> Think about open source projects: nobody takes 6-12 months to "get up to speed" before contributing to a project. That would be ridiculous.

I'm trying to be generous, and to say that the people under discussion in the comment are past the 6-12 mo timeframe to avoid needing to fend off "but maybe they just need more time/experience/etc."

But I also do think 6 mo is about the "productive" point. This doesn't contradict "start contributing something within weeks" — you should contribute something within your first week, ideally, if the company has their stuff together. But it's 6 mo, IMO, until one has got a good grasp on the architecture, and more importantly, the theory of the system at hand, and can make their own salient decisions about how to grow it that are going to fit well into the existing theory of it.

But again, I'm just putting it out that that we're well past the "initial onboarding" phase of an employee, and tried to pad the amount to avoid commentary.

The havoc I was referring to was more due to the person’s political skills and ability to shift the blame for his own shortcomings to people on his team, while those on the team were unaware of how he’d throw them under the bus while managing up. The failure at “fizzbuzz” was a red flag that got ignored by management (yes there was some existing dysfunction in the org).

And so — figuratively speaking — someone who couldn’t even build a doghouse ended up being tasked with architecting a shopping mall, then attempted to deliver a skyscraper (and failed miserably at it).