I've been working my first real tech job (as a fullstack web developer) at a local company for almost a year now. Prior to that, I had 2 summer internships and some personal projects. At the current company, I work mostly with React, Node and Javascript (which took a while to learn, as my last 2 summer internships were both Python focused), but as of today both me and a couple of other colleagues are confident in my ability to code (I've been receiving quite positive reviews in the last 2 months, even as far as some compliments). To be noted, that I'm the youngest in the company (both in terms of age and experience) and the company structure is supposed to be flat.
The problem is that there is a senior with more than 2 decades of experience who seems to not like me. When I first interacted with him, he seemed pretty quiet, but usually quite helpful and willing to explain. Now, after a while, I can definitely say that he wants me gone. I am saying this because he raised several red flags:
- He held a presentation about code review practices, where he said that you should not argue about the requests on your code, because it will "ruin your reputation", even if another senior said that discussing about code changes is the whole point of code review. (This came after I asked why should I implement the change he requested. I genuinely did not understand, because to me my code seemed good, but I thought I missed out something.)
- He actively reviews my draft PRs which have the "Do not review" tag and points out things that are not done yet (comments, unused variables, unoptimised code).
- One of the managers told us that some seniors complained about newer employees, and that they are completely useless to the company.
- I was following the specifications given by our product manager and he said that this specifications are not good, and that I am a bad programmer for following them.
- He requested changes on pieces of code where another colleague gave me a positive feedback. Note that this senior reviewed my code, found nothing problematic with it (but didn't approve the PR for some reason), the other colleague came, gave me a positive feedback (he liked my implementation) for a certain piece of code, then an hour or two later, that senior requested immediate changes on the piece of code that received positive feedback, saying it was "bad code" (with no other explanation, even after I asked him why was it bad).
- He puts himself as the main reviewer then purposely doesn't review the code, only after the deadline of the feature implemented on the PR. This makes other colleagues which don't have the same seniority as him to be afraid to approve the PR, because they would get on bad terms with him. Also, for large PRs, he just reviews the code in chunks, meaning he reviews all the code, and requests a change today (which I implement right away, in a matter of minutes). Then, the following day, he requests a change, but based on the code that I wrote before the initial change (he basically doesn't give a detailed code review the first time, so he can keep me in some sort of limbo until my deadline passes so I can be seen as underperforming).
- He flat out ignores all of my direct messages and questions to him (such as requests for review).
None of the other colleagues do this. They are all professional and quite helpful, but this guy somehow hates me and wants me fired. I never took part in office gossip, since I barely set foot in the office a few times, because of the pandemic. I never insulted or questioned this senior's ability to code. I never made any comments about the senior looks and attitude.
I really don't want to start job hunting now, but I cannot go on like this for much longer. What should I do? Contact my superiors and show them the evidence?