So I Hired a Homeless Guy

I’m surprised no one is commenting on this directly; it sounds like he has clear mental health problems.

Breaking things arbitrarily and screaming loudly enough to bother other people are signs that something is clearly off, so you should approach it from that angle. That’s important not only in diagnosing the problem, but sadly with mental health problems that severe it may not be safe for you or your other employees to work out of the same location as him (disclaimer: though I probably see more mental health issues than most, I am not a mental health professional or licensed in any way).

That said, while the pragmatic thing would frankly be to fire him (and would have been some time ago), it seems like you genuinely want to help. If he writes good code it could be reasonable to let him work remotely, but absolutely not at the office.

Focus either way should be on getting him the mental health help he needs.

Your options are:

1. Move him out.

2. Move him out and fire him.

Allowing him to keep this up is not an option. You need to figure out if he can be professional during work hours and whether it's worth it for you and the company to keep him at the job.

Whatever you pick - try to be as decisive as you can. You sound like someone who is really trying to help and it's easy for someone like you to be taken advantage of.

You're torturing your staff by keeping someone so toxic and erratic around them, just for the feeling of doing some good deed for the world.

This is a terrible forum to have this discussion, as well. For the sake of your employees, delete this and get rid of this guy.

First, you should immediately delete this. If anyone at your company, or “Jake”, sees this they will immediately know who it is about. I can’t imagine the HR disaster if that happened.

Second, I cannot believe you are actually entertaining the idea of continuing to allow this person to live in your office, destroy walls, and destroy company equipment. Are you nuts?

I have a neighbor like this. Nice person, loudly wrestles with demons on the regular, took a while to get used to it.

It sounds like an apartment is right out, but maybe a detached residence (ie a house) would work. I don't know what part of the country you're in and what sort of options are available/how that would interact with work travel time etc.

What if you take his situation seriously in the sense of legitimising his belief? ie treat the witchcraft/auras thing as real (which it obviously is, for him), but explain that you don't have the expertise/insight and other people feel his power but aren't able to read it correctly. Don't patronize him, just give an example of someone else you've known who had to deal with that sort of thing to communicate that you respect the fact of his personal struggles. Failing that, ask him if there's a book or a movie you could consult on your own time to help you understand his thing better.

Ask him what he needs in a space to be able to defend himself from these bad forces and also what amount of time/energy it takes - maybe it interacts with work hours. The flip side of his focus and stamina at work could be difficulty in switching off and relaxing; perhaps it's a sort of dynamic tension that needs to be cranked up to an angry climax through which he discharges his energy in a burst and is then able to sleep it off.

As this has obviously happened before he's probably heard conversations of the form 'Jake I like you, love your work, but the demon stuff is a problem.' Could be the way out of this vicious circle is 'Jake I like you, love your work, how do you fend off spiritual attackers?' If he can't talk coherently about it, set aside a few work hours to have him write it down. Your role is that you want to help but don't have the psychic sensitivity he does, ie the supportive sidekick that can line up resources for the hero but not fight the battles.

If you can find some way to mediate your relationship through this framework (and agree clear boundaries on your ability to assist, but be willing within those mutually-agreed and inviolable boundaries)then I think you could carry on helping each other in your different ways. It's clear that you care a lot and want to help, while also needing to balance that with the needs of other team members and yourself, so I think the key is establish some sort of language in which you can communicate with each other about how he's doing without necessarily getting into the specifics of how he does it, if that makes sense.

Best of luck to you both.

You say this person's colleagues have become apprehensive. Are they outright scared?

As the boss, you have the ability to fire this person, or order them off the premises at any moment. You're also more able to remove yourself from the office if you feel uncomfortable.

Your other workers don't have this agency. They have to show up and work alongside somebody who can't control themselves and has violent outbursts.

