

Ask HN: How to handle over-entitled-ivy-graduate who wants work on shiny things - ibyon

I have been coding for many years in big co. I got to work with a young guy who came from reputable college in CS as a peer.  My management thinks he is A level player thus pretty much he is on free rein.    But I am left behind with mass because I don&#x27;t want to leave things in loose ends.  
He asks for help for any kind of stuff and asking me to take a look at his compilation errors.  His lack of team playership makes me frustrated and not so motivated because my work is not appreciated.  How can I improve here?  Is this common with smart guy?  
I have talked to my boss but he doesn&#x27;t seem interested on lecturing etc.     
Sorry for grumbling.
======
anigbrowl
It's hard to understand you fully because your writing is so unclear, eg 'But
I am left behind with mass [...]' Realistically, interpersonal communication
skills are just as important as programming skills. If this is how you
communicate to your boss, no wonder he is ignoring you - your English is as
bad as your young colleague's code. Sorry to be so blunt, but it's true. If
you just wrote this in a hurry, then do yourself a favor and rewrite it to be
clearer - and I will delete this criticism.

On to your main problem - your boss likes his new employee, from a combination
of novelty and because it sounds good to say 'I have an Ivy League guy on my
team.' This is very unfair to you but it's a common situation in human
psychology. As you are at a Big company, you should have some way to talk to
someone in human resources and explain your problem in general terms, to ask
what the appropriate strategy is. Definitely get that advice before making a
decision.

It seems to me that you have 3 basic options here: ask for a raise, ask for a
transfer, or work-to-rule. Asking for a raise, you are basically saying 'hey,
I am having to manage this guy in addition to my own job, it's a lot of extra
work.' Ask for a transfer gets you out of the situation, and while it's
disruptive for you it means the new guy becomes Someone Else's Problem.
However that's a rather passive-aggressive strategy, which I don't think is a
very good idea. Third option is to say 'of course I'm here to help you
understand our in-house libraries and our codebase etc., but handling compiler
output errors and so on are the sort of skill you have to build up for
yourself.' If he still can't cope, bring him to your manager and say 'he (or
we) need/s some more training with this compiler, Big Co should send him/us on
a training course to improve his/our skills.'

I don't think you should blame your colleague too much for his lack of a team
player mentality. Bear in mind that not only may he lack experience dealing
with production code, he is probably also unfamiliar with professional and
social 'rules' of the workplace. He has mostly been in college with peers of
the same age and school year surrounded by supportive faculty and the ability
to work on new projects rather than deal with legacy code. So he probably does
not understand how much of your mental resources he is consuming. At worst he
thinks you are biter and burnt out because you are not so obviously excited to
be working at Big Co and you probably don't think it's cool to eat cold piazza
and write code until 4am.

~~~
ibyon
Thanks for the critique. Sorry that my english was poor. I wrote it in a hurry
for sure and that was my rant really. I didn't bring this up to my management
explicitly. I will try that route. The project is interesting and I learn a
lot from it. And I don't think this is a unique problem of mine. I like to
solve this problem.

I have worked hard to give him better environment as senior in the org
reaching out my network to look at his issues and resolving ops issues. Our
legacy system is big and not agile and document is not up to par. I produced
documents to help sort out this situation. But rather than being appreciated,
he thought I would work for him. That's really odd result after my hard work.
This is new experience to me.

My workstyle is more working on behind scene talking to the person directly as
a first step because I believe in that personal interaction is better than
seeking help from outside like my boss. I have sat down with him on his work
ethics because he missed work deadlines a few times. He was not motivated to
work on legacy system. I encouraged him to give different perspectives on his
work.

I just want to learn from other people if they have this kind of experience
with younger folks working in big co meaning young ambitious new employee who
doesn't want to work on legacy system but they still want attention from
management.

How can I ask or teach him to listen and recognize other's work more effective
way?

~~~
anigbrowl
I think you're going about it the right way. Document everything, although
it's tedious, and if it doesn't settle down then ask HR for guidance. Good
luck!

------
JackK
Your English seems less rushed than non-native.

The red flags that are going off for me are related to the possibility that
what you're seeing is an Ivy League white male discounting you as a foreigner.

Management in large companies doesn't like complainers. Bringing a problem to
management when you don't also have a good solution to offer risks you being
labeled a complainer.

Going to HR should be a LAST RESORT. HR is not there to help you; it's there
to keep management from getting sued.

You need to see if you can work with this guy or not. If he's going to
continue to discount what you know while still depending on you, you may need
to draw very clear boundaries between your work and his, making him
responsible for his own compile errors.

It may just be that he's gotten off on the wrong foot. You may be able to
teach him if his head isn't already full of his own importance, or if you are
willing to take a secondary role to his "Ivy" leadership. If neither of these
things look to be happening, I'd be looking for another job, not going to
management with a complaint that effectively says, "This guy thinks he's
better than me, but he isn't!" No management wants to have to deal with that
kind of complaint, so will start making your life more difficult in small
ways.

Your non-native English is going to cause people to underestimate your
intelligence in many places in the U.S., however. May work better for you to
find a job in a company with a strong international presence, which will be
less likely to equate English fluency with intelligence.

------
rgbrgb
Give him concrete actionable critique as close as possible to the time of his
"offenses". He's new to professional coding and probably doesn't know what
he's doing wrong. For instance, after you help him with a compilation error
that you think he should have figured out on his own, recommend him the
resource that you think he should have learned it from. Take the lead in
training him and putting together technical documentation around common
problems new members of your team might have. It's more productive to
recognize this as a flaw in the system your team has created for on-boarding
new hires.

Using name-calling like in the title of this post will not help.

~~~
ibyon
True I know. I wanted to avoid name calling.

Please read my response above. I have worked hard to my knowledge working as
ops guy in a team and had reached out my network to solve the problems and
produced document. But he seemed to think my work as granted. But personally I
spent a lot of time troubleshooting his issues in our legacy system and that
doesn't get recognized.

It affects my morale. But at the same time, I do recognize that it is a good
management experience working with smart juniors. I have kids. I see same
behaviors but I cannot yell at him like I do to my kido. ;)

------
chrisBob
You are the experienced one on the team, and he is the new guy. Make sure he
understands the hearty, and take a few weeks to mentor him in how things
should work. Teach him the culture that you want to have at work. The fact
that he is having some trouble is a good point for starting this relationship,
but isn't necessary. You should be able to fix this.

------
greenyoda
_" My management thinks he is A level player"_... and yet he's _" asking me to
take a look at his compilation errors"_.

A-level players don't need help fixing compilation errors. In fact, A-level
players rarely have compilation errors. Routinely writing code that doesn't
compile (except for obvious typos) is the sign of someone who doesn't know the
language they're using very well.

~~~
ibyon
I think the compilation issues and others were due to his lack of attention.
How would you motivate young folks and foster team player mentality at the
same time?

~~~
dllthomas
Maybe some sort of pair programming could be good for everyone involved?

------
ibyon
It turned out as a rant but I do recognize it as management experience that I
want to learn from. I have worked as ops in the team and reached out my
network to reduce frustration that blocks his productivity. I don't think this
is my unique problem. If someone has fixed this issue successfully, would you
like to share?

