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I work in a small team of software developers and we all get along quite well. There is however one junior coworker who continues to intrude im my duties and tasks. He will work well over what everyone else does to get stuff done, then complain he has nothing to do and try to take stuff off of everyones plate, especially mine.

Everytime we work on something together he contributes nothing creative, but tries to take credit for all the work. Additionally he interupts me in stand ups. I have taken to being a bit more agressive and stopping him down when he intterupts me but I feel that it is becoming a loosing battle.

Everytime a new request comes in he makes it a point to take it as soon as possible before anyone else can chime in, and most of the time his solutions are not maintainable.

On a final note he has started trying to get himself invited to project meetings that he has nothing to do with, and my suspicion is to do the same thing he has been doing.

I want to speak with my manager about it but I feel it will just be received that i am overthinking and it will just sully my reputation within the team.

How should I proceed in a way that will resolve this without creating more problems for myself?

user32364
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    Why is this such a threat you? Why not let him burn himself out? In any business or department there is more work to be done then there are hours in the day. Is he making mistakes? Are worried he will get promoted? Does he not know how to properly do the jobs/projects? He probably will get his hours reduced or told that he will not get any more overtime...if you are that worried. Why can't/won't you say "No" to him? I would focus on you and be happy there is an over zealous team member who will jump and take on almost any task (even grunt level ones)..it's better than not having one – G.T.D. Jun 22 '16 at 01:15
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    Management is not that stupid. Just do your job. If management is really that stupid nothing you do will help. Avoid teaming with the person. If it happens then let them speak up about something they know nothing about and bury then in a polite technical manner. – paparazzo Jun 22 '16 at 01:21
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    Possible duplicate of Coworker who likes to take credit for work that is not theirs – gnat Jun 22 '16 at 01:41
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    I feel that it is becoming a loosing battle. Do you feel like it's becoming harder to stop him from interrupting or do you manage to get him to stop talking and are just frustrated that he still interrupts in the first place? Don't feel like you need to cure him of his need to interrupt. As long as you're able to stop the interruption and finish you're doing OK. – BSMP Jun 22 '16 at 03:50
  • When you say "Junior", is he just new or does he get some experiences ? You could maybe help him, showing him how to get involved in work and explaining him why he has to find a maintainable solution etc... – Gautier C Jun 22 '16 at 07:26
  • If he wants more work, give it to him. There is always some technical debt that can use some attention. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Jun 22 '16 at 12:45
  • He sounds like a great employee to me – rdab Jun 23 '16 at 07:40

2 Answers2

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I think you and the team are not focusing on the real problem.

most of the time his solutions are not maintainable.

If this is the case, there needs to be some code review. A junior programmer should have been under tighter supervision from the beginning. None of his code should be going into production until it meets a certain standard. Your manager or team (if they have an level of self-management) have failed.

Making him sit down and go over his code with a more senior member should slow-down this cowboy coder and make him realize he has a lot to learn. Until he learns how to be a more effective programmer, he's never going to get credit for anything he does because none of his code will ship.

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You said "stand-up", so I'm going to guess that you're using an agile framework like scrum. If so, I suggest using the team retrospective to suggest the type of teamwork you're after in as non-accusatory way as possible.

If you don't have retrospectives, then I'd suggest talking with your manager in a "I'd like for us to collaborate more effectively" type of discussion.

Jared
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