I design electrical circuits for a living. Over the past few years, I've established a logical design method which works for me and helps me to keep track of how everything is connected together. Since these designs can become humongous, I group the sub-designs in a specific way, name my nets in a specific way, etc. This isn't a matter of right/wrong, but rather just how I think about things.
I was the only designer in my company for a number of years. A couple of months ago a coworker was hired to take up some of the work. I've found his structure of doing things to be difficult to keep track of. He seems to think very differently to myself and organises his designs in a very different way to me. I did speak to him about it, but he said this is what makes logical sense to him. Nonetheless, when I look over his work, it takes me double the time it would take to figure out what's going on than it would if it were my own design.
He is significantly less experienced than me (I'm at 10-ish years, he's at 2). I don't know if his method is due to him not really establishing himself yet or if this really how he does things.
How can I find common ground with my new coworker? I want to be respectful of him, but his design style is really getting in the way of our progress as a team.
To clarify where my techniques came from: I was trained by a company who was much larger and had an established internal design standard. I didn't question where this came from. When I started at my current employer, one of the first things I asked was "what's your design standard?". They didn't have one, and I was pretty much left to use the techniques that I'd learned. These have evolved slightly to fit the needs of a smaller company. I have only really worked at these two companies, so haven't been able to objectively evaluate my design process relative to the industry as a whole.