Let's say you were a manager.

Under what circumstances would you fire an employee? If an employee royally screws up an expensive project, or crosses the line and sexually harasses a coworker, then it my be a no-brainer. But what if the employee doesn't do anything terribly wrong, but doesn't do anything very right either: just an employee who constantly under-performs. Does a worker who needs continuous baby-sitting and micro-managing because there isn't any trust or faith in the work s/he does deserve to be fired?

We've had someone in our group for the last year and change who continually shows his inabilities in every facet of his job. I've mentioned this guy before in my blog. He's a coworker that can't think on his own, can't follow instructions properly, and can't remember the details of his work (or of our product, for that matter). As our dedicated QA engineer, the majority of his testcases don't test to completeness and aren't written well. His organization skills are atrocious, and documentation and presentation skills are equally poor.

Yet, in spite of his obvious cons, we've kept him around for over 1 year. The fact of the matter is, we haven't been able to hire anyone else to do QA for our product in his place or with him. Resources are tight, and perhaps even having someone on board to do a half-assed job is better than having no one at all. I had my concerns during his 3-month probation, but the decision to keep him or drop him wasn't mine to make.

If you had this kind of a employee on your team, how would you handle it/him/her?