Handling brilliant but also troublesome developers [duplicate]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I've recently been promoted to a management position in a medium-sized digital agency. One of my first tasks will be either to make two members of the development team more productive or fire them.

Both of them are technically brilliant but they have a lot of trouble delivering working functionalities. Many times they waste account managers time by sending over things that they say are done and tested, when they clearly aren't even looked at properly (e.g. A form that handles simple data and doesn't submit or leads to a PHP error). They are also really bad in communicating and sometimes have a bit of an attitude.

If I do help to decide to fire them, this may cause a ripple effect on the rest of the team, as everyone's been there for quite a while. To be honest I believe that's what I'm more hesitant about.

For anyone who had to handle this sort of situation, how did you go about it?

PS: This is not a "What should I do" question. I'll draw my own conclusions after analysing other people's experience in similar situations. I just feel it's better to have a second opinion from other people who've been there.

manpreet 2 years ago

Programmers that don't deliver at least slightly reliable code aren't brilliant, no matter how accomplished they are within their technical skill niche.

Creating software for money comprises several complementary skills, and having intimate knowledge of a programming system is only one of them. Therefore, by all means try to improve their contribution to your business value, but if they don't improve and cite technical knowledge as an excuse for not getting things done, they shouldn't be here and you should fire them.