New Job Getting Me Down

pushpop

I started a new job just under a month ago as a software developer and I'm not sure it's for me, so Id love some constructive feedback on my next step.

I loved the job I was in before as the work was interesting, everyone was really nice, we had flexi-time (never underestimate the value of this) and the location was really good. Eventually I got itchy feet because the pay wasn't great, development processes were non existent, there was zero potential for progression and the technologies and platforms targeted were so old that it was one of the places where staying meant you really risked becoming pigeonholed, so I decided to be career-minded and move on.

The new job sounded good on paper; the recruiter told me I would be part of a team of 5, doubling to ten in a few months, with three such teams in the office, nice salary bump, health and dental, non contributory pension, brand new offices and working on fairly interesting new tech, on state of the art machines. Bada bing bada boom.

However, I'm actually only on a team of 2, so already the job is not as described at interview stage, with a third senior guy starting next week, and the guy I'm working with currently is a bit of a p***k to be quite honest. I think he's a good bit younger than me based on LinkedIn stalking I've done, but all his professional experience is in the area we're working in, whereas I've more or less changed areas completely by moving, but would be more qualified and have more experience as a developer overall.

He is the same rank as me but you wouldn't think it the way he monopolises projects and tries to dictate how things should be implemented. He is constantly critiquing my work and looking for problems that aren't actually problems. For instance, we had a bit of a barney yesterday because he came up to me saying a feature I implemented wasn't working correctly. He showed me the "problem" but I insisted it was working correctly, he had just mistakenly assumed it should work in a different way, and rather than researching the feature or competing products, he jumped in mouth first and criticised my code. When I showed him it in a different product, he backed down and muttered some nonsense like "ah ok, just trying to see how things should work." I felt like telling him to shut his cakehole.

He's blunt with other people but I get the brunt of it and I dread coming into work every day ad having to deal with him. He is quite austere and businesslike with me, not so much with everyone else as he had a laugh and asks how they are, but when I ask him he just goes "fine" without any attempt at reciprocation. I don't whether he just has a basic dislike of me, or whether maybe he resents me a bit because he's no longer the only guy on the team and feels a bit competitive. He isnt from Ireland so I think there is a linguistic and cultural element to the problem, and software developers in my experience tend to have quite argumentative and anti social know-it-all personality traits anyway, but it still doesn't get him off the hook for being a bit of a knob.

I try to give as good as I get and push back but being new and not knowing the lie of the land, I'm afraid to rock the boat too much, especially as this guy seems to be popular in the office, and I dont want to end up saying something and becoming the black sheep. Honestly it gets exhausting when you're stressed enough about the work without piling your colleagues in on top of that.

Its made worse by the fact that my superiors are in another timezone so that planning tasks means I have to deal with him directly and "discuss" things, rather than being delegated work by my boss. I've emailed my boss about the problem and he said he'd get us together to clarify stuff via Skype but that never happened and without him here it's very hard to imagine things changing.

Ive resigned myself to the idea that I'll now just clock up a few months experience in the company I'm in now and move on somewhere else. All in all it's a really disappointing start to what is in many ways my dream job, and if i could go back to the day i was given the job offer id say thanks but no thanks and keep looking.

When the new guy starts next week I'm hoping he'll rein my current colleague in and act as a buffer between the two of us, but my gut feeling tells me I won't be working there in 6 months time. Life is too short to be putting up with that nonsense, I mean you spend a third of your adult life in work so it may as well be somewhere that's semi tolerable.

Mrs OBumble

So at the interview they said they'd be expanding a lot over the next few months.

Hang in there, don't cut your losses yet ... you may find that the team structure in even three months is very different.

tk123

Well you're not alone OP - I'm in a similar situation in my job! I'm there almost 2 months and have known from day one it's not for me and like you plan to clock up 3-6 months before moving on!