[sam0x17]

All of that said, engineers are not static -- everyone is learning and changing all the time, so "problem" engineers after you've eliminated the above are simply people who have a ways to go before they change enough to become effective in your org (or, quite possibly, your org and its processes have a ways to go before more than an extremely specific type of engineer can become effective). Then it's just a value-prop of "do we think it's worth it to wait it out for this particular employee" because they're always learning and leveling up.

Other problems, like dishonesty, not doing enough work, not appearing to level up, honestly all come back to comp/benefits/company-culture. I genuinely believe that a good manager with sufficient resources can get good engineering work out of literally anyone, given sufficient time and (possibly quite high) resources.

And sometimes, the employees that require the highest investment in that regard can have a very high return when they finally do level up. In fact, I find that a really good predictor of success is simply ambition to level up. I care about that much more than I care about raw skill at the time of hiring.