
Ask HN: Engineer won't approve my PR - alexandercrohde
I&#x27;ve encountered this situations a few times where, once I&#x27;ve joined a team, an existing senior engineer (often the one seen as a lead, but never officially recognized as such) rejects relatively minor things on my PR (these are not things in the coding spec, usually both function, usually it&#x27;s an argument of the form &quot;What if x then y then z happened?&quot;, sometimes I think my preference is slightly objectively better)<p>In these situations I try to tease apart if this is  psychology thing (&quot;asserting dominance&quot; or &quot;hazing&quot;), because the way these engineers argue in PR is often very black&#x2F;white.<p>For reference I&#x27;m more senior career-wise than most of these engineers, but it happens most when I&#x27;m new to the company. The last thing I want is 1-hour arguments over minutia or a protracted mutual suspicion. The problem is worse for me when the engineer is remote.<p>Of those who have been in that situation and conquered it (i.e. the other person would admit they have things they can learn from you &#x2F; considers you a friend), how did you do it?
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AskewEgret
When you are new, you should be given a lot of leeway to ask questions. So,
perhaps you should set aside potential motives and use these rejections as
opportunities to ask questions.

Something along the lines of: "I've worked at a lot of places, and none of
them have ever done the on-boarding process perfectly. One thing I try to do
is to document some of the problems encountered as well as the solutions or
mitigating factors. It will definitely help me become a productive member of
the existing team with the existing culture, but all future employees will
benefit as well. Can you help me understand the thought process that went into
this rejection, what I missed, what I did wrong, etc?"

You would hope that management recognizes the long-term benefit of such an
exercise and would support you. It also places a fair burden on the rejecting
engineer to explain him or herself.

