Salvaging senior engineer who's planning projects by how good they look on his resume/CV

Question

One of our senior (and more competent) engineers, "Peter", who was due for a promotion and pay raise a few months back, raised an issue and meeting with me when his promotion was deferred indefinitely due to COVID. After explaining to him how many companies, even Google, are putting off promotions and raises due to the pandemic, he just retorted with statements like "exceptions are made for exceptional circumstances; I made the company a lot of money" and "how nice, but it seems executives and managers didn't get that memo, as they're getting record bonuses". After explaining how I'm not the one that makes those decisions, I have to threaten him with a formal reprimand to calm him down.

Fast forward a few months: we've noticed a change in the programming languages and technologies being used in our products (i.e. more open source technologies, modern programming languages and methodologies, etc.). Productivity is even up, and Peter seems to be in good spirits, and back to his usual levels of productivity too. All seems well, until we noticed 10x the normal requests from the Legal team for permission to use open source software in our products (not a problem, as long as it doesn't mean we have to give our products away for free). What's odd is that employees are the owners/authors of a lot of these third-party open-source projects.

It turns out Peter spread the word of deferred promotions and raises, and created the impression that if he was denied "his due", most others would likely face the same. So, Peter took it upon himself to encourage teams to make an effort to use new technology that would look good/modern on the CV/resume if employees were laid off. He also led an effort to get overtime to zero, and have employees work on work-related open-source projects in their spare time (i.e. "use GitHub as a secondary resume/CV"). Even though we can use most of the open source software employees have been developing in spare time, we no longer have exclusive ownership of code employees would write as part of overtime to advance within the company.

In short: Peter has taken it upon himself to drive down overtime across the company, and plan projects so the first priority is to buff up the resumes of colleagues and himself.

I can't fire him outright, since there's no material evidence he led this effort, and I'm being urged to try and reclaim/salvage/steer him "back to the light side". I'm permitted to offer up to a 30% one-time bonus (i.e. about 4 months of pay), but he just smirks and says he "doesn't know what I'm talking about". I even overstepped my authority and said "look, this needs to end; I can offer a 50% bonus and let you walk away with your severance package too in order to save face", and he still insists (but smirks) that he's oblivious to the topic. He's now turning down the promotion as well stating "I have no idea what you're talking about, but you and the execs clearly have a poor opinion of me if you're offering money for help with something I don't know about; and the well has been nice and poisoned it seems, in your eyes. I don't see any benefit to continuing these discussions".

Is there any way to steer such an employee (a lot of the engineers trust him, so he seems to have a lot of sway), or do we just rip the bandaid and fire him? Unfortunately, his severance package is large, so I'll be in trouble if we have to pay it out in full.

Answer 1

After explaining how I'm not the one that makes those decisions, I have to threaten him with a formal reprimand to calm him down.

If the execs are actually getting these bonuses then Peter has every right to be mad. He is not the problem, your execs are.

Even though we can use most of the open source software employees have been developing in spare time, we no longer have exclusive ownership of code employees would write as part of overtime to advance within the company.

What makes you think you are entitled to what people do outside of work hours? If you don't pay overtime, you are entitled to NOTHING. Be thankful that some of the stuff is useful for you.

I can't fire him outright, since there's no material evidence he led this effort

What's your location? In an US at-will state you can fire anyone for anything or nothing at all.

".. I don't see any benefit to continuing these discussions"

That's a clear indication that you lost him. You had your chance,you treated him poorly and now he's treating you the same way.

Is there any way to steer such an employee

Not anymore. It's pretty clear that your company had plenty of chances and opportunities but blew them all. Given the current tone, this relationship seems to be broken beyond repair.

Your options are:

1. Suck it up. If you feel you get enough value out of the situation then you can just let it continue until he leaves
2. Fire him within the legal framework or your situation. If you are legally required to pay severance, than you pay severance. Don't sign contracts that you are not willing to keep.
3. Fix your company. Make sure compensation, bonuses and advancements are fairly and equitably distributed and that there is full transparency on how this works and applies. Once Peter sees the effort he may come around (if that's what you want), but there is no guarantee for this.

Answer 2

It's too late to close the barn door, the horses have already escaped.

All I can say is that you disrespect this guy at your own peril. Never disrespect your employees, especially key ones. The wisest move here would be to,as they say in execu-speak, "embrace change".

