I work in Scandinavia where "just fire them if they're not improving" is a lengthy process. So when I got a case like this on one of my teams, it was worth my time to try to help this person improve because with their long tenure, they were going to be very hard to give the boot. This person seemed to be a fairly competent programmer, but just didn't do much actual work. He spent all of his time butterflying around, joining meetings he didn't need to be in, digging into other teams' work that didn't need digging into. I give my teams a ton of autonomy, but he was clearly taking advantage of that in order to seem busy without delivering any value for our users.
The single best tool in handling this situation for me was peer feedback. We instituted a system where peer feedback came from a few peers he selected and a few I myself selected. The person in question was shocked when even the peers he selected came back saying that he simply failed to get stuff done.
This came as a wakeup call for him, and we were able to work on a very clear development plan that minimized distractions and maximized time for deep work. He ended up being a solid contributor.
The single best tool in handling this situation for me was peer feedback. We instituted a system where peer feedback came from a few peers he selected and a few I myself selected. The person in question was shocked when even the peers he selected came back saying that he simply failed to get stuff done.
This came as a wakeup call for him, and we were able to work on a very clear development plan that minimized distractions and maximized time for deep work. He ended up being a solid contributor.