> Our other (kinda founder) who has been with us since the beginning does the back-end programming, without him it would've been hard. We are paying him about $25/hr below his market pay, but he went to college with me so he is helping with discount. The backend shouldn't be more than about 150 hours of true programming (not including research time). > > Here is the situation. The programmer is a dick. He has a house and baby so we try to cut slack, but he keeps on missing deadlines. He has almost no communication skills when we want to meet and work, he doesn't show passion like a founder.

I count six red flags. You're paying below market rate; your programmer is a college friend who probably agreed to take the job as a favor; you've given a time estimate which is probably wrong; you excluded "research time" from the time estimate when you clearly shouldn't have; and you show obvious disrespect and no gratitude.

And you wonder why you aren't getting his best work?