“When I hired our first and only senior backend developer, he seemed like a shy guy that I supposed would one day ‘warm up’ to the team.
That day never came.
Not only did he keep quiet, he came in late, never voiced his opinion, and regularly made up excuses for his poor performance.
Without a proper way to motivate him, I considered letting him go. That’s where I hit an even larger snag: being our only senior developer, he alone had the knowledge to access our infrastructure.
If I fired him, he may have retaliated by sabotaging our development process or worse, completely nuking the product.
I ended up sticking it out with him and scrambling to hire another dev, but learned that entrepreneurs cannot afford to consolidate knowledge in a single person.
And as cruel as it sounds, leaders must be able to lock down everything at a moment’s notice to prevent disgruntled employees from taking rash actions.
By doing so, we’re not just safeguarding our own contributions, but the contributions of every team member that worked their ass off to make the product come together."
