From my experience, there are two types of "bad" programmers: Those that want to improve and work with you, and those that don't, or at least not take advice fr

From my experience, there are two types of "bad" programmers: Those that want to improve and work with you, and those that don't, or at least not take advice from you. For the first category, as others have said, you should try to mentor them. For the second category, this was tough in my experience. I did my best trying to work on my communication, being friendly, but the other programmer just ignored it. After I gave it some time, I wrote the business guys (some have a technical background though) what problems I had with the other programmer. If you keep it high-level and that it is mainly the communication that doesn't work, they should get it. From then on, it's really their job to fix the problem. In my case, it was handled pretty good. I didn't become best friends with the other programmer, but it was workable. If your management can't fix the problem (final escalation: firing the other guy), you should quit. This will not be the last time such problems will pop up in the company (be it engineering or another part) and good management is able to handle that.