The new employee

"Yeah, it was a very nice vacation", said Long Johnson, the Asian-American manager. "How have things been here? Everything going well?"

"We need to talk about Agapito Hackerman", replied Pascal Devoto, the lead developer.

"What about him?", asked Long.

Agapito Hackerman had been hired 2 months ago. On that day, everyone in the team had marveled at his typing speed. He'd brought his own mechanical keyboard and he had a pair of mysterious electrical gloves. With that equipment and his training, he was able to type at Guinness World Record speeds.

"He types fast. That's all the good things we can say about his work".

"We?"

"The entire development team has discussed this. We are all behind what I am about to tell you."

"Okay, I'm listening."

Pascal looked to the side – he did not want to do this. Inadvertently, he saw a poster on the meeting room wall. White on blue. "You are more than", followed by a bunch of scattered options: "a coder / a designer / an analyst"...

"Look, to start with, the quality of his code is extremely mid".

"Mid?"

"Just meh code."

"Okay. You mean ravioli?"

"Um, no, not spaghetti code, no. It's a different problem. It's like his code is always... default. He knows about code architecture, but he constantly assumes we have needs we don't have, and ignores the needs we actually have. So the architecture in his code is never the right one. And he can only do easy tasks. I have tried giving him harder problems a couple times, but... I don't know... it's as if he could only solve problems that he has seen solved before."

Pascal took a breath and continued:

"His code is so meh that I wonder where he learned programming."

"Wait, I still have his CV here." Johnson opened his drawer and found it. While he read, he took a sip of his smoothie, labeled Cacao-Empathy.

"Hackerman went to the Microsoft Academy."

"Figures", said Pascal. "And Microsoft pushed you to hire him."

"Well, yeah. I listen to them. They are huge."

"But you know I have been trying to build a team that writes code of great quality. You know how important this is for the future of the product."

"Yes, but you have hired mid programmers before."

"True. By giving them time and a learning environment, they have improved and progressed from junior to senior levels. But you remember Andrzej. He just wasn't interested in software architecture, and ultimately I couldn't keep him on the team. That's much, much worse with Agapito."

"How come?"

"He does not seem either able or open to receive lessons."

"I find that hard to believe. You remember how much he was recommended to us."

"Look, Long. Even with his problems, the potential seemed high at first. But we have tried teaching him things. On the next day he appears to have forgotten everything he was taught. At first we wondered if he was a jerk. Now we assume he has some kind of condition. He forgets all kinds of information, too. Even what it is that the product does. All facts seem to be gone in the next conversation. This company should insist he go to a head doctor, and pay for it."

"Really?"

"And his interactions with the rest of the team are very limited. He doesn't even know anyone's name. Including yours."

"Are you sure you guys don't just envy his speed? I mean, I like how productive he is."

Pascal sighed.

"Long, you are not listening to me! He types quickly, but the rest of the team must correct everything he does. And if we don't, we'll have awful code, and what's worse, oceans of it."

"I don't know about code quality, I cannot evaluate that... But I see the stats. His productivity is way higher than everyone else's."

"No, it is not. Writing the wrong code isn't productivity. You know, he suddenly uses libraries we don't use here. I have often had to remind him we use Flutter, not React. No matter how much I teach him about dependency management, he seems to just use any library out there. But it gets worse!"

Pascal was gesticulating:

"You'd think he knows hundreds of libraries, but he doesn't know any one of them well. He doesn't know their API – but instead of looking up the documentation, he types the code immediately, as if he remembered every detail! Long, he writes against a fictitious API!!! He thinks he remembers, but what he remembers is a hallucination! Then he commits the code and creates a pull request. The PR is immediately failing because Agapito doesn't even run the automated tests."

Pascal gasped:

"It gets even worse. I don't think he compiles his own code, even. We have found syntax errors in his PRs."

"Okay, so you tell him to fix the problem, right?"

"Of course. You know what he does?"

"What?"

Pascal got up and started walking back and forth.

"He doesn't read his own code! He types the entire thing again, from scratch. Instead of a little correction, we get a new program! The diff is unreadable, nobody can make sense of the changes! All previously done analysis is wasted. He might have solved one problem and created three more. And the problems could be security vulnerabilities!"

"Maybe that's a price of typing as fast as he does?"

"I don't know. But it's insane. It has affected my work. I am behind in everything I do. I don't even write code myself anymore, I have to baby-sit Agapito all the time!"

Pascal stopped in the middle of the meeting room and continued:

"Long, it's fair to say the guy is an impostor. The entire team is talking ill behind his back. We've never had this kind of problem before."

"Okay, but maybe that's not such a bad thing. If you can remind him of everything he needs to do, he will type everything out for you real fast, if I understand you correctly. Why don't you start a checklist of the things you typically need to tell him?"

"That's an insane way to work. But I am glad you thought of that. Here is the checklist. Gradually built over two months."

Pascal took 40-plus pages out of the printer and placed them on Johnson's desk. He wanted to throw them, but he placed them.

Johnson took a cursory look at the long document. All kinds of information about the company, the product, the kinds of users, their roles, the current code, the future the team aimed at.

"Every time I give Agapito a new assignment, I tell him to read that first. But he always manages to forget something important from it."

"But this is good work, Pascal. Looks like a great summary of everything about this company. This text could be used as a basis for so many things. I may start sending this to whoever doesn't yet understand what we do."

"Okay, Long. But it's not normal for a team member to be so... absent. You know Agapito refuses to attend team meetings? And he doesn't do anything during the meetings, either. He just sits there, waiting. He only works in short bursts, when asked to work. I have never worked with anyone so strange in my entire life. The team has given up any hope of Agapito ever learning anything from us, about ourselves, about the company, about our customers, about the work itself..."

