Ask HN: How to deal with a senior colleague who acts like he's boss?

Maybe you should go one level up than your manager.

Some people have difficult personalities. Usually there are still some thing they are really good at. Try to find out what their strengths are and how you two could complement each other. You don't have to like everybody on your team, you just have to get your work done.

I'm not sure that my social skills is good enough for you to imitiate, but I would do one of the following.

I could tell such a person that I'm busy and have no time for a conversation. Without explaining him what his personal traits bothers me. I would say something like "I need to work now, have no time to chat, sorry, maybe next time".

If it is unacceptable for some reason, I would tell it without words, by playing a role of busy person with his mind on something else, honestly trying to be nice but having no spare mental capacity to do it good. At the same time I'll try to aviod to show him any emotion, because it may reinforce his behaviour. Just imagine that there are a lot of things going on your mind, you are thinking right now some complex thoughts that are not related to the conversation with this guy, and the conversation doesn't really prevent you from thinking, despite you are trying (not very hard) to be nice.

A few months of such a one way conversations and he will find something else to teach.

I'm guessing that you two are having a communication problem as it is highly unlikely that a "senior colleague" can't understand simple logic.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the problem is entirely yours, but in most communication problems, the blame lies with both parties. I'd suggest involving a third party (another colleague) in your conversations and allow them to moderate the discussion.

In my experience a third party can quickly see where the communication is breaking down, even when it's not apparent to the two people attempting to communicate.

   if some-predicate
      // left blank.
   else
     // do something
   end if

    if ((a and b) or (a and c and not d)) and not e)

    orderSubmitted = a and b
    orderValid = a and c and not d
    orderNotYetFulfilled = (orderSubmitted or orderValid) and not e
    if not orderNotYetFulfilled {
         # code here
    }

Go with it. A huge part of experience is learning to work with people you don’t like. Don’t worry too much about who’s whose’s boss. Also try to assess whether he’s trying to tell you something right that you cannot understand yet.

Is his acting like your boss hindering your work? Does he come between you and tasks to be done or somehow take credit for your work, at the same time diminishing you or reporting your work as bad when it is not?

If it is only the kind of hierarchical conflict that rise in day to day conversation and doesn't actually interfere with work, you should give it little attention. Stand your ground with arguments and reason, and if some fails that means he was right in the first place to criticise and you can use the opportunity to be a better professional.

But if he is actively hindering you unfairly you have to do something about it smartly. Can't really advise as to what specifically, but talking to other people, finding other coworkers with the same problem is a good start. And also maintaining good relations with his superiors is a nice idea too. Because if this is the case it is likely he is doing this to other people or other coworkers will notice this unfair relation.

In any case, harsh positions are good opportunities to be a better professional and grow in social skills, if you so choose to see this as an opportunity for self improvement.

Could it be that it's you who doesn't know which way is up? You said it yourself: you're new to the job and the company, so your judgment being off is more likely than everyone else being in the wrong.

See if you can tell the story from your colleague's perspective. Perhaps it might go something like this: "There's this one junior employee who seems to speak as if he knows everything, but in fact his fundamentals are lacking, so all I can do is set them straight as quickly as I can."

Just absorb it with a smile and put your head down and work and ensure everyone likes you.

In six months everything will have changed.

Also, read "The Prince" if the really want to know how to survive office politics.

Is your difficult senior colleague assigning work to you? Perhaps in a way that clashes with the priorities set by your manager? If that's the case you should deflect his assignments by saying "more than happy to help, but I need to prioritise this with my manager before working on it." Then discuss relative priorities with you manager. No need for finger pointing or blame storming, and no need to make it personal. Frame the conversation as being all about sorting out competing priorities. If your manager has got a clue he'll see that your senior colleague is introducing dysfunction.

Without downright complaining, you should talk to your manager. Friend or not it is his role to make sure that everything in the team goes smoothly and people get along with one another or at least can work together. If you don't provide him with the tools (i.e, the information) he needs to do that, then he'll just have to find other metrics to explain poor performance. And if that senior member is a hindrance to your work (make you redo stuff multiple time or through convoluted ways), then you will look like the "weak link". Understand, the goal is not to fire that person, or you for that matter, is to find ways to make you work together. This can be by putting you in different area of the application for instance, so you don't work on each other's toe. Or reminding him than senior does not mean manager and he shouldn't tell you what to do. Or maybe you're actually the problem, and he will have to teach you a few things so that everything run smoothly. Ultimately, if nothing works, you might have a fundamental difference on how to approach code than the rest of the team. For instance, on party might think performance is the most important thing, and should be seeked, even if it means reusability of the code, while another party think otherwise. Some might like lean more on the overengineering side of the scale while another might lean more on the hacking quickly side of the scale. If that's the case, being the new member and more outsider, you will have to either adapt your position or leave.