Liability concerns aside (IANAL) I think you should be proud of what you've tried to do, and accomplished so far. If everyone involved is a tight knit group and you're comfortable that they're aligned with the ongoing risk/altruism tradeoff, that's one thing. If not... please consider that you are signing other, less powerful people up for the downsides of this situation.

Sound like the guy is struggling with mental illness. Unfortunately, this carries a huge stigma in our culture (even though the brain can be ill just like any other organ, and there's no shame in that) which makes convincing a person to get help not easy (the "crazy" part). Which means this person's behavior may be hurting other people, thus reinforcing the stigma. Maybe try to talk to him in his lucid mode and explain the problem, not in terms of him being crazy but in terms of how his actions influence other people and what he could do to change it - maybe consult with a social worker? If he's unwilling to do anything about it then it's up to you to decide whether his behavior is more than you and your team can tolerate. It probably won't get better by itself - mental illness rarely does. Other people have the right to mental health and safety too, and this needs to be taken into account.

C) Talk to him, make time so that he —and maybe your other staff— can talk to a psychologist, and promise to retain him through breaks and treatment of that's required.

In other words, care for him. People have baggage. Help him with his.

If your idea is just to move the problem away from the workplace, you're just waiting for the fast it all goes wrong. It sounds like you have a good employee who likes the work, might accept condition of help and be with you a long time... You just have to help them stabilise.

I have to ask. Did you do a criminal background check on him ? If he has some issues and possibly needs mental help, you need to be careful on how you handle this.

I would first talk to him and mention that it is safer not to use company office after a certain hour and so he should not work so late in office. If possible, revoke after hours access (unless your office is literally a lock and key)

If that doesn't work, then you need to think about how to handle it. You can either fire him (but talk to an employment attorney first to ensure you have everything covered) or you need to give him strict warning (could backfire) that he cannot do this.

Document everything!!This could save your ass. It sucks to hire someone and put faith in them, give them a chance and then dealing with this type of stuff. Jake probably needs mental help but you cannot provide that to him.

I applaud you for wanting to help him. The best thing you can probably do is to help him find the help he needs. I think that is probably a difficult position, but let him know that you think he's great, that he's doing a great job, and that you want to see help him get his personal life in order as well.

I'm not sure if you can make it a requirement for him keeping his job. Perhaps consult the local housing authority as well, and the two of you can work together.

I will say, don't go this alone. It's possibly too risky for either of you.

Why not just have him work remote and let him figure out the homeless situation, if he can't perform good, it gives you actionable cause to fire for poor performance.

But living in the office, damage to office equipment, tiles, is already enough to terminate him.

You're a great person, OP, but, your business is your baby and if you allow this to fester longer, you'll risk losing other employees. Imagine how the signal works for everyone else whose observant.

First off, good on you for giving people second chances. The world can be cruel, and good people make mistakes. It's nice to know there are people out there like you willing to take a chance on someone with a less than squeaky clean past.

I think the problem here is the line between professional / personal life is a bit blurred. If he is doing good work and continues to do good work, keep him. However it is not the place of an employer (or a workspace) to fill every need in someone's life. He needs to move out and work on establishing healthy boundaries.

Does your health insurance plan cover mental health services?

I don't think this is the best place to ask. HN has a strong individualistic perspective. I'd reach out to local mental health/employment non-profits to see if they have ideas. They're experts in these types of scenarios.

I am in no way qualified to give HR advice, but I would bring it up with him and give him options... Anyways, this is the highest-upvoted 'Mental Health' post in HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14711621 and maybe there are useful ideas in the comments.

The Workplace forum at stack exchange (stackoverflow) is a good place to ask this question.

https://workplace.stackexchange.com/

It sounds like prior to joining your company he may have been in financial hardship, so that rather than use his new salary to start renting a place immediately, he would rather pay down debt and build up savings. Or he might have not gotten around to or not know how to go about finding a place. In either case, you should talk to him about it. If his reasons are financial, you might find out that he has a timeline in mind (eg 'after my student loan is paid' or 'when I have $x savings'). You might consider offering a salary increase to offset the rent. If it's about getting around to apartment-hunting, you can pay a real estate agent to book him apartment showings.

