Ask HN: How to handle over-entitled-ivy-graduate who wants work on shiny things

I have been coding for many years in big co. I got to work with a young guy who came from reputable college in CS as a peer. My management thinks he is A level player thus pretty much he is on free rein. But I am left behind with mass because I don't want to leave things in loose ends. He asks for help for any kind of stuff and asking me to take a look at his compilation errors. His lack of team playership makes me frustrated and not so motivated because my work is not appreciated. How can I improve here? Is this common with smart guy? I have talked to my boss but he doesn't seem interested on lecturing etc. Sorry for grumbling.

It's hard to understand you fully because your writing is so unclear, eg 'But I am left behind with mass [...]' Realistically, interpersonal communication skills are just as important as programming skills. If this is how you communicate to your boss, no wonder he is ignoring you - your English is as bad as your young colleague's code. Sorry to be so blunt, but it's true. If you just wrote this in a hurry, then do yourself a favor and rewrite it to be clearer - and I will delete this criticism.

On to your main problem - your boss likes his new employee, from a combination of novelty and because it sounds good to say 'I have an Ivy League guy on my team.' This is very unfair to you but it's a common situation in human psychology. As you are at a Big company, you should have some way to talk to someone in human resources and explain your problem in general terms, to ask what the appropriate strategy is. Definitely get that advice before making a decision.

It seems to me that you have 3 basic options here: ask for a raise, ask for a transfer, or work-to-rule. Asking for a raise, you are basically saying 'hey, I am having to manage this guy in addition to my own job, it's a lot of extra work.' Ask for a transfer gets you out of the situation, and while it's disruptive for you it means the new guy becomes Someone Else's Problem. However that's a rather passive-aggressive strategy, which I don't think is a very good idea. Third option is to say 'of course I'm here to help you understand our in-house libraries and our codebase etc., but handling compiler output errors and so on are the sort of skill you have to build up for yourself.' If he still can't cope, bring him to your manager and say 'he (or we) need/s some more training with this compiler, Big Co should send him/us on a training course to improve his/our skills.'

I don't think you should blame your colleague too much for his lack of a team player mentality. Bear in mind that not only may he lack experience dealing with production code, he is probably also unfamiliar with professional and social 'rules' of the workplace. He has mostly been in college with peers of the same age and school year surrounded by supportive faculty and the ability to work on new projects rather than deal with legacy code. So he probably does not understand how much of your mental resources he is consuming. At worst he thinks you are biter and burnt out because you are not so obviously excited to be working at Big Co and you probably don't think it's cool to eat cold piazza and write code until 4am.

Thanks for the critique. Sorry that my english was poor. I wrote it in a hurry for sure and that was my rant really. I didn't bring this up to my management explicitly. I will try that route. The project is interesting and I learn a lot from it. And I don't think this is a unique problem of mine. I like to solve this problem.

I have worked hard to give him better environment as senior in the org reaching out my network to look at his issues and resolving ops issues. Our legacy system is big and not agile and document is not up to par. I produced documents to help sort out this situation. But rather than being appreciated, he thought I would work for him. That's really odd result after my hard work. This is new experience to me.

My workstyle is more working on behind scene talking to the person directly as a first step because I believe in that personal interaction is better than seeking help from outside like my boss. I have sat down with him on his work ethics because he missed work deadlines a few times. He was not motivated to work on legacy system. I encouraged him to give different perspectives on his work.

I just want to learn from other people if they have this kind of experience with younger folks working in big co meaning young ambitious new employee who doesn't want to work on legacy system but they still want attention from management.

How can I ask or teach him to listen and recognize other's work more effective way?

I think the compilation issues and others were due to his lack of attention. How would you motivate young folks and foster team player mentality at the same time?

Your English seems less rushed than non-native.

The red flags that are going off for me are related to the possibility that what you're seeing is an Ivy League white male discounting you as a foreigner.

Management in large companies doesn't like complainers. Bringing a problem to management when you don't also have a good solution to offer risks you being labeled a complainer.

Going to HR should be a LAST RESORT. HR is not there to help you; it's there to keep management from getting sued.

You need to see if you can work with this guy or not. If he's going to continue to discount what you know while still depending on you, you may need to draw very clear boundaries between your work and his, making him responsible for his own compile errors.

It may just be that he's gotten off on the wrong foot. You may be able to teach him if his head isn't already full of his own importance, or if you are willing to take a secondary role to his "Ivy" leadership. If neither of these things look to be happening, I'd be looking for another job, not going to management with a complaint that effectively says, "This guy thinks he's better than me, but he isn't!" No management wants to have to deal with that kind of complaint, so will start making your life more difficult in small ways.

Your non-native English is going to cause people to underestimate your intelligence in many places in the U.S., however. May work better for you to find a job in a company with a strong international presence, which will be less likely to equate English fluency with intelligence.