I joined the team halfway.. I cannot take resposibilities for others. One of our senior software engineer makes $85K per year and was hired by our CTO before I walked in. This person is the weakest link in our team and I got a lot of headaches. By the way, don't think about fire an employee unless he/she made some big mistakes. Of course, it is a piece of cake for me to terminate contracts with our consultants, but I have no opportunites to do that because they are so good :(-:(- -):-);