How long have you worked with him? Your language suggest that you are making a lot of assumptions that might be false. This might be related to the fact that you are new and as a junior developer it might sometimes feel like people are against you for some reason. Maybe he actually is like you are describing, but somehow my gut feeling says that you are projecting your own insecurities onto him. I'm not dismissing your claim. Actually, he's a great opportunity to learn how to co-exist with people you don't particularly like.

And be careful how you use your language, just some points that got my attention:

- "who thinks he's my manager" -- You don't really know what he thinks.

- "like he knows everything(in reality he doesn't..." -- You don't really know what he knows.

- "He can't understand simple logic" -- I'm sure he can understand "simple" logic.

- "he acts like I don't know anything" -- People act differently, but you are the one who gives meaning to their actions. If you don't like him, everything he does might seem bad to you.

EDIT: Formatting

Sounds like you're stuck up there on your high horse. Come down and chill out dude.

I think the ideal thing would be to find disagreements where you are objectively correct - where even your boss can see you are right, and then take those to your boss. Don't get emotional.

If there are enough of them he should get the point. If not he is not a good boss and your best option is to switch jobs (or move within the company if that is possible).

On your own, you can do two things:

1) Leave ASAP

2) Take this as an opportunity to learn something which is really common with (senior) SW developers

I am not gonna tell you that (2) is easy. It's actually extremely hard, it can get even harder than what you think right now. However, time-box your learning experience: how long before you leave? how long before you have a nervous breakdown? In the meantime, try to learn as much as possible about communication with this difficult colleague. Some resources you might want to use are

- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

- Getting to Yes: Negotiating an agreement without giving in

- Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

Then you can follow any other advice given here, like talk to your manager, etc. However, be cautious there, especially when talking about someone that has already some sort of power.

You may be giving too much importance for what he says. There's what people say and there's what is actually going to be done. These two things only have to match if the person doing the talk is the lead (or, a customer, perhaps).

There may be something going on behind the scenes; consider that the senior colleague may have been asked by your manager to mentor you and make sure you stay on track or may have been told that they need to show "leadership" before they can get promoted to team lead.

Either way, focus on establishing your relationship with your manager. The manager assigns you tasks, not the senior colleague. If you disagree with your colleagues input, follow up with the manager to make sure your approach is correct.

Also, see if other colleagues are having similar problems (if your team is larger). If you are correct, you will probably find everybody on the team is simply ignoring them.

The OP could be out of line, but there is another factor in play.

Remember that when a company wants to keep someone, they will tolerate no end of ridiculous behavior. When they don't care or want someone out, they tolerate nothing, or invent things not to tolerate.

There is a personality type who cherry picks easy problems from other peoples queues and then front runs the news of solving them. They create a race to the bottom environment where to survive in the org, people start competing to claim credit for insignificant problems and create pressure to neglect the valuable and hard ones. It also creates "turf," instead of collaboration.

There is a lot of advice that will say, "things are dynamic, be yourself, be authentic, collaborate," but what advice really means is, "no, the situation isn't changing, we're not making the jerk accountable, you are the bottom dog."

A manager who lets this happen is also encouraging it. Maybe the culture is such that it doesn't matter, and the jerk has protection higher in the chain, but the effects are clear.

In principle, you can always ask a manager to clarify roles and rules. In conversations, you can always ask that colleague for clarification of principles, e.g. "thanks for the insight, and while I balance it with other priorities, to be clear, do I have a reporting relationship to you, or has your manager given you direct accountability for this work?" In practice, this can alienate people by asserting your interest and forcing a decision, and they may resent you for it.

If they do, find a new job, there are better places.

You’re a junior developer. Honestly, you probably don’t know anything besides what you learned in school and you’re finding out that academia is only slightly related to the real world.

Be humble, be quiet, listen and learn.

I’ve been doing this $a_long_time and every time I start a new job I act like a junior, no nothing developer until I get both the political and technical lay of the land.

