

How do I deal with difficult but talented employees? - nsoonhui
http://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/1963/979

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tweiss
Having been a difficult employee myself (don't know about the talented part),
I've wondered if the way my old boss dealt with this problem was the right
one. After some initial conflicts he decided to ignore my antics as long as my
output was high. But I guess if he'd had the opportunity to replace me he
would have fired my ass in a heartbeat.

Which brings me to my point: Most of the advice is sound ("if they're not
playing by the rules, let them go", "the team is more important than an
individual contributor") and I'm sure they work in a corporate setting. But do
they work for startups? If you have a bunch of average people, you'll end up
with a mediocre product. You need talented people who can do more than what
their job description asks of them. And unfortunately talented people are also
notoriously difficult to manage, because they have better alternatives than
others, because they don't think rules apply to everyone the same, because the
lack social skills or because they're just jackasses. Stay away from the
jackasses, but for the rest of the talented misfits there must be a way to
manage them and make it work.

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gte910h
I am a little hesitant to accept the posters description of the person.

"Refusing to cover for other teams" sounds a bit like "we expect to drop him
in multiple areas of responsibility and work as well in both" as well as "I am
the boss do what I say" instead of "I am the guy with the responsibility to
get X Y and Z done help me get there"

He sounds a bit like expecting to be a military officer with Yes sirs and the
whole bit. Sure, the guy he's talking about also seems to go off on tangents,
but the poster seems like someone who has a outdated management model and just
wants to fire this guy rather than learning to lead people. But our industry
has lots of people with interesting social skills, but can still function
extremely well with leadership instead of C&C type orders from on high type
relationships.

I think 1:1s, giving the difficult guy actual responsibility, and providing
more non-technical team building time for that guy and the guys on the other
team will make him a useful contributor, if he isn't already. It really sounds
like we're getting half the story here or the poster is just trying to get
permission for firing the dude from the technical community.

