Underperforming employee who keeps buying the team food

Our team is 4 people. CIO, infrastructure engineer, jr admin and help desk.
Our previous infrastructure engineer left and we hired someone who is clearly not what we thought. He admitted to test dumping to me privately for every cert he has (VCP CCNA MCSE some others) and just generally doesn't have the "get it" mind set that you need in IT. He won't do anything without being explicitly told to do it including calling ISP's. We had an outage with one of our systems and probably 20 open tickets. He went to a doctor's appointment, came back 2 hours later and didn't bother following up with anyone. Doesn't use the ticketing system at all because I guess nobody showed him? Just all around shitty employee I suppose.

The flip side being he really tries to be nice. He goes to Carls JR and gets buy one get ones for the team. He takes us out to lunch every other Friday (nothing fancy but it's always a sit down place). Still my coworker and I have openly complained and lobbied to have him replaced. My boss has brought up the under performance to him which immediately resulted in more Carl's JR, him interacting with us and asking if we need help, but still just not being proactive / really getting it. I've more or less taken over his job (which isn't practical long term since I do not know AD well enough) and it sucks. I know I shouldn't be taking the stuff he's getting but it would make an already awkward situation move to the boiling point if I just stopped.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? I feel like I'm screwed either way I approach it. At the least I am hoping some of you guys have some funny stories.

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Comments

RogueAdmin

blatini wrote: »

2 months

....

Does the place have a 6 month probationary period? It is a good mechanism to shed those who don't fit the company culture or work ethic required.

Remedymp

blatini wrote: »

2 months

I didn't mean for this to be a roast of the guy (even though I clearly caused it), but he isn't a scapegoat. There's no need for a scapegoat. There haven't been any problems aside from your typical things (IE: carrier goes down etc). I will agree that the vision is bad but in my experience there is always that rocky send off for your 200-400 employee companies when you lose someone who is that integral.
It's just a funny work situation ala Seinfeld I figured I'd share and hopefully get some feedback from people who have been in a similar situation

Edit - Although you might be talking about the training process and such. Which I can see I just don't really agree with. In smaller teams I have always seen most training is done by approaching others, asking questions and a willingness to step in when something arises. Maybe that isn't the case everywhere and I am just a close minded idiot.

There is NO such thing as a self-starter. Trust me.

I've worked for HP, Dell, IBM, all the big brands and financial institutions. No one comes into a job and "hits the ground running". It takes time to cultivate each resource because each one is different. Before we even let anyone touch a ticket or incident, we sit them for 4 weeks in training in an isolated area for 6 hours a day. Only after they've completed training do we let them shadow other resources. This is to assure that the resource gets all knowledge necessary to perform the responsibilities.

What I am seeing here is that, most of the time you have a troubled resource, it's due to leadership (lack there of) and poor work culture (Toxic or Non-cohesive, Frat house).

JMHO...

brewboy

The guy has been there two months. Maybe give a little guidance and give him a chance. I've had superiors who were very bright but could not work with them because of their awful personalities. To me that is much worse.

TechGuru80

blatini wrote: »

Carls JR

And he's still there? Haha!

volfkhat

scenicroute wrote: »

Personally, I don't like feeling like Chester in the Chester & Spike cartoon, having to hound people on how to do every little thing. Remember these two?

It's probably been 25 years since i've seen this cartoon.

Good times :]
Looney Tunes Tree for Two 1952 720p - Dailymotion Wideo

Fayz

The guy is a fraud and if he's doing this Carl's Jr stuff too often then he's just doing it so that the others take a liking to him and not focus on his lackluster skills. I am in a similar situation where there's a guy at my job who is not resourceful and lacks real troubleshooting skills. Instead of trying to troubleshoot or googling or looking at forums to try to solve issues he's always asking me how to solve it and I have to clean up his mess. He's level 2 while I'm level 1 and he gets more money than I do and I do a better job than he does. A person who's close to management defends him and protects him and doesn't see or refuses to see his inability to complete tasks properly or even his lack of effort in showing initiative. If management doesn't fire this guy in your case I would start looking elsewhere. That's what I plan to do in the summer.

blatini

Remedymp wrote: »

There is NO such thing as a self-starter. Trust me.

I've worked for HP, Dell, IBM, all the big brands and financial institutions. No one comes into a job and "hits the ground running". It takes time to cultivate each resource because each one is different. Before we even let anyone touch a ticket or incident, we sit them for 4 weeks in training in an isolated area for 6 hours a day. Only after they've completed training do we let them shadow other resources. This is to assure that the resource gets all knowledge necessary to perform the responsibilities.

