You are the weakest link, buh-bye!

One of the engineers announced she was going to “take some classes in the fall” and, in the meantime, would be transitioning back to testing and customer support. She’d been put on an intricate project without any supervision or help.  She and Herr Crankypants, our architect, have difficulty getting along.  (The same can be said of anyone and Herr Crankypants.)  As the culture encourages passive-aggressiveness, work was done but he result is in some amount of need of refactoring.   That hasn’t prevented El Jefe from declaring the defect milestone had been reached.

To be sure, this person seems to have tried; she’s just not cut out as an engineer. The “not even trying” part reminds me of a different person: the Technical Writer from Hell

I had been at a company for a month when I noticed a startling pattern of this Sid, our technical writer, being out sick every day. As often as he was out, I suspected he was battling ebola or leprosy or something else I didn’t want to catch. Then, later in the week, he announced he was going to be out three days for some kind of training class. The following Monday, he sent a message indicating he was “leaving early because he was sick.”
I asked the obvious question: what the fuck?

Sid reported to Ralph, who had also been out with (documented) health issues, and wasn’t going to address the situation. The best I could do was generate a clear set of milestones Sid must achieve for my product’s successful delivery, present them to him, then track them publicly. When he missed them, there would be an audit trail for me to kick it up the organizational chart. Sid never updated his Outlook Calendar, so it was impossible to determine when he would be in to schedule a meeting. I did the next best thing, sent email and Cc’d his boss.

The next morning, Sid was in the office and responded with an invitation to “pop over for a visit.” We had what diplomats refer to as “a frank exchange of views,” but Sid was now on the hook for delivering stuff each week in a very visible forum that his boss and the CEO occasionally attend. A few minutes after I was back in my office, my manager came in saying he “could not help but overhear…” because I was apparently yelling. I only remember getting worked up at dealing with Sid’s fucking huge ego and sense of entitlement. My boss asked how I was doing (as I never shout) then thanked me for not “sweeping this under the carpet” like has been done for the last several months.

Sid was in three days a week for the news few weeks. When I hadn’t actually seen anything produced, I sent him an outline of things I wanted in advance of a public meeting. He … I swear I’m not making this up … put a cover sheet on it, then presented it as his work. What he didn’t realize was I had circulated the outline among the attendees prior to the meeting. Busted.

A week later, I overheard Sid talking to the CEO about going contract and working part time. He came in to tell me (!) that we were not paying him enough to remain a full-time employee. In fact, he is already got a small, part-time gig that starts next week, thanks for the understanding, etc. What an asshole.

Ralph was visibly crestfallen when I told him. He agreed to let Sid continue on as a contractor for 25 hours a week, with flex time, with working essentially unverifiable periods of time (like 5:00 am - 7:30 am, then he goes over to his day gig elsewhere). This was brilliant because it paved the way for Sid to quit without receiving the unemployment benefits of having being fired. A token project was presented to him that he bid out to be three weeks of work, over forty times what we estimated.

We have not heard from Sid since, though his LinkedIn profile still references us.