"Peter" has managed to cause a massive increase in efficiency, a paradigm shift, and subverted the entire business process, replacing it with one of his own. You've already lost the war. Your only move now is to join him because you can't beat him.

Doing anything else has terrible risks, as outlined in This post

And here was My Answer to that foolishness

He's outmaneuvered your company, and has done so legally.

Approach him delicately and ask him what he wants.

He is smart enough to know he has you where he wants you, and he has set up a Xanatos Gambit where, if you fire him, he wins, and if he stays he builds up his resume until he can quit at a critical time, and likely take half the team with him.

Your only choice is to offer him something to compensate for the REAL thing he's upset about, RESPECT

Give him the overdue raise, without conditions, and an apology for the delay. You don't want to be the villain in this. If you make it personal, he will do the same, and he's already proven how terrifyingly competent he is.

Answer 3

Is there any way to steer such an employee (a lot of the engineers trust him, so he seems to have a lot of sway), or do we just rip the bandaid and fire him?

This seems to be the question that's at the core of what is being asked here.

If you fire him, then if he really has that much sway with the rest of the team, there is a chance they will leave with him or otherwise act counter to your wishes. Still, if the company really wants things done their way, and the employee won't do that, firing him may be your only option - though to be blunt, the fundamental problem here doesn't sound like the employee, but the disaster area that the company has created.

To avoid the risks involved in firing him, you are going to need to get the employee back on-side - not by "threatening him with a reprimand" (which I can guarantee did not calm him down, even if it shut him up at that time) nor by asking him to leave of his own accord (with or without full severance) into an uncertain job market, but by actually treating him and your other employees properly.

This means at least all of the following:

• Swap with another manager, or otherwise remove yourself from a position of authority over this employee.
• Give him the promotion and pay rise he was due (and the same for any other employee who missed out). Get the executives to pay back their bonuses to cover this, if needed.
• Announce (and implement) a policy of paying for overtime at time-and-a-half or double pay, but only when requested by the company in advance (to control the expense), and with the consent of the employee working the extra hours (not compulsory).
• Introduce pay rises, employee benefit schemes, training courses, an on-site gym, a cycle-to-work-scheme, new hardware, and do anything else that might make this company a better place to work.
• Apologise for what's happened, ask people what they want to change, and make those changes. It sounds like both you and the executives need to do this.

And, the one thing you might have to do that isn't to the employees' benefit but your company may have no choice but to do:

• Ensure employees declare an interest in any open source request, and decline the use of open source projects to which any employee is a regular or significant contributor. (Do not attempt to get them to stop working on open source in their spare time, that's up to them; but prevent any possibility of someone holding the company's core code hostage).

Those are your choices. Either part ways with the employee (which may have unforeseen consequences), or work very hard to regain a good working relationship with this employee and any other employee influenced by him (which may be very difficult). I recommend the latter but it is uncertain.

Answer 4

You should embrace the situation

This could be beneficial for you depending on whether or not you want to stay. You can now claim to be managing all this open-source software. You can claim a boost in productivity. You could potentially be able to claim to bring engineers with you if you wanted a management job at a new company, which is always valuable. Especially given that they are clearly passionate engineers. This assumes that you haven't damaged their trust in you too much.

Win for you. Win for your staff.

You all leave for higher raises.

Considering that your alternative is firing him and getting in trouble for doing so because of the cost and management here does not seem to be the caring type, consider joining the fleet as it sails outward to more promising land. I suspect that this fight with Peter will eventually cost you several engineers, for which you might also be punished.

The fact that management got bonuses and the fact that they would punish you for defending the company's interest indicates that this is probably not a company you want to be with long term.

This is a perfect opportunity for a controlled exit.

Answer 5

Productivity is even up.

To me does not look like a problem. As you are asking this question and saying that you don't have authority to do some of the proposed solutions maybe everybody except you is happy. It this is the case I would recommend ignore the whole thing. If your boss shares your concerns but solutions may require more authority than you have then describe it to the boss and here your responsibility ends as well.

Even though we can use most of the open source software employees have been developing in spare time, we no longer have exclusive ownership of code employees would write as part of overtime to advance within the company.

There is no sign there is any "we" in the situation. This is not your problem.

Answer 6

I think the question itself is an indication of an ongoing problem with the OP.

Let me give you a similar possible situation:

"Developers where I work are grabbing open-source solutions that solve our needs and then integrating them in to our products!"