What I am seeing here is that, most of the time you have a troubled resource, it's due to leadership (lack there of) and poor work culture (Toxic or Non-cohesive, Frat house).

JMHO...

How is there no such thing as a self starter?
It's great that's how things work at large companies but it isn't at all at small ones. Maybe you just haven't worked in an environment that was on the lower end of the corporate structure so it doesn't make sense?
I am also not sure where you get the toxic / frat house vibe from. It's more a cross between a strip club and where the sopranos play cards except we have a couple of computer monitors hanging from the ceiling

Does the place have a 6 month probationary period? It is a good mechanism to shed those who don't fit the company culture or work ethic required.

I don't believe so

Remedymp

blatini wrote: »

How is there no such thing as a self starter?
It's great that's how things work at large companies but it isn't at all at small ones. Maybe you just haven't worked in an environment that was on the lower end of the corporate structure so it doesn't make sense?
I am also not sure where you get the toxic / frat house vibe from. It's more a cross between a strip club and where the sopranos play cards except we have a couple of computer monitors hanging from the ceiling

I don't believe so

A person who is talented enough to be a Self-Starter is also considered to be a Renegade. Renegades don't work for anyone, they work for themselves and on their own terms.

TheFORCE

blatini wrote: »

TheFORCE if I came to your desk and put a steak egg and cheese on it 2-3 times a week you are telling me you would just give it back?

You know there are people in africa who.......................

No I wouldn't accept something I didn't ask for or if there was no prior agreement for lunch. The contrary, I'd think something fishy is going on if someone was bringing that food to few people every week.

gespenstern

I don't care about it these days. It's not your company and it shouldn't be your problem how it is run. You have your role to oversee some IT and it's up to you to perform either well or not so well, but the performance of other people isn't your business, unless you manage a team of them and your own performance depends on how well your team performs and meets its quarterlies. If your higher ups decide to keep such a person -- it's their choice. They are responsible how to run their business and if they wanted to they could've just hire morons only to eventually ruin their business and they would be in their own right. It's their business and they have full power to do anything they want, unlike you.

I've seen tons of underperformers in my career and if I chose to fought them in any way I'd just lose my time and distract myself from reaching my goals.

The only exception to this rule would be if you are assigned a project where you share some responsibility with underperformers. In this case I just do my fair share and document all the hiccups that arise because of someone's inability or unwillingness to do their share and, if the project fails to meet its deadline I present them to make sure I'm not to blame here and therefore it's between the manager who managed the project and the underperformer who failed their share.

Danielh22185

I can relate to this all too much.

I just left a job where insubordination and laziness I felt was rewarded. I joined a team 7 months ago (thinking it was going to be the right move for me to grow and mentor from senior techs) boy was I wrong.

The senior tech on the team was basically just itchy to get me there so I could take over all the work. He had been there 3 years before and at one point the team didn't even have an official manager. So the team just spun completely out of control. When I finally came along the team finally had a manager but was just another lazy guy promoted within the buddy club pool of "managers" and he had no idea what he was doing. There was no accountability for anybody's work and so this one senior tech I worked with took complete advantage of it. He would fall asleep at his desk, take 3-4 hr lunch breaks, take additional breaks which amounted in another hourish per day (working 8 hr days), and would avoid work completely (like running away from outages like you mentioned). I found myself doing EVERYTHING. Icing on the cake they brought in 2 new guys in about the stent of my time (outside hires) but I ended up having to train them because the senior tech / mgmt had zero involvement in doing so (I was an internal role move). I was supposed to be one of those new guys needing some mentor ship...

Moral of the story my team was a complete management failure, and your situation sounds all too the same. If there is good experience to be obtained still and you are getting paid decently, I would say stick it out for a bit longer then jump ship. Wait till you hit a year. Sounds like this fool is untouchable (just list the guy from my past job). They will feel the pain and begin to realize they are messing up when they see they can't hold on to talent.

neslin

anhtran35 wrote: »

He suppose to be YOUR SUPERIOR? Carful treading. He probably has more clout then you realize. We had someone at a previous job complain about a co worker. Similar issues. Months later the ax came to the complainer. Additionally, you only been their 6 months. You are a rookie too.

Exactly, I've seen this before too. Tread lightly indeed. If possible, can make jokes about the person being a slacker, but definitely don't "out" them or complain...

greg9891

Remedymp wrote: »

There is NO such thing as a self-starter. Trust me.

I've worked for HP, Dell, IBM, all the big brands and financial institutions. No one comes into a job and "hits the ground running". It takes time to cultivate each resource because each one is different. Before we even let anyone touch a ticket or incident, we sit them for 4 weeks in training in an isolated area for 6 hours a day. Only after they've completed training do we let them shadow other resources. This is to assure that the resource gets all knowledge necessary to perform the responsibilities.

