[theideaofcoffee]

I personally take an adversarial view on management because the large majority of the 'managers' I have had in the past were useless to the point of providing negative value, to both the technical and to the business side, so my views are colored by that fact. Not all of them of course, and they were the good ones. But most were just managers in name only.

A coasting employee may be a problem of the employee's making, but it is still a failure of management. If an employee isn't doing anything then you fire them. But it's still a failure of management because that wasn't fixed right away. And again, if someone doesn't know what they are doing (if that's truly the case why did you hire them, but that's another conversation), even async, a keen manager should be able to pick up on that and provide coaching, connections, or other resources--you know, actually 'manage' this person. Failing all that, then cut them loose. But it's still the manager's problem.