The vast majority of underperformers I've managed are people who are less motivated to perform, less technically skilled, not aligned to the team, have different values, etc. Almost always the answer is to keep them around and try to squeeze what value you can get. One engineer I have really values on-call firefighting which is great, except my entire org is aligned around avoiding that. I'm getting value out of him by letting him do the firefighting he likes, but ensuring he drives the postmortem process so we can avoid fires in the future.

At the end of the day, all I care about is getting an acceptable level of output compared to pay from an employee who knows the business and isn't particularly fussy. So I'll try to find the path to get low performers upskilled, find what interests them, or find another role in the company that fits & do some horse trading. Or I'll let them coast and replace them when it's easier for me to hire.

>> hiring is a goddamn mess right now.

> Any insight you can give on why? I know enough from the hirees end, but how's it on the other side?

Someone smarter than me might know the true answer. I've heard three compelling arguments:

* tons of companies were irrationally exuberant and overhired, cut roles, and now we're seeing the impact of those workers looking for new work

* increasing shareholder greed means running a threadbare team and driving the company into the ground is better than staffing appropriately if it means next quarter looks good

* most companies are big dumb herd animals and hey, if the big guys are downsizing, so should we

But even though the market is saturated, profitability is now king, so if I'm going to hire someone I need to have a compelling answer to finance saying "how does this new role guarantee us ROI?"

All I really know and can see is the knock-on effect: I posted the same role in 2022 and last month. In 2022, I had to recruit like crazy, to the point that I had external vendors placing below-average employees at above-average salaries. Last month I had the pleasure of sifting through 700 applications, and plenty were "pass: overqualified, won't stick around".

So it seems there are tons of people out there competing for fewer roles.