One of the most difficult things I had to learn to do as an engineering manager was to be able to confront attitude problems and take action as quickly as possible.
Performance problems can be fixed. Attitude problems are much harder to solve. You will face this situation multiple times in your career as engineering manager.
I'm not very aggressive or confrontational by nature, so having that conversation with the engineer in question is absolutely not something I looked forward to. This obviously led to an unfair amount of work for the others in the team, a feeling of unfair treatment, resentment and a hit to morale and performance.
Two situations were so extreme that we've had to lay off the engineer(s) in question, which is one of the hardest things to do as a manager. I can tell you that in both instances the teams fared much better afterwards.
Performance problems can be fixed. Attitude problems are much harder to solve. You will face this situation multiple times in your career as engineering manager.
I'm not very aggressive or confrontational by nature, so having that conversation with the engineer in question is absolutely not something I looked forward to. This obviously led to an unfair amount of work for the others in the team, a feeling of unfair treatment, resentment and a hit to morale and performance.
Two situations were so extreme that we've had to lay off the engineer(s) in question, which is one of the hardest things to do as a manager. I can tell you that in both instances the teams fared much better afterwards.