He was let go after two weeks? No confrontation nothing?
Sounds very american. In European working culture if you don't show up for two weeks people will be worried that something happened to you and try to work it out with you. This type of all or nothing reaction is a bit sporadic imo.
Yeah, it's not like that part of the story was condensed and might have left out a bunch of details that weren't important to the story. So let's give OP a hard time and make judgements about a situation for which we have not even the slightest bit of context.
Oh absolutely, you're right. I am saying that despite whatever may have happened, two weeks is very short. I feel like it would be at least a month here regardless.
For context, I was brought in with the knowledge he hadn't done anything meaningful since being hired some time before my arrival, and we did reach out and offer help or ask if he needed anything, which he refused, somewhat angrily.
You might have meant to use a word other than "sporadic." That word describes a recurring event that happens at unpredictable intervals, such as snow in a normally hot desert, or a Linux crash caused by a race condition. Other words that fit the sentence better are "unusual," "unexpected," "unjustified," "inappropriate," "surprising," "extreme," "abrupt," or "out of the blue."
(For what it's worth, I'm American, and I disagree with your assessment. We don't know how long the person was given to make progress, and we don't know what was communicated. To conclude that a two-week period without a commit represents the entire period between the start of the poor performance and the termination is, well, a bit out of the blue.)
I was the final two weeks of a long period of zero productivity, despite many offers of help and asking if he understood, needed help, etc. I never enjoy firing someone, even if they are downright awful or mean, and do my best to avoid it. My own involvement was late in the stage, and the thousand or so tabs that were left open I'm sure weren't 2 weeks worth of effort.
When I was hired I was told he was a problematic hire, that hadn't produced anything for long before my arrival. It was basically "We already know we're going to probably have to let him go but if you want to try to work around it, be my guest". I did try to go in with no judgments, as I always do, but he refused help, and refused to even let anyone look over his shoulder and find why this task was taking an order of magnitude too long.
Sounds very american. In European working culture if you don't show up for two weeks people will be worried that something happened to you and try to work it out with you. This type of all or nothing reaction is a bit sporadic imo.