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Ask HN: Senior develloper is sabotaging me. What should I do?
I have joined a startup 3 months ago, and I thought that I have been doing a good job until I had my performance review with the CTO. They basically told me that the senior developer is "unhappy with my code".
I have been hired SPECIFICALLY because the senior developer who architecture and coded on his own the main application has no CS background and made such a mess of the code that everything was months behind schedule, and the entire application is locked in an obscure framework.
I was hired despite my lack of knowledge of the used obscure framework, that the senior developer has chosen. However, my knowledge of the language and the fundamentals of the platform are what they needed to fix the bugs and optimize.
I have been doing exactly that for the past 4 months, the number of open bugs at any given time went down from around 70 to less than 6. Application performance and testability have been improving, and overall I think that I was doing objectively a good job.
However in the review the CTO (the person that haired me, and told me about the shortcomings of their senior developer) is telling me that this same person in not happy with the quality of my code.
The senior developer might be scared for his position and trying to undermine me, so that my contract wont be renewed after 6 months?
And even if my contract is up for renewal, do I really want to work in a place like this? Or am I just reading too much into it and I should consider bettering my code?
PS: He apparently didn't give any "constructive" cretinism as in what is bad and what should be made better.
- hoodoof 9y agoJust leave, plenty of other jobs.
- throwAway894 9y agoThat was my first reaction, but even if I leave I intend on honoring what I committed to, and finish the first contract so that they wont fall behind.
- hoodoof 9y agoSo tell the boss you'd love to stay but you feel undermined by the senior guy and it's not tenable.
- throwAway894 9y agoOP here: One other thing that has left me confused, during the same performance review, the CTO spoke with me about plans for the application on the long term (beyond my actual contract) which could mean that they're planning on keeping me, or it could be just random talk.
- daedalbug 9y agoit does sound like they're insecure and are trying to 'show you your place'. I've been in a very similar situation, with an immediate manager not being from a tech background and received pretty much the same comments.
- usuallybaffled 9y agoLooks like you invaded someone's little kingdom. Jokes aside, it's very hard to go from working alone and making all decisions to working in a team.
- DarkKomunalec 9y agoTry "I think, regarding code maintainability, open bugs, <other metric>, I've done well, and the project has advance steadily since I arrived, but am eager to hear how I may further improve my code." -- basically politely point out your contributions to the CTO, and make the senior developer back-up his claims, cloaked in a call for advice. If you can show you can work well, even with adversarial colleagues, without sowing strife in the company, a reasonable CTO might very well decide to keep you and get rid of the senior dev. But whether your CTO will actually do that, and if you should stay, I cannot say.
- gjvc 9y agoYou just coined "constructive cretinism". Full marks. I too have been the subject of "constructive" cretinism lately and it stinks.