What I am seeing here is that, most of the time you have a troubled resource, it's due to leadership (lack there of) and poor work culture (Toxic or Non-cohesive, Frat house).

JMHO...

Excellent Point! I would train him and see if he catches up, or even takes the time to research aka learn on the job if there an issue he should know but doesn't. If he was a hard worker (which it doesn't sound like he is) I would definitely train him or give him a change to see what he can do.

He probably should be fired. but since he was such a nice guy I would give him the opportunity to be trained and if he didn't catch on and show better work ethic then fire him and his free cheese burgers.

TechGromit

blatini wrote: »

My boss has brought up the under performance to him which immediately resulted in more Carl's JR, him interacting with us and asking if we need help, but still just not being proactive / really getting it.

I don't how your company operates, but where I work, under preforming full time employees are put on a "Performance Improvement Plan", (PIP) where management gives the employee clear goals they must meet in within a defined period of time. This is the first step to getting rid of an employee. Employees that fail to meet management expectations can be shown the door. It's helps the company with any litigation, they can show they did there due diligence documenting a poorly performing employee. Contractors on the other hand can be fired because we don't like the shoes they picked out to wear to work that day or any other reason, fair or unfair.

PIP plans are normally confidential between management and the employee, so your problem employee may be on his way out the door, it's just management needs to show they gave him every chance to improve.

MontagueVandervort

blatini wrote: »

He is supposed to be my superior and I can't really tell the CIO to manage him either. I've been here less than 6 months which I guess adds to it as well.

Strike what I said before. I didn't realize this was supposed to be a superior. In that case, I would probably be handling it exactly the same way you're handling it (especially because of being new at the company), and I understand your frustration.

DatabaseHead

blargoe wrote: »

Absolutely this. Do not do their job, or it will become your job. Personal experience.

Boy, I could tell you some stories that makes this guy look like employee of the year if I had the time right now.

Experiencing this now.

Sometimes it's better to let "balls fall" rather than continuing to juggle.

Remedymp

We're still not getting to the root here (IMO).

What is the culture like and what kind of leadership is there?

Because even if you get rid of this resource, the culture and the leadership has yet to be put under scrutiny. This type of stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. There is more to the story that is NOT being told.

kevozz

blatini wrote: »

TheFORCE if I came to your desk and put a steak egg and cheese on it 2-3 times a week you are telling me you would just give it back?

You know there are people in africa who.......................

Apologies for that post. Roommate was trying to be funny.

blatini

I have no idea you could take what I said as an insult. Not sure what the unprovoked hostility is about either.

Because even if you get rid of this resource, the culture and the leadership has yet to be put under scrutiny. This type of stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. There is more to the story that is NOT being told.

Not sure what you mean there is something not being told? It's a pretty straightforward situation. The culture is less corporate and more laid back. The leadership is definitely more hands off and not without fault. I feel like I've commented on this a few times.

Remedymp

blatini wrote: »

I have no idea you could take what I said as an insult. Not sure what the unprovoked hostility is about either.

Not sure what you mean there is something not being told? It's a pretty straightforward situation. The culture is less corporate and more laid back. The leadership is definitely more hands off and not without fault. I feel like I've commented on this a few times.

So, how was the resource trained? Laid back=unstructured and a clusterf**k for an uncultivated resource.

blatini

Since the previous employee left before the new hire's first day he didn't get the ideal first days training. We had a 3-4 hour meeting showing him where documentation is, laying out the infrastructure, and just answering general questions. We told him to shadow us for however long he liked but he said he'd prefer to poke around our wiki, ipam, whatever other documentation and then shadow us. The shadowing never happened. The previous employee has been brought in 2 times for 3 hours to answer questions the team might have for him. Obviously most of the time was dedicated to questions the new hire had for him.

Some people thrive in an unstructured environment where they can time manage themselves and still get things done productively. Since you don't agree with that (from what I can tell) that this will just go in circles.

Blucodex

blatini wrote: »

Since the previous employee left before the new hire's first day he didn't get the ideal first days training. We had a 3-4 hour meeting showing him where documentation is, laying out the infrastructure, and just answering general questions. We told him to shadow us for however long he liked but he said he'd prefer to poke around our wiki, ipam, whatever other documentation and then shadow us. The shadowing never happened. The previous employee has been brought in 2 times for 3 hours to answer questions the team might have for him. Obviously most of the time was dedicated to questions the new hire had for him.

Some people thrive in an unstructured environment where they can time manage themselves and still get things done productively. Since you don't agree with that (from what I can tell) that this will just go in circles.