It's probably important for him to have a decent psychiatrist. He may be defensive about that; I'd go into that conversation with a non-threatening narrative in mind.

Talk to a local organisation that might be able to help with accommodation and give real advice and maybe support.

What you are talking about is beyond the capabilities of most people. But giving people second chances like you have done is also more than most people can do, it is really hard. But don't be afraid to bail this time, you might not yet be up to it in life.

I wonder if the screaming is computer games... We used to play at work until the Co-Tennants complained.

1.) Jake should not be project lead. That position requires mental stability and social skills Jake does not posses. Jake as project lead is likely harming people under him. Do talk with those people about impact Jake has on them and how to mitigate it.

2.) Jake is mentally ill and needs professional to look at him. Regular therapy and all that. Feel free to make it condition for employment.

3.) Telling him to find apartment and to pay for damage he caused is completely fair.

You can keep Jake without him being lead and with both him and you taking his mental health seriously. You cant have there a lead who makes holes in the walls and screams without the rest of office being affected.

I have this idea, be honest and but firm, and do a proposition to him: you'll allow him to stay and continue working but he has to accept taking a serious psychological treatment, that person needs mental attention immediately. He sounds like a reasonable/intelligent person, try to negotiate something that helps him and you.

If he has mental illness or home problems, he might not be able to handle those on his own, and might not have the wherewithal to seek out what meager public safety net exists.

Its possible he just needs a pastime caregiver... call it a personal secratary, hired out of his pay, to help him get his housing and psychological care situation straightened. Hopefully, his income is high enough to live off and pay for someone like that (since I understand that generosity can only go so far).

Obviously, I would ask him his opinion on this sort of arragenement, if you and him are both willing to go this far for a #3 option.

I’ll try to be succinct - you have tools to help people both in a professional capacity and a personal capacity. When you start commingling those interactions as an employer, particularly with those suffering from psychological issues, you are taking on potentially ruinous risks that get exponentially worse because of your level of authority and responsibility. I could share stories.

You need to act quickly and decisively. Letting him do his thing is not an option, as an employer, manager and/or owner. This will only get worse if you allow it to play out. Considering the lines that have already been crossed I don’t think there’s any way for you to reset the relationship. Let him go and add whatever toppings you need to feel good about it - references, referrals, do a severance in exchange for indemnity against any claims, but gtf out of the relationship and don’t look back. Yeah, I empathize with your good intentions as well, but learn from this and don’t let it become an even worse lesson. Define (for yourself) the lines that can’t be crossed ahead of time so in future you bring more structure to your rehabilitation program. Write back in 6mo and let us know how it turns out.

Is this really a true story or part of a social experiment?

Good on you for being a decent person.

Help out with alternate housing and mental health care, make it clear why you are doing so and what expectations you have for his own commitment to this new program, and why it has to be a "yes" from him, draw up a subset of options, then give him the dignity of choice as to where and when, within a clear time limit. Pay for the mental health / social worker, but defer any raise or overtime for 12 months to recoup cost.

You can't leave him alone and hope it works out. He has mental issues that need managing, and after dark those issues aren't being managed in a helpful way. You could just as well say you don't need design or a coding standard or SCM or CI and just hope it works out. Same principle.

He's reluctant to move out because the office has become his haven of sanity and security, where the other people help ground him and distract him from his issues that creep back like demons in the night. Most likely he's getting more and more scared as this goes on, helplessly watching this slow motion train wreck progress, fearing the worst and also feeling powerless to stop it.

If you just leave things as-is, he'll slowly degenerate and will eventually start having problems during the daytime as well, which will make his co-workers fear and dislike him, and that will spell the end.