... you don't view that as a problem, do you? I mean, why would you want to spend the resources developing in-house when there's already a solution out there for what you want? In general, this situation would be a good thing!

Now, let's rephrase it:

"Developers where I work are grabbing open-source solutions that are tailored specifically to our business needs and are developed by people with an in-depth understanding of our business needs."

... uh, that's amazing! You're not only getting to integrate in open-source solutions, but those solutions were developed specifically with your company in mind! I mean, this is practically fairy-tale.

... and that's the situation you're basically in right now. Your company is able to put quality open-source software that was developed with your company specifically in mind!

So what's your actual objection to this? That employees are doing open-source programming on their own time at all? That the open-source projects they're working are also relevant to your company? That your employees are no longer giving you free unpaid overtime labor?

That's what has me convinced you're not going to find a good solution. Because it never even occurred to you that the current situation is actually still really really good for your company.

You're still getting employees willing to work overtime for your company. Sure, that extra labor is on the open-source market. But it still beats the business-standard situation - where, if you want a proprietary form of that software, you'd have to pay an employee to do it during their actual job.

If we're being 100% honest, your issue is that you're still thinking in terms of "My employees should be working overtime for the company". They're upset with you because they feel that their efforts were exploited. And despite them giving you an outcome you frankly don't deserve, you're upset with them because they're not giving you extra unpaid labor. Wait, no, scratch that - you're upset that the extra unpaid labor they're giving to you isn't only yours.

So here's my advice: be thankful. If you push things any further, it's almost certain that your devs will simply put in their 8 hours and do nothing to help your company out during their off-hours. Or simply quit.

Answer 7

Wait, what? Your company sounds horrible. Peter should have quit a long time ago, and to be honest so should you.

"Peter", who was due for a promotion and pay raise a few months back, raised an issue and meeting with me when his promotion was deferred indefinitely due to COVID. After explaining to him how many companies, even Google, are putting off promotions and raises due to the pandemic, he just retorted with statements like ... "how nice, but it seems executives and managers didn't get that memo, as they're getting record bonuses".

So your company is raising executive pay while the company is making less money due to Covid, and that additional bonus is coming out of the paycheques of the employees in the form of deferred raises?

It turns out Peter spread the word of deferred promotions and raises, and created the impression that if he was denied "his due", most others would likely face the same.

Well, wouldn't they? The company's view is that executives deserve to be paid first, and that if there wasn't enough money after the executives got their ever-increasing bonuses, then that money would be taken from promotions of the employees. That's exactly what happened to Peter; if you don't like it then perhaps you shouldn't have done it. You made your bed, now lie in it.

Peter took it upon himself to encourage teams to make an effort to use new technology that would look good/modern on the CV/resume if employees were laid off.

Peter is upgrading your tech stack for you. This is a good thing, because it means that you won't have the situation where, in 3-4 years when you're stuck on Javascript AJAX and everyone you're recruiting knows Angular and React, you can't hire anyone to support your "legacy" code (which is rightfully termed "legacy" but is actually "active"). He's doing you a favor. Why is this a problem?

He also led an effort to get overtime to zero

So you think reducing overtime to zero is a bad thing? Your company encourages its employees to impair their work-life balance by giving their time up for free? That's a blatant disregard for your employees' health. You should be ashamed of yourself for even typing these words.

and have employees work on work-related open-source projects in their spare time

What's wrong with what your employees do in their spare time? They can work on open-source projects if they want. Or do you want to monopolize all the actions of your employees even in their spare time? That goes beyond micromanagement, it's toxic.

overtime to advance within the company

Wait, so your company rewards employees not for how good their work is, but for how much overtime they do? So your bar for promotion is "don't have a family, and if you do have a family, spend as little time with your wife and kids as you can and stay in the office 24/7 or you won't get promoted"? That sounds pretty awful.

Is there any way to steer such an employee (a lot of the engineers trust him, so he seems to have a lot of sway), or do we just rip the bandaid and fire him? Unfortunately, his severance package is large, so I'll be in trouble if we have to pay it out in full.

Now to answer the actual question. No, you cannot steer Peter. Especially if he knows that his severance package would hurt the company. Nor should you. He is making your company better, by using modern technical practices, a modern tech stack, encouraging his coworkers to be healthier and therefore more productive and happier, and taking a stand against your cronyism bullshit. Peter should be the CEO of your company, and you should be fired for even thinking of writing this question