I recently fired my junior developer and I'll paint a picture of what that looked like.
He was hired behind my back, and began a React project using some "admin template" that we didn't need, and now it's a dirty mess. He had a wedding+honeymoon planned before he started with us I guess, which took him out 2 weeks shortly after starting. But he also missed half days of work whenever a contractor showed up at his house. Meeting calls were attended with of his wife making outbound sales calls in the same room and frequently with his dogs barking like crazy the whole time. He often traveled on the weekend and emailed that he "got stuck" and wouldn't be in until Tuesday or Wednesday. On days he showed up for a full day it was typically 10:30am to 5:00pm. I had to change pretty much every code commit to use it.
If you're showing up and producing anything of value there is probably someone around who can help you stop hitting the process bumpers. My guy wasted my time by not showing up often enough to get support.
By the sounds of it it seems (without having all the details) like there was poor communication & expectation setting which at least in part contributed to this outcome.
Having him hired behind your back is obviously not his fault. Wedding/honeymoon should be a non-issue as well as long as management was made aware. Being expected to show up to work regularly and in an environment free of distractions should be a no-brainer, but for lots of people (especially juniors), working from home is something they aren't used to.
As far as the work itself, as a junior, why was he starting any projects at all without supervision/guidance? All of his code should have required PRs (maybe they did - again not enough details?) Juniors generally don't know how to write production quality code, it should be expected that code will be reviewed and issues addressed before being merged into the codebase. They're juniors because they don't know what they're doing and as seniors/staff engineers it's our job (whether it's fair or not is irrelevant) to help them get up to a baseline of proficiency.
Seems like the company and the junior were both contributors to his failure.
It's always the company's fault: either they didn't vet the candidate for good culture match, or they didn't provide a good Jr. Ramp up plan (being a jr dev remotely is extremely though), they didn't provide clear/firm enough ongoing feedback and as you said, they didn't provide the right expectations.
For a Jr remote SWE position, I would expect heavy pair programming the 3 first months.
There's a basic expectation that people should be actually showing up to work. How can you possibly vet during an interview that someone will be flaky like this? Sometimes people just don't have a good enough work ethic that meets the basic expectations and no amount of ramp up plan or initial feedback is going to produce changes quickly enough to make continuing the relationship worthwhile. People like this are just constant ongoing headaches. Thankfully, they're in the extreme minority in my experience.
Although I would cut some more slack for the background noise during calls. Not everyone has separate rooms they can work from. Instead, the company should have sent him a good headset to use which would mute background noise. Sometimes my coworkers will apologize for their dogs barking and I'll say I can't hear anything when they are using a good headset.
It certainly seems like the expectations weren't at all clearly communicated to him. Either that or very frequent insubordination was tolerated by management, which is a problem with management.
First off a Jr shouldn't be working on a project all by themselves, obviously. That's on management to fix, an employee shouldn't be expected to perform at a higher level than they were hired at.
>Meeting calls were attended with of his wife making outbound sales calls in the same room and frequently with his dogs barking like crazy the whole time.
The idea this would happen "frequently" is crazy.
As a meeting leader myself if someone showed up to a (virtual) meeting with such noise/distractions in the background I would absolutely stop the meeting immediately and let the employee know they need to find an appropriate place. Once they did I'd resume the meeting. If claimed they didn't have access to a quiet/appropriate place at that moment I'd have them leave that meeting (or at least mute themselves) and speak to them offline about appropriate behavior during meetings.
The stuff about him missing work (presumably without using PTO or LWOP) should be met with an immediate formal reprimand. Any other instances after that should be termination.
> He was hired behind my back, and began a React project using some "admin template" that we didn't need, and now it's a dirty mess. He had a wedding+honeymoon planned before he started with us I guess, which took him out 2 weeks shortly after starting.
Not the employee's fault...
> But he also missed half days of work whenever a contractor showed up at his house. Meeting calls were attended with of his wife making outbound sales calls in the same room and frequently with his dogs barking like crazy the whole time. He often traveled on the weekend and emailed that he "got stuck" and wouldn't be in until Tuesday or Wednesday. On days he showed up for a full day it was typically 10:30am to 5:00pm. I had to change pretty much every code commit to use it.
Those are issues where firing would be appropriate if they happened more than a couple times. Especially if they happened early in the job (aka probation period in most countries).
"You're not working the previously agreed amount, quantitatively!" is probably the least controversial reason for firing someone.
Agreed. I happen to work for an imperfect company, if you can believe that.
I did my post-mortem homework, and certainly concluded I could have done more and sooner about the situation. I was too busy trying to code for both of us to put my management hat on when I should have. Lesson learned!
I’m getting the impression that someone expected this junior to be somewhat more productive than could be reasonably expected and you were caught in the middle trying to (as you said) code for two people. Lousy outcomes for all involved.
He was hired behind my back, and began a React project using some "admin template" that we didn't need, and now it's a dirty mess. He had a wedding+honeymoon planned before he started with us I guess, which took him out 2 weeks shortly after starting. But he also missed half days of work whenever a contractor showed up at his house. Meeting calls were attended with of his wife making outbound sales calls in the same room and frequently with his dogs barking like crazy the whole time. He often traveled on the weekend and emailed that he "got stuck" and wouldn't be in until Tuesday or Wednesday. On days he showed up for a full day it was typically 10:30am to 5:00pm. I had to change pretty much every code commit to use it.
If you're showing up and producing anything of value there is probably someone around who can help you stop hitting the process bumpers. My guy wasted my time by not showing up often enough to get support.