Senior engineer outsmarts an arrogant new hire when the newbie tries to play office politics, shattering his misplaced corporte confidence: 'He quit out of embarrassment'

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Jan 18, 2026 9:00 AM EST

Fresh-faced new hires act like they know better than the senior employees, but what they lack in experience, they also lack in the good sense to keep their mouths shut. 

Back in the day, to score an entry-level position at any company, you needed to be forthright, have your thin resume in hand, and prepare for a nice, firm handshake at the door with the big boss. Nowadays, to even show your face in the same room as a hiring manager, you need to have 15 years of experience, 2 degrees, an insider connection, and a lucky rabbit's foot in your pocket.

Perhaps it's for this reason that this newly hired engineer felt entitled to belittle his superior. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it when new hires have fresh ideas and a new perspective on existing protocol, but on your first day in the office, it's equally important to know your place. 

Empowered by gusto and 3 rounds of matcha lattes, this young new hire charged into the workplace on his first day, intending to steamroll anyone who got in the way of his good fortune and apparent genius. However, when met with the levelheaded senior engineer in his department, his arrogance and misplaced confidence were quickly shut down. With 20 years of experience to back him up, the senior engineer put the newbie in his place, refusing to play office politics as if he were the one seated in the entry-level chair at the conference table. 

Alas, experience trumped gusto this time, and a seasoned pro, unsurprisingly, turned out to be the smartest, most seasoned, and most skilled in the room. 

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  • Senior engineer teaching his apprentice the job.
    via Monkey Business Images

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Sometimes the old guys do know best. 

    Especially when it comes to old school training on ancient modules, a new employee must sit back, shut up, and endure their training. Pay your dues when you enter a new workplace, and don't disrespect the seasoned employees who came before you. You might just need their help afterall when your silly little degree proves to be useless.

  • The guy assigned to attack me did it in the wrong meeting. My career was spent as an applications engineer in the EDA (electronic design automation)
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  • industry and my main function was doing tech support for electronics engineers using programmable logic devices which required a very complex implementation toolset, and so there was both hardware and software support involved.
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  • Initially I was working in a small startup company and had taken on the role of also doing admin work for a bug tracking system for the implementation toolset development. I was tasked with
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  • writing a scripted batch interface to the bug tracking system we had acquired, so that after bug review meetings, status changes could be batch loaded from a text file using a command line interface in Linux, and it worked out well.
    via bwade913
  • A few years later, we were acquired by a much larger company in the bay area and that company replaced their own toolset with ours, and so also switched to our bug
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  • tracking system. At the same time we started plans to migrate to a new bug tracking system. I wasn't going to be involved in the admin work for the new system, but because of my experience | was assigned to a group laying out the specs for the new system.
    via bwade913
  • It turned out that the idea of having a command line interface for batch processing was controversial and the split was across site boundaries, not department boundaries. I was warned that I needed to be
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  • prepared to speak up for the command line interface in any meetings pertaining to the new system. Then I learned that a specific engineer (new hire) in my division in CA had been assigned to argue against the
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  • feature. I wasn't used to having to play politics, but I figured all I had to do was speak up about the benefits of having the feature that was already in heavy use in the old system.
    via bwade913
  • Young engineer apprentice learning the ropes.
    via Monkey Business Images

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story

  • Then I was asked to do a training presentation for people that needed to come up to speed on the old and still current system, and the new hire was attending. I was going through all the
    via bwade913
  • features and use cases. When I got to the section on using the command line interface, the new hire interrupts and says "I don't think we need a command line interface". I replied, "No, you've got it wrong. You're supposed to
    via bwade913
  • argue against this feature in the new system. I'm just training you on using the existing system". His manager who was also in the training session told him to let me finish. He quit the job a few days later. I like to think he quit out of embarrassment.
    via bwade913
  • notthelizardgenitals I would have quit out of embarrassment for allowing myself to get pulled into some messy kindergarten feud kind of BS! Thank you for sharing your story, it was very satisfying
    via notthelizardgenitals
  • OP bwade913 It was surprising that a new hire was put in that awkward position. I never did find out what that was about.
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  • cheffromspace Thank you for creating and defending CLIS.
    via cheffromspace
  • OP bwade913 Sadly the CLI did get axed in the end. The new company had a separate tools group that refused to develop and support it.
    via bwade913
  • LowAcanthocephala251 Help me out here. Why is CLI preferred over whatever the alternative is (assuming GUI)?
    via LowAcanthocephala251
  • OP bwade913 It's tedious and error prone to load each record individually and hand modify the various fields. Batch processing streamlined the processing. Command line driven custom reports were also a big part of it.
    via bwade913
  • Tomocafe Small world... I know these companies. This must have been around 95 or 96. Interesting piece of history.
    via Tomocafe
  • OP bwade913 It was a good company to work for. I was there more than twenty years until I retired.
    via bwade913
  • ElectronicAvenger Back when the F-15 Eagle fighter was being initially designed and developed, it was envisioned with a completely new A/A missile system and nose gun. But when the first flying prototype was finished, it featured an existing and fully tested A/A missile and the M-61 Vulcan nose cannon. The thinking on this was 'The Tried and True to protect the New'. Punchline: it is not wise to ditch everything that works without fail just to push out a totally new system.
    via ElectronicAvenger
  • dsccsd00 What a satisfying read. Thanks for sharing, OP.
    via dsccsd00
  • TriGurl Ha!! That's glorious!
    via TriGurl

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