Hey guys, In need of some advice, I’m finding myself in a tough situation.
I’m the Product / UX Designer in our small startup team. We’ve recently hired 2 senior developers (who has been colleagues for about 6 years at their previous company) due to their company being acquired, leaving them to job hunt.
One guy is our new CTO and then we’ve hired a dedicated senior front end developer (who brands himself as a solid Fullstack / Product Designer). When we hired this frontend guy, we made it abundantly clear that he will not be doing UI/Product design but he’d be a dedicated React developer that needs to help migrate our Angular app to React + establish the front end standards & support the product vision. He was completely fine with not being the product designer but rather a dedicated developer.
It turns out that he’s really not open to collaborating with me at all. He’s not consulting me to understand the vision of our product. Instead, he’s taking things in his own hands and bypasses me and the sprint (constantly picks up tasks not prioritised in the sprint and changes our product’s UI and behaviours without checking with me). It’s very obvious that he’s not impressed with the fact that he has to run things through me and I think it’s due to his experience. I think he finds it very challenging having to “report” to someone 15 years younger.
How does one go about working with these seniors if they don’t feel the need to collaborate with someone they don’t deem experienced enough?