1. The person impresses everyone during the interview process with their skills and potential.
2. Initially, the person doesn’t meet the expected productivity levels. They give various plausible reasons and commit to improving.
3. Time passes but there is no significant improvement in their output. Management invests time and resources in identifying possible support and interventions to help enhance their performance.
4. It’s eventually discovered that the person is only dedicating 2-3 hours per day to their role with your company, instead of the agreed 8 hours, because they are simultaneously pulling the same scam with two other companies.
In this situation, I don't think it would be rational for a manager to try and work out a suitable working relationship. The person has already shown they are dishonest and cannot be trusted. This not about envy or anger, but about using past behaviour to predict future behaviour.
There was no mention of any warnings or interventions or probationary periods. The OP said he was fired for working 3 jobs, and then later edited that to say it was due to low productivity.
Lets be real -- a "brilliant" engineer knows what is expected, knows how to do quality work, and certainly is capable of meeting minimum output to avoid getting fired, even just putting in 10-15 hours a week. The whole story seems kind of off.
OK I think the point I was trying to make is getting lost.
All I'm saying is:
1. The fact that someone hasn't yet been fired for underperformance doesn't mean they're meeting expectations, and will be retained indefinitely without improved performance.
2. If someone in that situation is subsequently discovered to have a secret second job, then the reason for underperformance will be obvious (they never intended to put in the effort that would be reasonable to expect for a full time job), so there's no longer any good reason to believe their performance might improve.
And I'm saying, the "best engineer you ever worked with" is fully capable of avoiding the low, low bar of being fired for underperformance, even splitting his time 3 ways. So something about the story doesn't seem exactly right.
Or, maybe the original story was true that he was actually fired simply for having multiple jobs, because the bosses were butthurt, and the later edit about low performance was not really entirely accurate.
It doesnt sound a bit strange to you when the OP states that "his talent went to waste"? Don't you think the "best engineer you ever worked with" could pass an interview rather easily (I mean, he already did at least 3 times) and get back to work somewhere else? Is the OP implying that losing this particular job was so devastating that this brilliant engineer quit the industry?
1. The person impresses everyone during the interview process with their skills and potential.
2. Initially, the person doesn’t meet the expected productivity levels. They give various plausible reasons and commit to improving.
3. Time passes but there is no significant improvement in their output. Management invests time and resources in identifying possible support and interventions to help enhance their performance.
4. It’s eventually discovered that the person is only dedicating 2-3 hours per day to their role with your company, instead of the agreed 8 hours, because they are simultaneously pulling the same scam with two other companies.
In this situation, I don't think it would be rational for a manager to try and work out a suitable working relationship. The person has already shown they are dishonest and cannot be trusted. This not about envy or anger, but about using past behaviour to predict future behaviour.