My senior colleague ignores me

Question

I am a junior software developer. I joined one of the big tech companies a year ago, immediately after graduating.

I joined a team that has one developer, he is a senior dev.

In the first half of the year, we didn't get along much, but things were more or less fine. I thought that the reason might be different mindsets. I came directly from college, so I am still fresh with theoretical knowledge, he's experienced and knows how things work in real life.

After the first half of the year, I decided to follow what he wants for everything, as an attempt to learn and resolve conflicts. This reduced the number of conflicts / intense discussions a lot.

However, for the past 4 months, he has been ignoring me completely. For example:

• When I am assigned to develop a new feature, I write my proposal for the solution, and share it with him to get his feedback. I thought this would reduce the amount of re-work since we'd both agree on the solution. But he always comes with answers like "do it yourself now, and I'll check later" or "I think your solution is fine, I only have some points which I consider subjective not objective so you can go ahead with your solution"

Then when the feature goes life, he asks the manager to redo the feature since it has potential flaws and it'll give us a headache in the future.

(That happened 2 times)

• Another example is that he is hiding things from me. Since he is senior, other teams contact him for alignment. They give him requirements and discuss solutions. I know nothing about all that. I get to know that only by finding a weird code pushed to our code base, and then I asked what is this code about, and he says this is a new feature. (and we didn't even discuss the solution, and he never mentioned that he was working on that)

(That happened 2 times)

• Another example: I was working on a task, and it was a big one, I spent 3 weeks working on it, and when I finished it, I asked him to review the code, and he said: "Oh but this task has been canceled because of COVID 19" apparently another team has aligned this with him but he didn't even bother to tell me.

-There are so many more examples about me sending him messages and emails and he either doesn't reply or he says that he'll come back soon and then he never does.

Our team has a manager who is managing 3 (maybe 4) extra team, we barely see him.

I don't know if (and how) I should tell the manager, because in the first half year, I have escalated many issues to him and I believe he things that it is me who is so junior so I need time to adopt to corporation environment.

also, as you probably know, the senior is always a favourite for the manager.

How can I deal with this situation? should I talk to the manager? it is making me nervous and I feel it is unfair that I seek alignment and he's ignoring me.

Answer 1

However, since at least 4 months, he is ignoring me completely

The following words suggest they are not ignoring you.

But he always comes with answers like "do it yourself now, and I'll check later"

There could be many reasons for this response. Maybe they are too busy to look at it now. Maybe they are putting a fair degree of trust into you. Maybe they performed a professional assessment that this task does not need a solution review before implementation.

"I think your solution is fine, I only have some points which I consider subjective not objective so you can go ahead with your solution"

Seems pretty clear cut. They performed an assessment of your solution, and they determined it was sufficient.

Then when the feature goes life, he all of the sudden asked the manager to redo the feature since it has potential flaws and it'll give us headache in the future.

Nobody likes having their work discarded. But that's sometimes how it goes. Sometimes even senior people will have to rewrite other senior people's work due to unforeseen problems, scope creep, or new knowledge. Maybe an initial assessment was wrong. Maybe there are aspects that are difficult to capture during solution design.

"Oh but this task has been canceled because of COVID 19" apparently another team has aligned this with him but he didn't even bother to tell me.

This is something that you should raise with your manager, because it's not a waste of your time, it's a waste of company resources. Obviously there was some sort of communication breakdown. It could have been caused by the senior. It could have been the manager. It could have been the other team. Raise it with your manager, and let them pick up the pieces.

-There are so many more examples about me sending him messages and emails and he either doesn't reply or he says that he'll come back soon and then he never does.

Yes, this may be regrettable, but this may simply be because they are busy.

it is making me nervous and I feel it is unfair that I seek alignment and he's ignoring me.

I don't know what "fair" is in this context. It doesn't sound like a word you should use in a professional context.

It might be silly to mention, I also asked him out for a beer, he said he'll receive a handyman to fix something at his place, and then I found him in the bar with another colleague.

Yes. It is silly to mention. It sounds like you want a friend.

You need to clearly identify the solutions where you have not been able to work as efficiently as possible, and that is what you need to look at.

If three weeks were wasted with you working on a cancelled project, that is a very clear-cut example that you could raise with your manager.

If I was you, I would also try to cut back on unnecessary communications as much as I can.