Episode 359: Competition and awkward in person

In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

Hi Dave and Jamison!

What do you do when one of your immediate teammates is constantly competing against you?

I really don’t like competition. Ignoring the competitiveness + praising his value did not work.

Some examples:

Leaving code reviews comments showing off obvious knowledge which does not really add value to the PR

Constantly harassing you to pair on trivial matters (I think because “pairing with someone less experienced” is a trait desirable in our engineer scoring framework)

Picking up a bigger version of whatever ticket you just did

Trying to be the first to “answer your question” in public without actually answering the question (this makes it difficult for me to actually get answer for question I ask because other would think it’s “resolved”)

Part of me feels flattered that somebody who has more years in the job sees me as worthy of competing against, but at some point it became annoying and counterproductive.

Appreciate your thoughts. Please don’t tell me quitting my job and saying goodbye once and for all is the solution