Ask HN: Startup coworker underperforming
A little background:

I'm half of a development team at a young (but very promising startup). We have angel funding and seed funding and are working our way towards proving our product is profitable for the next round. I was brought aboard by the other half of the development team, the subject of this post, who recommended me to the founder/CEO.

During my first few 3 months of being hired, we re-wrote the entire application to meet the requirements that the previous developers couldn't meet due to them being junior and inexperienced (who were later fired). When I say "we", I really mean "I". This is where the problems lie. The other developer on the team has productivity issues. He has the title of "principal engineer" but he his full time duties are development oriented. And he cannot perform. When tasked with debugging software issues, he cannot solve them on his own. When tasked with developing new components, he cannot make decisions or create them on his own. He's been in the business for many years, and I worked with him at our last job together, where he was let go for productivity reasons. He is a smart individual, but he cannot produce, and he cannot "play jazz" to solve software problems.

On top of this, his personal life is a chaotic mess, and he is constantly clocking in late and signing off very early to babysit his young children. Even if he could solve the issues he is tasked with, his personal life is so burdened with responsibility that he cannot put in the hours or focus required to complete the tasks. His days are frequently interrupted by needing to pick up his kids or drop them off, or whatever else he needs to do. These were the exact issues at our last startup job as well.

I, on the other hand, work my ass off. I pull long hours all week. I've always been productivity-oriented and have a high engineering standard for excellence. I build big systems fast with great test coverage, and they meet requirements. I don't need anyone to hold my hand to step into a debugger or provision machines in our infrastructure. I'm busting my ass to pull his weight along with mine. I schedule work, prune our stories, assign what needs to be done, and then do my part in solving it.

I'm beginning to form a toxic opinion about this coworker. I'm feeling very resentful towards him that he gets cut so much slack for his personal responsibilities. I'm resentful that he can be pretending to work all week but have nothing to show for it at the end of the week except excuses about why he had trouble. He's not putting in what the founder and I are. But he technically outranks me, so I cannot "sit him down" in the way someone with more authority could. I could sit down with him as a peer, but he is known for snapping at people (even the founder) who question his productivity. And I don't think the discussion would have any positive outcome anyways. His issues are systemic.

The founder knows all about this, and I've made it very clear to him how I feel. He knows that I've written the vast majority of the systems and solved the vast majority of the issues we've encountered. He knows we cannot rely on the underperforming employee for anything serious. However, he won't act because of how it looks to the outside. It will look like he doesn't know how to find good people. It will look like internally we chaotic if we let him go, and that will hurt our chances of raising more funding. I told him very recently though that it's reaching a breaking point for me, and I cannot work with him any longer.

I need advice on how to proceed. I am willing to walk away from the job if the founder won't fire the other employee. But I don't want to be that guy that is like "it's either me or him." I just want the founder to act on what we've agreed the situation to be. He needs to fire this guy. He costs money and drags down productivity by slowing the rest of us down. And he kills morale. How do I convince the founder that he can massage the staff change into something more palatable? I know he doesn't want to lose me...he's made that abundantly clear. But I also don't want to be the one to put a gun to his head to make a choice. But i'm at my wits end at dealing with this guy.