[weinzierl]

The article has a clickbait title: It uses the word "incompetent" when it should have said "underperforming". There are may reasons an employee is not performing and the article discusses a few of them. Sometimes it is right to fire the person, sometimes another approach might be better. It's as nuanced as the reasons.

[indymike]

This article, and the one it was written in response to are both about the scenario where someone is under-performing because they are incompetent, not capable of becoming competent and really nice and likable. What both articles missed is that in many organizations nice, incompetent people often get promoted to leadership positions and become the subject of business books and bad memes... and unfortunately go on to hire lots of other nice but incompetent people.

[weinzierl]

Maybe this is a language thing, but if someone underperforms because of health issues or burnout (like discussed in the article) I would not call them incompetent.

[indymike]

I agree with you - health and burnout aren't incompetence.