Disciplining engineer who embarrased senior engineer [closed]

Question

I am a manager involved in getting project out the door quickly, and oversee several dozen engineers for this project. A year ago, my senior engineer designed a replacement technology for a core piece of technology we use, and almost all engineers opposed it because they are lazy, and some went far as writing lengthy discussions on re-writing this because it was, in their opinion, "fundamentally broken".

One engineer decided to go over my senior engineer and myself to raise her concerns to senior management, and assembled a meeting with other senior engineers. I believe this individual orchestrated opposition to our replacement technology in advance, so that when a larger meeting with senior management and senior engineering took place, there was massive opposition to our replacement technology already.

Regardless of the outcome of the meeting, this engineer went over two senior colleagues, setting us back almost ten months of work, since management now wants us to re-do our replacement technology. Are there any legal problems with firing this engineer?

Answer 1

Let me reformulate your question: You, as a manager, together with "your" senior engineer made up a plan on your own, discarded concerns of the rest of the engineering team as "laziness", and now that several senior engineers convinced the management (i.e. your bosses?) that something needs to be changed, you actually want to fire the person who brought up the issues?

You are the one who should be fired for gross incompetence at managing people.

• Talking about "my" senior eng. instead of e.g. "our technical lead" - for a good manager there is no "my" but only "our".
• Not being able to address the concerns of your team and work with them on the problems which they see.
• After your management made a decision which you don't like, you do not accept their decision
• You want to fire somebody who got the attention from your bosses and convinced the rest of the team to do something?

My strong recommendation: work with this person instead of against her, and positively plan with your team, otherwise I already can make some guesses who will be on your chair after the management wipes the project clean of narcissistic and egocentric people.