Discussion on question by MightyPizza: How to stop an employee from holding the company hostage?

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11:44

Q: How to stop an employee from holding the company hostage?

I work in a team that writes software to facilitate one of the key business units of the company. I joined the team a few months ago and found out that there is high turn-over in my team due to one person. This person (let's call him Mr. A) has been with the company for 7 years, he is very diffic...

Laconic Droid

You fix the mess now or 6 months from now. Either way, firing him won't make it any worse.

emory

That the team has high turnover suggests that a lot of other people have found the best solution to the problem of Mr. A is to leave the team. Why do you think they are all wrong? Why is this your problem?

Joe Strazzere

"My manager knows this, but he says there is nothing he can do about Mr. A." - your manager is wrong.

Masked Man

Some things are not clear from your post. 1. Are you sure the company feels like they are being held hostage? 2. Why is this your problem to fix?

BЈовић

what is your position?

John Hamilton

11:44

Are you sure he's not just incompetent and deliberately breaking the software?

JAD

Lycan

Some things you say are suspect. How does the language make it untestable? Why is an increase in modularity a bad thing? How do you know he's doing these things to deliberately hurt the software vs just hacking things out the best he can to meet unreasonable schedules?

Mawg

"... written core business logic in languages that can't be tested" - which would they be? I know of none.

Lycan

You say there's high turnover because of this specific person. How do you know that? Have people told you they left because of him specifically?

Stian Yttervik

The graveyard is full of irreplaceable people. There is a misconception here... When push comes to shove - very few people are actually irreplaceable (professionally).

Daniel

11:44

Your problem is not Mr. A, your problem is: My manager knows this, but he says there is nothing he can do about Mr. A.

Jay

If all the things you say about the software architecture are that bad (i doubt this), there is no option but to re-design and re-write the code. This will be a different project in itself.

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