Before I got this job, the team I manage was malfunctioning to a point everyone left except for this person who I'd like to get rid of now.
He is my direct report. In 10 months I have hired two more senior developers under me and feel I have the full trust and support from the CTO mainly because my own abilities to deliver projects and manage people around me successfully.
During the 5 months period when it was just him and me, I found out he is 1) not very good at what he does 2) lazy. Apparently this wasnt dealt with by the previous director so the team fall part. I tried to be good with him and lead by example and even wrote his code to get stuff done while I was establishing myself.
He always shows up late/leave early, either playing sick or request to work from work on a weekly basis and he blames others for his incompetency which is a big no no for me since it damages my teams creditability.
I started to tell him to stop use being sick as an excuse to work from home and grew tired of pulling him along since the new year. Didnt work. Then I talked with CTO who obviously knows all his problems that I was ready to ask HR to give him a warning letter and start a 30 day improvement period. CTO agreed to handle this with HR but nothing really happened. I think that's his way of preventing me from getting to HR myself.
Now 1) I could keep pushing my boss who is trying avoid the topic 2) or worry about and put up with this person not getting stuff done. But I feel I lose either way.