Johnson glanced at the glass-walled office where Hackerman was sitting in front of his desk. Like a statue.

"Okay, but still, can the team adapt to working with Hackerman?"

Pascal touched his forehead with all his fingertips.

"That is the wrong question to ask, Long! We are talking about a dev that is unable to adapt to us in the slightest! We were doing fine before, but now the entire team is dedicated to finding his mistakes and fixing them!"

Pascal's expression was a painful grimace. "Jesus H. Christ, Long, we all know how to type!"

Johnson seemed a little shocked that Pascal was almost yelling.

"Agapito never has any questions! He never asks for clarifications. He never asks the opinion of any team member. He either understands the briefing and the briefing is... inhumanly complete, or chaos ensues."

Johnson was trying to interrupt and now he got this in:

"Wait, Pascal, have you talked to him?"

"Of course I have, Johnson! You know what happened? He politely agreed with the criticism and promised to do better. And then nothing changed."

Pascal resumed walking.

"Since our team is not programming anymore, all our skills will vanish in a couple years! Programming is a craft, if you don't practice it you lose it! Now the only one doing any programming is someone who never learns anything!"

Johnson crossed his arms. Pascal caught his breath.

"This is a developer that absolutely refuses any and all long-term responsibility and only produces brittle code. Like a baby, he must be continuously supervised. It's exhausting! We loved our work before..."

Johnson was getting impatient. Pascal doubled down.

"What we wanted was to hire an expert coder. We knew the job market lacks qualified workers. Instead of doing what we needed to do – hire a team member – we hired a typist. His work is nonsense and he has to go. If you say he stays, that will kill motivation for the rest of the team. And kill their skill, since nobody is practicing their craft. Meanwhile, the typist is unable to learn anything!"

Long Johnson seemed to enlarge in his chair. His head was turning red.

"Okay, Pascal, listen. Everything you are saying is very hard to measure. Only his typing speed is easy to measure."

"Long, the job is not typing. The job is to communicate to understand the market, the company, the users, the product; to learn a language, some libraries, how to write good code; then write it, read it, maintain it, document it and then communicate some more. Typing is not even one percent of the work."

"I know, Pascal. What I don't understand is why an expert would forget what they already know."

"Johnson, I know exactly how to explain this to you. This is something strange about the profession. You see, if a lawyer or a doctor has practiced their profession for 40 years, then they are 40 years better than when they started. But that's not true of developers. 10-year-old technology is obsolete technology. Nobody cares if you know AngularJS 1 – it was abandoned 10 years ago. The value of a developer is only in what she's been doing the last 10 years."

Johnson sighed – Pascal was preaching again.

"A programmer must be learning new things daily. Learning is part of the profession. But here's the thing about learning: Humans learn by making! Constructivism. Jean Piaget. Reading a book on a technology is not enough to learn it. One must build with it; only then does one learn. Without the practice, the theory does not sink in. This is how this wonderful team, full of experts, will become a bunch of ignorants if they don't keep writing code."

"Isn't there some other solution to this problem?"

Pascal laughed. "Yeah, we could practice in our copious free time."

Johnson shook his head. "No need for the sarcasm. You are getting emotional. This is a serious question. Can you work in a different way to embrace Hackerman's higher productivity?"

"Higher? You mean negative. I will be the first to quit my job. I love programming, that is why I am a programmer. I enjoy the creative activity of writing good code, using skills acquired over decades of study. Reviewing someone else's bad code is boring and painful. And it is not programming."

"So you aren't interested in focusing on high-value alignment tasks and thought stewardship? Well, so be it. I find Hackerman productive because he delivered a few demos in no time. I was very impressed."

"But making a tiny demo is very different from maintaining a large codebase! Look, Long! We were building an awesome team. The guys were improving and learning together. But Agapito is harmful to the team – he sets an awful example. A passive typist who never tries to interact with anyone else. Can you imagine how limited his world experience must be? Yet he apparently gets your approval."

"It's true, and I need to let you know why it is so."

Pascal was paralyzed to hear that. He turned his face a little, as if to point his good ear towards Johnson. Or maybe protect the other ear.

"Brace yourself, you are not going to like my decision."

Pascal started biting his tongue.

"Hackerman's salary is one tenth of any other team member's. I am telling HR to scout Microsoft Academy. Look for others like him. I think we can drive the cost of development down by pairing each expert with a good typist – like a co-pilot. The experts can focus on vision harmonization. When I present the idea, the slide will be titled 'Post-human efficiency'!"

Pascal blinked a few times.

"Long, I just told you one Agapito already tasks the entire team with his mistakes. And you want to hire more Agapitos?"

"Yep!"

"I just explained how and why that ain't gonna work. Have you forgotten everything you learned in the Agile course? ...And everything I just told you?"

"No, I haven't. But even if I understand you partially, you know who doesn't? Our CEO. He likes numbers, graphs and objective things. My strategy takes all of two seconds to explain. But Agile and your arguments are hard to explain. When I talk to him, I don't get the feeling I have time or permission to teach him anything."

"Honestly, Long, that's just dumb. You are forgetting a manager has a duty to protect his team. And you know who will suffer the consequences? The team, the product, the customers, and the company, in that order."

"Well, such is the world, Pascal."

Pascal Devoto still searched for words, then suddenly stormed out of the room. The entire office heard three loud door impacts. In the corridor he rushed past a Microsoft banner. It said:

Faster. Smarter. Limitless. Let the AI build your future.

An alliance with Microsoft was announced two weeks later. Stock went up 3%.