My wife ended up with an employee like that one time. He was absolutely incompetent at even basic development tasks.
More troublesome, the place she worked at the time had a very complex technical interview process where candidates have to show at least some level of competency in the core languages and concepts the company was using at the time -- and he had passed it.
But once work started, he was completely incapable of even trivial development tasks...somebody who knew nothing and had access to stackoverflow would have performed better.
Eventually, after about six long months, he just had to be let go. But the mystery of how he made it through the technical gauntlet remains.
I thought I had escaped this for the most part, but recently, while working a contract that had my company in close proximity with another, I uncovered perhaps one the best bullshit salesmen I've ever encountered. He was a master at moving goalposts, organizing meetings, and producing lots and lots of activity, but no actual technical output of any sort. He knew all the latest technobabble buzz-words and even taught as a professor in the subject at a local college. His pedigree seemed great.
Finally, during a forced meeting, he was asked to show something anything he had produced, and he pulled up a half-formed, invalid JSON file he was hand writing for another project.
We've been able to separate our work from his group, but it's unbelievably aggravating that he's still getting paid.
> We've been able to separate our work from his group, but it's unbelievably aggravating that he's still getting paid.
How common is this?
I had a similar situation. I didn't challenge the developer directly, but when asked to justify why our project was falling behind I sent a summary of the VCS log to my manager. The developer hadn't committed anything in five years! Management promised to sort things out, but it's over a year and she's still employed.
Throwaway account, because this is one of the reasons I won't be employed there much longer...
I suspect it's more common than anybody would think. A disturbingly large number of stories I've heard about regarding "consultants" (from numerous points of view, including consultants themselves) seems to indicate there's a huge quality variance in the field.
More troublesome, the place she worked at the time had a very complex technical interview process where candidates have to show at least some level of competency in the core languages and concepts the company was using at the time -- and he had passed it.
But once work started, he was completely incapable of even trivial development tasks...somebody who knew nothing and had access to stackoverflow would have performed better.
Eventually, after about six long months, he just had to be let go. But the mystery of how he made it through the technical gauntlet remains.
I thought I had escaped this for the most part, but recently, while working a contract that had my company in close proximity with another, I uncovered perhaps one the best bullshit salesmen I've ever encountered. He was a master at moving goalposts, organizing meetings, and producing lots and lots of activity, but no actual technical output of any sort. He knew all the latest technobabble buzz-words and even taught as a professor in the subject at a local college. His pedigree seemed great.
Finally, during a forced meeting, he was asked to show something anything he had produced, and he pulled up a half-formed, invalid JSON file he was hand writing for another project.
We've been able to separate our work from his group, but it's unbelievably aggravating that he's still getting paid.