I think what Remedy is saying is that it's pretty difficult for a new guy to come in and be expected to run an environment with no real training/hand-off. My last position I was given 3 months to get up to speed. Been here for 5 and still do not know half of the environment well enough to just go and do certain things unsupervised. There is just too much history and potential impact.

scenicroute

Blucodex wrote: »

I think what Remedy is saying is that it's pretty difficult for a new guy to come in and be expected to run an environment with no real training/hand-off. My last position I was given 3 months to get up to speed. Been here for 5 and still do not know half of the environment well enough to just go and do certain things unsupervised. There is just too much history and potential impact.

This sounds right. I prefer an environment where I manage myself and am left alone to do my work, but when starting at a new company, I do expect essential training on how *they* do things. It's not good to make guesses when it comes to company-specific procedures, and it shouldn't feel like pulling teeth trying to find out this kind of information. Unfortunately, in many of my past experiences, it was just like pulling teeth, because everything was so disorganized and everyone was so frantic that they couldn't find any time for proper training.

blatini

Yeah that is a fair point, but it's aside from where the frustrations with him lie. It's more the BS he sold on his resume, an unwillingness to jump into things unless explicitly told (which I guess is a more accepted thing than I previously thought), and unreliability. He also really isn't tasked with running everything anymore. I handle all of our networking, backups and overall storage. He is more just Citrix and AD.

Blucodex

scenicroute wrote: »

This sounds right. I prefer an environment where I manage myself and am left alone to do my work, but when starting at a new company, I do expect essential training on how *they* do things. It's not good to make guesses when it comes to company-specific procedures, and it shouldn't feel like pulling teeth trying to find out this kind of information. Unfortunately, in many of my past experiences, it was just like pulling teeth, because everything was so disorganized and everyone was so frantic that they couldn't find any time for proper training.

Similar experience. It can also be very difficult when a single individual holds all the knowledge and can be hostile...

Blucodex

blatini wrote: »

Yeah that is a fair point, but it's aside from where the frustrations with him lie. It's more the BS he sold on his resume, an unwillingness to jump into things unless explicitly told (which I guess is a more accepted thing than I previously thought), and unreliability. He also really isn't tasked with running everything anymore. I handle all of our networking, backups and overall storage. He is more just Citrix and AD.

Not to excuse the guy who's in over his head. Sounds like he's a nice person but was handed a role that he wasn't ready for. We all start somewhere. Maybe he can make up for his shortcomings if there is a real sit down and expectations are presented.

If he straight up lied on his resume I would fire him.

blatini

I guess he didn't outright lie on his resume since he does have those certifications. But he test dumped them and it's really apparent he did for the CCNA. I have no clue what is actually included on the VCP to gauge that though.

I did talk to him a lot about it at lunch this past Friday so we'll see what happens!

UncleB

You could take this to it's logical conclusion, report him to the certifying authorities so he is stripped of the certs then flag this up to your management who will probably sack him.

Sure it may destroy his career and leave him long term unemployed, but he has it coming, right?

The alternative is to open your heart, explain clearly and comprehensively how the job should be done by a new hire and welcome him as part of the team where he will only fail through his inability to do the job.

Those would seem the opposite ends of the spectrum, so you have to use your own moral compass to decide where you lie on that line.

Verities

I say you just give the guy all the repetitive grunt work and take the free lunches, with the caveat he buys you coffee every day as well.

IronmanX

Sounds to me like this guy is your boss and you don't like how he delegates tasks to the team.
Sounds like the old guy who left was more of an hands on boss and this guy is all about managing the team.
"He is supposed to be my superior and I can't really tell the CIO to manage him either. "

So you don't like:
"It's more the BS he sold on his resume, an unwillingness to jump into things unless explicitly told (which I guess is a more accepted thing than I previously thought), and unreliability. He also really isn't tasked with running everything anymore. I handle all of our networking, backups and overall storage. He is more just Citrix and AD."

"Our team is 4 people. CIO, infrastructure engineer, jr admin and help desk. "

He's the engineer, so your either the jr admin or held desk and have ended up doing the day to day tasks "networking, backups and overall storage" which the old boss handled.

Sounds like he's got really good people skills and i'm thinking was an officer or someone in charge of others in the military. He told you of an outage and left to go to a doctors appointment. The outage sounds like it was outside the companies network so why not let the junior guys call the
ISP and deal with it?

"Nobody really fit what the previous guy was - who literally did everything (networking, systems, automation, citrix, vmware)."
I'm wondering what his boss thinks of him?
I would not be complaining to any one in the org about this but if you have a general feeling on how his boss thinks he is doing I would be interested in knowing that.