Once upon a time our team was starting a new project and there were several Senior Engineers including myself working with an offshore team. One of the other Senior Engineers took a very assertive stance as the project got started and was suddenly telling people what to do, assigning work, and generally acting bossy. I asked him to come into a conference room to talk and I told him that I felt frustrated by his sudden assumption that he was in charge of the technical work when the team's previous pattern had been to share technical decisions and apportion work collaboratively. He responded by saying that our management had actually told him that he was being tapped to serve as the Tech Lead for the project. Our craven management had somehow neglected to inform the other members of the team of the decision. I was so shocked by the dysfunction of that decision that I could only sputter something along the lines of "they should have told us that" and then the conversation ended. Oh the joys of corporate culture!

You can either view it as a learning experience, to handle with him and this situation... or something very bad, such as, it is his fault for being like this and there is nothing you can do. I would rather use the first option.

If all other factors properly calculated, the current job position is worth it, keep it, take it as a learning experience... otherwise leave.

But beware. Companies and people are complex, it is part of your job to deal with situations as above. If you always run away from problems like this, you won't improve and grow.

Also, don't have the expectations that you will manage to fix this problem tomorrow by some magic comment from HN. The only person that can: 1. handle this, 2. fix this. Is you. Maybe read books on communication and people problems. But the final attitude comes from you. Take responsibility for it.

And this might take time. But once you manage to handle this situation, you will have grown. I'm sure.

Also a side note: it could be that he's good, but you don't like him for some weird reason. I've seen much more developers fighting over this way. Most of people nowadays have a great deal of problem of dealing with authority and try to bend the universe in their head to make sure that they are the victim of the senior+friend from manager.

If he is senior and friends with your boss in such a way that you can't talk to them (your boss), then he is effectively your boss since he has power over you.

You may believe you are smarter than him and a better developer and even a better human being... it doesn't matter because you work somewhere that allows some nepotism and are willing to continue to pay "Senior" developers who aren't that good.

If you like the job/company, suck it up and just ignore this person whenever you can (kill them with kindness and patience when you can't) while improving your position through adding value and doing your job better than can be ignored.

If you don't like it, then keep that resume shiny and make sure you do a little more vetting of your employers in the future.

It's hard to know how to comment on this because there's a huge range in what might really be going on. You might be a bozo. He might be a bozo. You both might be bozos. Or maybe you are both pretty good and both just bad communicators.

So without really having any insight about what's up here, I have two pieces of advice.

Ask a lot of questions to understand why he thinks what he thinks. The job is not to explain to him why he's wrong; the job is to ask enough questions that you understand why he's reached some specific conclusion.

And focus on getting things done. Forward progress tends to get everyone aligned and give you something specific to talk about that's productive. If in the "blah blah blah" he's telling you 'this will never work' then you have proof positive that he's wrong. Great. If in the "blah blah blah" he's telling you that your solution is not re-entrant and it's going to crash then you are going to find out he's right.

> He acts like I don't know anything.

> I am junior and new in this company!

If you are young, it is quite easy and quick and sometimes deserved to think you don't know. He is being nice or projecting his own youth experience on you, where he learned very slowly and knew nothing at the start.

It you teach him or correct him, he will dismiss it and call it young person's folly.

It will take some time to get him to understand your competency level. And when you do there is no gain to be had.

I don't have advice beyond that.

Best advice. Find another job if you're unwilling to work with this person. Staying there will only make you depressed and its unlikely that they will change for you.

The problem is, it can go in reverse. You can have a senior dev whose really good, but has incredibly poor people skills and thinks they can solve everything and gets extremely irritated when you struggle on something. Not everyone knows the latest stuff and its often better to sit down and help them through their struggles rather than let it fester. They will respect you a lot more if you approach it in a neutral matter rather than just bad mouthing them on hacker news.

From the way you respond to comments that only support your position, it sounds like you've made up your mind.

However, one of the hardest things I had to learn in the professional world was active communication. Making every effort to let people know what I was doing and explaining, in detail, what I had concerns about. Sure, it takes a lot of time, but it helps immensely.

I've been there and I still experience this in life with family, friends and acquaintances.

The trick is to deploy massive empathy for him and know that he's displaying sure signs of insecurity.

I'm sure he knows that you know he was laid off. He also is intimidated that you're smarter than he is. But this is life, you'll be continually surrounded by folks that don't know their place and struggle when confronted with "threats" like yourself.

Walk in his shoes for a day and if you feel like it start asking about his past life, his past teams and experiences. Find out about his home life, does he have kids, did he watch Game of Thrones last night?

Don't take people like this seriously, just know that they're hurting inside when their behavior makes zero sense to you.

This is what I do and it works!

Finally know that when you dig deeper, you'll uncover that his actions have nothing to do with you.