He needs help from a trained professional. Helping him get that professional help, and then being a support while he's getting that help is the most promising approach to keep him on the team. He WILL need to move out at some point (soon), and he WILL need a support group and also people he can just be with (loneliness exacerbates the problem).

Get two appointments with a professional after explaining your situation. Send him in alone to the first one, take him home, then go back for the second session to talk to the professional about their opinion on how and if you can make this work. Ideally you should do this twice in order to reduce the chance of a professional who's bad at their job. You have to decide how far you're willing to go (after talking to a professional) and make those boundaries clear, because otherwise you're needlessly taking your entire company down choppy waters that will harm him, you, and your company.

Your description is a little terse - are people apprehensive because of: 1) tales of his living at the office and off-hours outbursts, or 2) problematic interactions directly with other employees.

If the latter, you likely should act to separate him from the other employees even though this will likely increase the odds of a bad outcome for him - the needs of the many and all that.

If it's the former, it sounds like unstructured time alone might be his trigger (or, he could just need to 'pop off' for X hours a day regardless of environment). If it is unstructured alone time, it might be possible to put enough structure into his life that he's a lot more stable. Getting him evaluated and maybe set up in some sort of halfway house might be a good longer-term solution.

But it's probably going to be rough and depend a lot on how much you want to invest in this person. He sounds like he's likely schizophrenic and it's usually a roller coaster ride; you can have months of relative stability and then things go off the rails, there are outbursts, police are called, housing goes away, they go back to living rough, and then maybe things settle down and they can climb back up the ladder a bit until the next time or until they die. My biological father's life was like that (I was adopted at birth and didn't meet that side or learn about him until long after he was dead).

Anyway... Yes, he might be a threat. Have a plan; have several plans. Especially have mental health crisis numbers handy and try to avoid police unless there's an imminent threat to human life. Check with your lawyer and insurance about how liable you are with him living there. Try to gently walk him towards mental health resources and other support structures. Maybe work out some sort of buddy system where there's rotating 'Jake duty' to touch base with him once or twice an evening to make sure he's ok. But it's a lot, and this is free advice from the internet, so handle it accordingly.

That is a very interesting and challenging problem that you have on your hands. It is sad that a candidate can hold it together during business hours but engages in anti-social behavior elsewhere that is indicative of mental or substance abuse issues.

Your best bet, as a small business with limited resources, is to sever ties with this individual and use all police and legal resources available to you.

The reason for this is arbitrary and stems from your liability as an employer to the safety of others, and to the office building's zoning laws.

I was honestly in this exact same position a decade ago and I was able to stay out of everyone's way by sleeping in my car in the back of another corporation's parking lot. Bringing this behavior into the office shouldn't be acceptable for legal reasons, not personal ones.

Both are risky. Listen to HN, but consult a psychologist.

Consult a lawyer for you and your business, and a social worker for "Jake".

This is frankly inappropriate for HN. You are exposing yourself to incredibly unnecessary liability, especially if "Jake" finds this post, because it won't be a leap to claim identifiability.

C) Find him a (temporary) place to stay so he doesn't spend all this down time in the office.

I would first recommend to get the government involved but since you're in the US I'm just going to assume you guys also don't have universal mental health options.

The guy is obviously in need of help but if you kick him out it'll only get worse. Sometimes people need someone like you to just catch them as they fall.

> After a couple of weeks, Jake surreptitiously “moved in” and started sleeping at the office.

weren't you alarmed by this already ?

"(He fixed the walls and replaced the monitor.)"

Depending on where this happened it might be illegal. Employees spending personal money on business stuff (without expensing them) is a big no-no. You might need to consult a lawyer to find out if you're now exposed to legal action - especially if you fire him.

Find a qualified mental health professional (A really good one) and offer to flip the bill for it. As you seem to be very well meaning, let a professional handle it and see if the behavior improves in the short term. It may or may not be correctable and after that you sort of have your answer.

This can only get worse. This person likely requires medication, and that won't happen unless he wants it.

