How should I deal with my team member who tries to copy?

Question

I have been working in a company for a year and a half now, after 6 months of work the company decided to hire one more person to help me and project. My colleague is so weird, We both software engineers work in one team and on the same project. During the meeting he tries to criticizes my work, usually interrupts. Also, he doesn't allow me to speak much in meetings with senior management of the company and tries to dominate every aspect of work by explaining repetitive facts which everyone is already aware of those things.

I am just explaining one of his annoying behaviors, we had a group meeting and I came with a PowerPoint and provided a formal presentation about what I have done for the past week and what shortcomings we have in our system that we need to fix, and I explained that I want to fix this issue, I literally said I will work on these aspects of the project to fix it.

The week afterward he started doing the same programming that I did for the past week, and he came with a PPT file to do a PowerPoint presentation(which he rarely did in the past) this time for our weekly meeting as I did before and now he started to work on the same thing that I suggested to be fixed.

It seems like he can't stand my appreciation and tries to copy me.

When I saw those overlapping parts, I tried to remind him that he did the same thing that I did, I needed some time to share my code. We started to covers over this and he tried to convince me his method was good, my manager asked us to not to get off the topic,

Answer 1

It's too late for the particular things you complained about, but these things will happen in the future. That person is obviously only too willing to stab you in the back, so you have to work to not allow it.

If you are talking in a meeting, and he tries to interrupt, you say calmly and loudly "Excuse me, but I am talking right now. I'm not going to interrupt you when it's your turn, so I expect the politeness not to interrupt me". Next time "John, you have this real bad habit of interrupting me. Please wait until it is your turn. ". Next time "John, why are you interrupting me again? Is it because I'm a woman? It's not acceptable in this day and age."

When he came a week later duplicating your work, after he presented it you should have stood up and said calmly and loudly "John, what you have been doing here was a complete waste of time. I might it clear that I would be doing this work, so apparently you didn't listen. ".

Don't worry about hurting his feelings. He doesn't worry about hurting more than just your feelings.

Answer 2

Time to have a private conversation with your manager.

Because: (God bless him or her ...) it's his-or-her "problem to figure out," not yours.

Answer 3

Oh, I would have fun with that guy. You just get him to take responsibility for something in the meeting and then you let him do it 100%. Even if you need to nudge him in the meeting to take it on. His ego probably will require him to say he'll do it. After the meeting, if he asks you for help just remember you're busy with other things. If he succeeds, fine. If he fails, it's all on him. Just make sure you have other things to work on that the boss considers high enough priority that it's a valid reason for you to be busy.

Don't complain to management anymore. They're not concerned with the unethical stuff he's doing so you're wasting your breath.

Longer term, get the hell out of this situation. You don't want to be considered part of a team where you do all the work and the other person takes all of the credit.

Always be planning your future. I'm sure you have goals that are bigger and better than the situation you're in now. Do whatever it takes to get there.

Answer 4

tl;dr You're getting out politic'd, and you need to fix your game or you risk getting hammered out of the credit you deserve. Your best defence is unambiguous work assignments, careful record keeping, and you can do things to unambigiously timestamp work that you do by dropping hashes of that work. You can also use github, or whatever document control that you have. The last thing though is that I suggest you stop playing defensively or passively. If you see errors in what this person is doing, feed them the rope they'll hang themselves with. If you don't, then you better lay claim on this stuff to show that they're clearly wasting time duplicating work that was yours.

Long answer

1. I'm guessing that you identify as a woman judging from your name, and apologies if I'm misgendering you. It's possible that you're falling trap to one of the many techniques that men can, and will, use to take over/take credit from their female colleagues. You're being talked over, and that can be very difficult to deal with. Various people have suggested techniques for dealing with this, but the one that I personally favour is just "out manning" them by talking over them in return. You see people in tech do it all the time, and the person left talking usually gets their ideas across.

2. Maybe I'm not reading it correctly because there are a few ways to read what you wrote here. The least charitable way is to take where you said "I" to mean the royal "we" as in "I want to see these issues fixed" and not "I want to do the work to fix these issues myself" and then gaining consensus among the group that you were going to fix them. If you weren't assigned/didn't get consensus as to the work to be done, it's entirely possible that this person will get away with it. This is especially true if they have finished the work, and were presenting it as finished.

3. So this person shows up the week after with a presentation, presents the work that he did (which was mostly a duplication of work), and it's not done yet (according to what you've written). You note that you "needed time to share your code", but he gets in to how his method was good. Your manager clearly doesn't care who does the work, they just want it done. This is far too passive/defensive on your part. You need time (non-committal, not confident), and this person is saying their way is good (comitted, confident). You're not gonna get a win here with this manager.

Honestly, you're just getting played here. Your coworker can take your ideas/initiatives and roll with them, get the credit for making them reality, and you're just kind of there because you're not laying claim. You can do all sorts of things like "thanks for doing that Bill, I knew you'd see the value in doing the work I saw as necessary, and having the extra time to do it, making it happen."