so, back in the day i was project / tech manager.
I hired this kid. Straight out of college for an entry level position with the development team. He dressed the part, was respectable, highly intelligent, always early and always stayed late.
He was probably the best behavioral employee i have ever managed to this day.
Shortly after hiring him, he made some mistakes. Easy to fix, but always missing a minor detail here and there.
I would constantly talk to him to mentor him on how to fix the problems.
We had a pig project and he forgot something, a very minor detail. It put us behind almost a full day work. People started to grumble a bit. The senior developers just didn't want the guy on their crew. They all loved him, the person, but he just kept jacking shit up all the time.
Finally, we had a huge project. I gave him a small, easy to do project, it was one very important detail. I made sure he wrote the details down.
Somehow, someway , he managed to screw up our entire migration by just messing with our naming convention. It was a very small detail and the one part he didn't write down and something that was just "common" knowledge (lining up on the line of scrimmage).
After that , two of the lead developers came to my office. The one girl said "he's a bright kid, but he just cant put his book knowledge and work ethic into a successful practical environment" . they both acknowledged that he was hard working, and highly intelligent but he just always screwed up.
It was the hardest fire i ever had to do in my career. I either had animosity from the team, or i had to get rid of the kid. No one wanted to work with him, and despite him doing all the right things as an employee and displaying incredible work ethic (he would be there 11 hours a day , learning and trying), he just flat out sucked at the job.
I ended up getting him moved to another department after begging with my boss. He just wasn't cut out for the job. The kid was devastated, all he wanted was to be a part of our team. It was hard and to this day, i keep thinking maybe i could have helped him.
That's nelson. He has the build, the speed, the size, the work ethic, but he just can't put it in play in the NFL. THe sooner we realize this , the better off we all are. He really can't handle the pressure because he can't fix it. His mistakes wont' go away because he mentally gets himself paranoid, it's like wearing a white shirt and constantly trying to avoid a stain on it. He's just not able to translate his abilities to success on teh field.