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How to deal with a senior dev trying to micromanage you and acting like he’s the boss when he’s not?

I newly joined a company and during the interviews, I let them know that I'm looking for growth and preferably a senior role, they assured me that bc team is small, and I'll have plenty opportunities of for growth quickly. I've yet to see how true is that. Since I joined, I have been getting a weird vibe from this colleague(it's a remote team) but I have been ignoring it as I'm new and I thought it's too soon to judge. When I first interacted with him, the meeting was supposed to be a KT but instead, he started to ask me technical questions as if he was taking an interview, and not just that, questions about the code base which is a total old tech stack and plenty of legacy code which I now know that nobody knows why's it there, but on my first week he was asking…


I newly joined a company and during the interviews, I let them know that I'm looking for growth and preferably a senior role, they assured me that bc team is small, and I'll have plenty opportunities of for growth quickly. I've yet to see how true is that.

Since I joined, I have been getting a weird vibe from this colleague(it's a remote team) but I have been ignoring it as I'm new and I thought it's too soon to judge.

When I first interacted with him, the meeting was supposed to be a KT but instead, he started to ask me technical questions as if he was taking an interview, and not just that, questions about the code base which is a total old tech stack and plenty of legacy code which I now know that nobody knows why's it there, but on my first week he was asking me questions which made me very anxious and I felt stupid for not knowing all of that.

And then in another meeting, he sort of called the EM and Architect of the team stupid, exact words – “these guys don't know anything what they're doing” and the topic was just to use a simple btn on a pr which they infact did know how to use, he just assumes other people don't know stuff.

And then again, I was having a conversation about him about why should we follow Way-X of doing something (which he insists on everyone to follow bc he prefers it himself) when there's Way-Y which is more dev efficient and also saves everyone's time and makes the process less complex. But to this day, after weeeks, not only he wants to follow it himself, he keeps pointing out for others to follow it too. (I did follow it bc he was being too pushy, but only skipped one time bc it was not necessary and there was no reason follow that)

I'm still unsure on his role in the team and if he even knows so much that he pretends to know because even my manager hasn't pointed out yet to listen to him or he's not a lead of the team. All I've noticed so far is, when there's an actual issue that needs suggestions from others about what we could do, he never has any real solutions/suggestions. He just keeps talking for hours in unnecessary meetings and wastes time with stuff that doesn't help anyone.

It has become an everyday thing now and people really suck at communicating here in the team(everyone else is nice and friendly tho), I have tried so many times to ask things that are blockers to other people that might know about it, but nobody responds on time, some not at all.

How do you deal with teammates/seniors like these especially when you're new and don't want to look like you're complaining? Should I think about quitting? (I just joined here. it pays well but things in the team seem too messed up and scattered. I want to pursue freelancing in future but atm I'm not sure it's the right time to go for it full-time without financial security)

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