John sounds like he might do very well as an independent contractor taking on smaller projects for clients. There’s a certain nicety about *not* working with a team, the most obvious benefit being you *don’t have to be a team player*. Nobody wants to work with someone who isn’t a team player, but at the same time communication is a two-way street and playing nice with a team is never effortless.

I have worked with awful SWEs who went on to be apparently valuable members of their new teams, so I wonder if it’s about who they’re working with (or under), or how the team’s SDLC works, rather than a “problem” with the SWE himself.

I want the other side of the story. I want to see the PR comments you guys left for him. I never will of course, but I like to remain skeptical in these sorts of “personality conflict” situations.

I worked under a lead (English also not his first language) who I thought was an adequate programmer, but a terrible lead. It was his first foray and he struggled a lot with PR reviews- namely, he would point out something he didn’t like or didn’t think was “good practice”, but he wouldn’t provide any detail, any links, or any suggestions for how to make the code better. When pressed, he usually couldn’t defend his stance, though sometimes he would post links that would sometimes actually back *me* up (inadvertently). I suspect it was a mix of wanting to assert “dominance” as the SME/lead of the team and misunderstanding what he was reading on the internet.