved successfully, no matter how many times they are moved around, or coached, or allowed to eat up the time of those who get things done.

[throwaway2037]

You are hinting about an important third trait: persistence (effort). I am not the nicest person, nor the smartest, but I am very persistent. This can make-up for other shortfalls. When hiring, if I cannot find highly competent, then I will sacrifice some niceness for more persistence. Never hire people who are low effort / not persistent. Some much of office work is "following up" to make sure that things are completed -- non-managers included. People with low effort will frequently complete tasks to 80-90%, then need to be managed across the finish line.

Edit

About: <<needing to be told exactly what to do frequently, and eating up lots of other people's time>>

I recommend that you Google: youtube casino blueberry muffin

Watch that two minute clip. It ends with this quote: <<Like everything else in this place, if you don't do it yourself, it never gets done.>>

I often mutter "blueberry muffins" to myself when it is easier to do it myself than ask someone (multiple times) to do it, and the results will be incomplete or low quality.

[908B64B197]

> and none of this improves over time.

That doesn't match what I've observed.

There's an initial phase where a new hire, no matter the level, will require hand-holding, especially if transitioning to a new language of level of abstraction.

Not seeing any improvement points at either a completely broken onboarding process, or sub-par candidates. There's a chance you simply have a poor hiring pool. I recall a story someone told me a while ago. Software business that did local CoL/prevailing wages. Hired an intern one summer that was just running around in circles around the other, more senior devs. Useless to say they loved him and the next summer they tried to get him back, even offering a signing bonus for an internship (something they considered unheard of) but he was already at a large search engine company down in the Bay. You can guess the comp was probably already 3x what his previous job was offering. Of course, he wouldn't return.

There's a whole class of engineers were completely invisible to most companies, even if they are in the same "local market" (Some use the term "dark matter devs" but I know it has another meaning). These guys tend to fly under the radar quite a bit. If you are in a tier 2 market or company, your chances of attracting one are close to nil. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally).

FAANG companies have internship pipelines, with bonus for returning interns. These guys are off the market years before they even graduate.