I have this coworker that is almost always paranoid regardles of the group of other Peers he should pair-program with. He gets so protective about what he is working on to the level where he wants to carry on entire epics on his back just to stay on his track. It is ridiculous. No matter what the project, group of peers or tech we get assigned - he always strives to run his own show and sometimes its so hilarious and obvious that people just sit back and laugh. I joined team way after him but he is always subjective about past projects and gets caught up in conversations where he claims ownership of other projects that don't even provide any value anymore.

Whenever he is asked if he needs any help, even from junior members, he acts protective and tries to find them tickets to document or triage bugs - anything but not to get in his code/space.

Basically this guy invents project of his own on every project he is assigned to and tries to artificially promote himself as a lead. In doing that, very often he forgets to hear or neglects other opinions.

Do you have folks like this at your workspace and what are your managers doing about guys like this? At the same time this is the most opinionated guy in the whole team and very often states the obvious just to say something. I mean, opinionated about every little possible thing.

How so you handle situations when you need to be productive and pair up with individuals like this? What is your strategy?