Letting him live at the office won't help him in the long term if he's unwilling to seek mental health help. It will only drag you into his crazy world.

How do you know he's great? I strongly suspect that when you scratch the surface there, you might find he's somewhat less than that. You very well might not be the only one who's covering for him, in one way or another.

You’re putting your entire staff in danger by keeping this individual around. This is absurd and wildly irresponsible. Tough situation to be sure, but needs to be dealt with swiftly. Take care to protect yourself as well.

Let him work from home, that should solve all the problems. It is not really your problem whether he has home or not, your problem is only his work. If he can't work from home then tough like for him...

Sounds a lot like an Addict to me. Have you considered recording his behavior on the weekend? (cameras)

Dear HN@hackernews: I've reached out to you to delete this. Please help me out.

Maybe pay for a hotel room he can live in?

OP I would quit if you made me work with a homeless crazy person. You're putting your team through hell for... what exactly?

What has Jake said about this?

You're a great human being! I love you, and I don't know you. Get Jake first and foremost appropriate mental health treatment.

Speaking of housing. Offer him a hand with housing or put conditions on his stay at your premises.

Some mean spirited, empathy deprived, sociopathic comments in here are not deserving of being answered to. I genuinely feel sorry for comment posters.

A few things come to mind here:

First, good on you for wanting to help this guy out. We need more people like you in the world.

Next, HN comments are one thing, but experienced and professional advice is quite another. I would recommend getting an appointment with an experienced psychologist to sit down with them and talk about how to best approach this situation. You want to keep the guy around because he does great work, and you want to help him so he can CONTINUE doing great work.

Now, I hate to say this, but you need to consider the downside and potential outcomes of outright firing this guy as some comments have insinuated. If he's really mentally ill, he could react violently. I don't want to scare you or anybody else here, but let's not be stupid - people with mental illness are more likely to react in violent ways to adversity, especially when forced on them suddenly. Be really careful if you decide this is your best option, and maybe discuss how to best keep your office and employees safe with law enforcement. I'd hate to see an active shooter situation come out of this, but it's a possibility you'd be foolish not to prepare for.

State resources might also be an option for you if you're in a state that _has_ resources for these things, like California. I'm in Texas, for example, and we have next to jack shit for resources for dealing with this sort of thing. So I recommend not really relying on state resources as they can be flaky or non existent.

If a psychologist agrees, maybe - I stress maybe - show him some of these HN comments. If he's a rational person, which he must be at some level otherwise he wouldn't be able to work as well as you say he does, he'll see the awkward position you're in and maybe realize "oh shit, I'm causing problems, I need to make some changes". That may be the first major hurdle in rectifying this situation, and once that realization is in place, he might be more receptive to getting counseling, psychiatric care, and moving into his own place.

It's also worth considering that maybe he's not _able_ to find his own place. Landlords are bastards, and the probability they'd rent to somebody who's ever been homeless is pretty low. He might want his own place but not be able to get anyone to lease to him, and he might be too proud/"professional" to mention this to you. In that case, maybe offering to help him by co-signing the lease (a risk, I know) might move the ball down the field toward a better situation.

No matter how you approach this, I suggest a slow, gradual movement in the right direction, toward getting him some help. Straight up slapping down a "hey dude, this is fucked, get your shit together" kind of approach is likely backfire in a big way and make the problem worse, and outright firing him is risky.

I don't envy your situation, but I do hope it works out well for everyone involved!

PS - a thought that occurred after I wrote this: maybe offer everyone a rotating work-from-home schedule that would minimize (not eliminate) their time in the office and their time around this problem employee. That might make them feel safer, and make things easier on him too. That might be a reasonable stop-gap while you gradually work the problem.

GOOD LUCK!

I have serious doubts that he is doing good work or could possibly be effective in a project lead position from what you said, mental illness isn't a switch that you can just turn off during the day.

Where do this "homeless" people sleep? Like, where does Jake slept before sleeping at the office?