So, I am senior software engineer, got hired into this company. I was tasked by my manager/tech lead to work with another senior software engineer.
Overtime I realized that this engineer did not have the proper background in this field. I asked him and I asked my tech lead, and confirmed he did not have background in this field. This guy just roped into this project and stayed.
I sent him articles, tutorials, and even documentations that say so and so is so and so, but he refused to believe it and said it was just my opinion. I even offered to work on these problems instead of him. But we ended up getting into heated arguments. I talked to my tech lead and my VP and they just brushed me off. It got so bad that I asked to be transferred to a different team.
I also realized later that my tech lead was not as technically competent as I hoped to be, so that's why he couldn't make a decision.
Anyway, I asked Reddit and TeamBlind how to best deal with this kind of situation. (In those forums I actually described exactly what were the problems)
To my surprise, a lot of them, 99% of the answers go along these lines "Who the fuck cares man, just get your paycheck and go home, what an idiot". These are highly paid FAANG engineers.
So, that was my wake up call. They were right. Who the fuck cares. Just get my paycheck and go home, and work on other stuffs, work on side projects, side hustle, and go Leetcode.
I was 8 years too late into the industry to know that this should be my default attitude when working.
Now I am in "Who The Fuck Cares" club.
Let me get this right, you discovered your team was mediocre, you then asked the clinically cynical folks at Reddit for advice, people you don't even know and people who certainly don't know you, and the conclusion you walked away with was that it wasn't worth caring because there's cynics on the internet?
If you're adopting a "Who the Fuck Cares" attitude, the highest form of it you can reach is not giving a flying fuck about what anons on the internet say.
Now, as an anon, I won't bother to give you advice, but I'll tell you what works for me. I found a team that is intelligent and passionate and enjoys their work, and a startup with talented founders that I respect, and I am far happier than I would ever be working at a mediocre company or team. I feel better as a person, I learn better, challenge myself more, and feel more accomplished by surrounding myself with other highly competent people.
The things that are broken at that company, which are the things people keep reacting to in this thread as "why is service X so bad?"... they're going to stay broken. It's still not caring.
The OP here, basically has a simple (and common!) 3-way collaboration/communication problem:
- OP did not get along with 1 single fellow coworker that he was assigned to work with; this coworker reportedly does not listen to reason, does not read the research or background info that OP shared, etc.
- OP tried to seek help from a manager/lead type person, but that person was also not useful (i.e. not able to force a course-correction towards better collaboration).
Note: OP did not actually indict his entire team, or the entire eng organization, as all being hopelessly useless. OP said he had a problem with 2 specific people, and asked for tips to deal with that (small!) scenario. But instead of giving "small" advice for a "small" (and again, common and usually fixable/at-least-improvable) problem, both the toxic hive-mind as well as the HN commentators here have completely avoided trying to solve the actual root issue (which isn't nearly the impossibly-large-turnaround effort that everyone's making it out to be)... What we have here, is fundamentally an XY problem (https://xyproblem.info/), in that OP asked for help with X, but got advice about Y.
EDIT: Okay so I guess I should offer some concrete advice to OP for what I'm calling his "small" original problem -- usually there are 2 categories of options from this point: either escalate again, or try to resolve interpersonally without escalation.
- Escalation route: OP tried the 1st manager/tech-lead, who couldn't bring a resolution... that's... pretty common actually! So escalate 1 more level, calmly and professionally. Whether it's a skip-level director/VP, or a project manager, or whichever stakeholder is appropriate in OP's context -- explain politely what steps you have tried to solve the problem so far, why the counter-proposal / alternative is bad or won't work, and emphasize that you are still happy to collaborate further, but you are currently at an impasse and need a more senior person to weigh in. Then, OP needs to be prepared to "disagree and commit", if the decision doesn't go his way. NOTE: if the decision doesn't go his way, it could mean 1 of 2 things: a more senior person brought in extra context or expertise that OP did not know about and hence made a better decision that OP can learn to appreciate, OR it could mean everyone is an idiot and OP is the only sane person in the company... there's no reason to jump to the most negative conclusion as the only one, but certainly I acknowledge it's possible (I just don't think it's good advice to assume the worst, without even trying a simple +1 extra round of escalation... OP could at least try 1 more time).
- Non-escalation interpersonal route: OP can find a professional way to say to the problematic coworker, "frankly, I still disagree with your approach, and it's my job to document my disagreement with our manager(s), but at the end of the day, if you insist on doing it your way, then go ahead". Sometimes, the only/best way to learn, is to let someone else try and fail. This isn't callousness or retribution, this is actually a common lesson for mentors who might otherwise struggle to try and protect their mentees from ever possibly making a mistake or being wrong about something... an overbearing/overprotective mentor would need to learn how/when to take a step back, to let a mentee try and fail and learn-how-to-learn from their failures. Of course, OP is not this coworker's mentor, and does not need to feel obligated to assume that role, but I am simply pointing out that letting someone go off and do something you disagree with, can actually be an act of caring (rather than a form of not-giving-a-fuck).