Ask HN: What to do if I'm a bad fit for dev team?

My hypotheses are:

1. They are doing it to purposely be unproductive. It's like in school where kids would ask the smartest kids in the class to bring down the grading curve by telling them to relax or hang out more.

<3k LOC supports this theory, which is absurdly small for a team that's been around for a while.

2. They see you as a threat. This could be for the above reason, it could be because of your background. The hazing and insulting comments support this.

This might also go into a lot of things that you haven't mentioned. Like some people saw me as a threat when I was the only developer who didn't have to work at the office. It might also be that you're staying in later or coming in earlier, skip lunch, aren't going out on drinks with them, aren't engaging in some workplace ritual.

Hypotheses should be tested, then you can work on solving the problem.

I would recommend the Benjamin Franklin approach. Ben was ambitious, but he was bad at reading people early in life. He was screwed multiple times for standing his ground or proving that he was right.

He eventually learned to roll with the punches, to fit in even though he thought it was wrong and unproductive.

You probably want to quit later, but it might be a good exercise to find out what you're doing wrong so you don't face the same issue in the future.

Slowdown and listen. Do you hear this loud sucking sound? It's the demand for software developers. There is a ton of examples in competitive athletics and other areas of human endeavors when someone was unappreciated in one situation and super successful in another.

Still, before you leave, learn as much as you can about the situation, so, if for no other reason, you could recognize it before joining.

2. Try to figure out why this is happening. There's usually a reason. Most likely it's managerial incompetence, but maybe not, and even if you can't figure out a solution being able to identify the problem is a useful skill (and might help you minimize conflict).

3. Try to switch teams. If that doesn't work, start thinking about switching jobs.

I just emailed the manager and said based on the first interaction with this particular team member it wasn't going to be a good fit for me and left on day 2.

Some people just don't like to collaborate and they want your hands out of their sandcastle.

For instance, I've been shopping around for a new job and had a CTO of a decent sized ~30 person engineering team told me during the interview that their standards for testing is "get it working" and "test on staging." If basic unit tests are a luxury around here, how do you expect to grow and become better devs over time?

These debates are why golang and it's gofmt are so great :)