I'm a new tech lead and I'm struggling
I've worked at big and small companies before and right now I'm in a very small company. Which means that the bar for hiring is of the "you get shit done at any cost".
well, it turns out that one of the engineers in my team does not meet that bar, and my manager knows. he was hired before I joined.
we don't get projects hand plated to us, which is a good thing in my eyes because we get the freedom to decide what to work on next, and to write tickets.
so. right now we have two high priority projects in flight, and they are somewhat intertwined. there's a few other low priority, smaller, projects that need to be done too.
the problem I have is that this engineer needs to be assigned tickets specifically or he will not work on them. half the time I don't know what he's doing. he doesn't keep his tickets status up to date. he doesn't ask for reviews when his PR's have not gotten any comments.
I'm new in this role and I don't feel comfortable being a ticket police and asking for status updates regularly.
I also don't feel like I have the bandwidth or mental capacity to do that. I have tasks of my own to do, specifically so that they don't have to do them and they can focus on project work. (eg I deal with out of band requests)
I've had multiple talks about this with my superior and they suggested that I be more blunt about what I need him to do. the issue is that I hate being the police. have I really got to spell out "there is a backlog of tasks, pick one at random and do that."? this guy is more senior than me (in terms of age anyway)
the irony of all this is that on the one hand I want this engineer off my team but on the other I DON'T want to inherit the code they wrote and have to be on hook to get it to the finish line.
the other irony is that his bad performance means that my performance is bad too because I cannot manage him effectively.
anyway. end of story. do you have advice for me?