This new guy has a senior position and is 20 years older than me.
Im not a senior because I didn’t study (still have 10y of experience) and i don’t care about the title as Long as the salary is good.
But.. he sucks, he doesn’t know basics, keeps overengineering, I have to explain basic stuff to him over and over again like JOIN in sql, lambda, method references and async threads in java..

He probably makes much more than me and has a higher title..
I feel like nobody notices because I keep helping him to finish his shit.

That sucks!

I had a similar situation in my previous company.

This is an evidence that seniority should never br defined by years.

Seniority isn’t defined just be the technology that you are currently using. It’s being able to see the bigger picture, being able to bring in other technologies, techniques and methodology to address problems. As well as mentoring.

There are some aspects of languages that I don’t use, I have to look them up every time because they are used so infrequently.

If he’s over engineering then it’s typically that he’s been bitten in the past by only doing x and it’s then been expected to do y and z also. But that also indicates that the requirements are too lax.

People are put into senior positions not because they have been there the longest (although that typically is the case in most situations), they have earned the right though technical knowledge and the trust of senior management.

@bluescreen a senior in my opinion should be able to adapt to changes and new projects within a few months.
He should also be able to do research on the problem and provide the best possible solution.
He should be able to LEARN and he should be familiar with basic stuff that’s not dependent on technology.
As multithreading, DB locks and stuff like that.

None of this seems to apply to that guy..

Well maybe you should think of another word because a senior is literally someone older.

That said, yes, a senior that was unable to keep up tends to be an absolute plague.