Yesterday, I fired one of my PHP developer. It is his 13th month. His team leader reported me that "He got average skills". Shame on me., Because, I hired him. After 13th month we fired him. Problem is really the hiring people (HR, CEO or anyone else). Now., I am preparing interview questions with twists & logic implementations.
Average skills? There was an article recently - I think by Joel on Software - that everyone thinks they're hiring in the top 1%. I have to admit I'm kind of curious as to what you were looking for in your team when you hired the guy, I can't tell unless you elaborate more. In addition, I agree with danilocampos: the problem might be in your hiring process. I'm not sure that throwing out puzzles or whatever will help you reduce your number of false positives.
"average" compared to what? your own team? that'd mean you've got people even below the person you fired. 'average' compared to the team leader's experiences? That's a bit... dangerous.
Frankly, an 'average skills' developer in a strong, supportive team can still be a great asset. They can do the work, but perhaps don't always know the best way to do something. However, they may be fine with being given direction. Many people I've worked with aren't good at taking directions from others - I'm not great at it myself in many situations. So the 'average skill' developer can be a blessing in many circumstances. But perhaps not on your team, which may say as much about your team dynamics as that developer.
Exactly. In fact, you NEED average people on your team to play the roles that the superstars are unwilling to play. Places like Facebook where the dirty and boring work is respected and rewarded (according to a Quora post by Yishan Wong) are rare. In a lot of places, the superstars do the superstar thing, and other people do the other stuff.
Good teams will always find a place for people. Ironically enough, this sometimes may even mean promoting someone with poor technical skills to management, among various other drastic measures. Their technical skills may suck, but their interpersonal skills and organizational skills may be off the charts, and they'll still have enough technical background to understand what the heck they're managing. That kind of thing.
When my friend first started at Google, he commented that there seemed to be a lot of underlying impatience and discontent because Google only hired superstars, and so many superstars had to stay on the bench. Not everyone can go do the glamorous job. Various anecdotal blog posts seem to have given us that even Google hasn't been able to 100% figure it out.
