HACKER Q&A
📣 throwaway24feb

How to deal with a difficult senior team mate at work?


Hello HN, I recently got promoted to a management / leadership role at a fast growing post series A startup.

As part of this, I have to oversee a new team where I am being confounded by a problem I havent handled before.

I have a very senior engineer on the team who

* Refuses to write tests (says things like the cyclomatic complexity of my code is low so I dont need unit tests)

* Refuses to use modern tools and practices (Example: Handwrites every single SQL query, refuses to even explore an ORM)

* Refuses to help me or other engineers in other related code bases or service (He keeps pointing to bugs and issues, but seldom takes up a refactor or a fix)

* Sticks to his own conventions even though a lot of the team does not agree with him ( Example: He refuses to follow rest patterns for apis, will not let us introduce api versioning amongst other things)

* Insists on bringing 100% clarity before starting execution (Example: any minor change in requirements and he insists on going back to the start)

Now the thing is he is one of the earliest engineers in the org and he is leading a team that has to deliver a very critical project.

This project is already 6 months late, and I am still seeing us going in circles.

If you dont agree with him on a technical issue, he would agree and then some how the work will slow down to a crawl till we dont revisit the original decision.

I am sure that there is his side of the story as well.

But by God I am clueless

How should I handle this ?

  👤 ericalexander0 Accepted Answer ✓
Welcome to management. At best you'll be making directionally correct decisions. Don't wait for perfect clarity. It's unlikely to happen, and it's probably too late if it does. You know what to do here. Go do it. Then go read The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team.
👤 grrdotcloud
Do you want the engineer who works as mentioned or one who follows the new management directives?

I have been on both sides. Be clear. Make the call. Take the action. Don't look back.

👤 amrb
I would go talk with three engineers in the company and ask if they would work with him on a project, based on the answer should influence the continued employment..