[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Do you all have enough to do at work?
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Ask HN: Do you all have enough to do at work?
I work at a big company have been there 6 months and really don't
seem to have a ton to do at work. My co-workers who have all been
there many years seem to have a bunch of work to do. I feel like Im
supposed to be schmoozing with them for work to do which I've never
had to do before at other jobsc and I'm not really good at. I keep
mentioning at standups that I have bandwidth available but never
get any more work to do. Is this like a tactic to drive someone out
or just kind of a normal ebb and flow? It feels weird.
Author : edmcnulty101
Score : 14 points
Date : 2022-10-13 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
| muzani wrote:
| Having worked at startups all my life, there's infinite work for
| us. At the very least, lots of tech debt and insufficient test
| coverage. On FE, there's also supporting a wider range of
| devices.
|
| And then things that could be done better (reactive programming,
| declarative UI, etc).
|
| Then finding weaknesses in the code, documenting them, educating
| the team. For example, we're not handling enough error codes
| properly like no bandwidth and when certain endpoints are down,
| users tend to panic. Or sometimes, certain endpoints should be
| combined for performance.
|
| It could be putting down more logs, benchmarking performance,
| integrating analytics into the sales funnel, monitoring user
| frustration.
|
| No offense, but I think asking around for things to do is a
| fairly junior attitude. The more experienced ones usually don't
| look at tickets, but instead start proposing things that can be
| done.
| Our_Benefactors wrote:
| > No offense, but I think asking around for things to do is a
| fairly junior attitude. The more experienced ones usually don't
| look at tickets, but instead start proposing things that can be
| done.
|
| This might be true in the startup world where product managers
| have less well defined boundaries on what their role entails.
| At bigcorp(c) it's generally frowned upon to go rogue and start
| working on stuff at random.
| [deleted]
| kimchisoup wrote:
| _sigh_ Yes.
| acchow wrote:
| In software? Isn't there infinite work?
| pisspool wrote:
| Sorry mate, you're getting fired. Good luck on the new job hunt.
| MehdiHK wrote:
| I don't have enough HN points to downvote this comment,
| otherwise I would.
|
| You don't know how comments like this affects people with
| anxiety, which probably led them to search for a solution
| online in the first place.
|
| Anyway, you are person unworthy of any attention. I'm just
| trying to make sure op isn't taking you seriously.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Lol. That's not how real-world(tm) works at all.
| hu3 wrote:
| You don't have even close to enough context to say something
| like that. And if it is a joke then it is of extremely bad
| taste about something that affect people's life and mental
| health.
|
| Please do better.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| If I don't have stuff I make stuff up that I wanna do and it's
| usually something the business needs but I usually have a decent
| backlog.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| There's an infinite amount of work to do especially at a tech
| company.
|
| I've been in your shoes before and when I was more immature I
| would just browse the Internet and not do much.
|
| However, as I became a more experienced engineer (and currently
| CTO of my startup), if I ran out of things to do I would think
| "how can I make this product better?" and just start working on
| stuff. Or if you can't figure out what to do on your own, you can
| always ask your manager or product owners.
|
| From a management and personal growth perspective, you should try
| to become as autonomous as possible where you provide value even
| if nobody directly commands you to. This will also grow your
| skillsets. People don't like micromanaging other people - ideally
| you would just be a useful employee without anyone continually
| asking or assigning you things.
|
| Also just imagine - what if you owned the company? Surely there
| is something to do that makes it more appealing to the end-users,
| makes the product better, makes the code quality better, or so
| forth?
|
| If your issue is you don't feel incentivized, or are just bored,
| then maybe look for a new job. If you are just staring into space
| at work then there are better things you could be doing with your
| time.
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| Your talking more about your experience rather than what the OP
| is saying. The OP is saying that he is not immature and he is
| not content to browse the internet and that he is trying to be
| autonomous but since he is not the product owner, it is
| unlikely that he will find ways to make the product better.
|
| Your message sounds like a spiel from a CTO given to his
| employee in order to motivate them and it's like you used this
| opportunity to practice a spiel that you have to give instead
| of looking at the OP's situation.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| One of my points is, nobody has to officially be a product
| owner to figure out things to do. Everyone should care about
| the product and can use their imagination to come up with
| tasks, or like I said, can just ask others.
|
| If he can't figure out how to be useful, that is also a sign
| of immaturity (at least in the workforce context), and also
| points to communication issues and incompetency.
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| He is 6 months on the job. He doesn't know the proper
| context of the business and it is normal and expected to be
| handheld at the start. If he was already at some length in
| the company, then it would be normal and expected that he
| would be able to come-up with his own initiatives and ideas
| on how to improve the product beyond the directions that
| the superiors give-out.
|
| At this point, he is being frozen-out by his teammates or
| maybe it is just normal ebb and flow like usually newcomers
| take some time to be integrated in a big company but it
| depends.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| 6 months is a fairly long time in my opinion, plus he can
| use his spare time to learn more about the business. I
| will just stand by my opinion that he probably has
| incentive issues, communication issues, and/or various
| types of incompetencies or lack of experience, or maybe
| even a lack of vision of what he wants to do with his
| life (e.g. doesn't care about or focus on making super
| cool/useful stuff). I highly doubt others are "freezing"
| him out.
| jfrbfbreudh wrote:
| 6 months is an eternity at an early stage startup and
| barely touching the surface at a tech giant.
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| There's no sign that he is lacking in
| incentive/incompetent/lack of experience, in fact, he
| mentions that he is actively making it known to his
| teammates that he has spare time and is not loaded during
| meetings.
|
| He hasn't mentioned any struggles to deliver or
| challenges with his past tasks; it just comes across that
| he is much less busy than his peers and he is wondering
| why. Maybe he is not liked and that's why I mention
| freezing him out, I guess one can classify that as a
| "communication issue" or the other possibility is that it
| just takes time to be integrated in a big company like
| other commentators have said.
|
| By freezing-out, I don't mean that his teammates are
| actively hostile against him but just that maybe they
| don't trust him yet to give more tasks, just like how any
| newcomer is treated with some unfamiliarity at the start.
| I guess that counts as a "communication issue".
|
| You seem to like to point the blame at the employee only
| while others have mentioned that it just takes time to
| build trust and to be given tasks and others have
| mentioned that he might have already lost the trust of
| his teammates which I guess does point to a failing in
| his part if so.
|
| In a big company, there is also usually more room to
| coast and that is another possibility in that the manager
| is just not pushing that much and that is normal for a
| new-hire. I think there are just more possibilities than
| the fact that the employee is incompetent which seems to
| be your immediate conclusion without sufficient evidence.
| oneforty4 wrote:
| ~6 months is still relatively new in my opinion.
|
| That's unfortunate that they aren't giving you more tasking,
| especially if you're asking for more. But, without knowing too
| many details, it probably is just the normal ebb and flow.
|
| My experience is that it can take several months to a year before
| I get really fully spun up on a new job. A lot of more senior
| people generally feel that it will take _longer_ to hand off a
| task to someone new than to do it themselves. So it takes time
| for them to know and get comfortable with your skills and
| abilities.
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(page generated 2022-10-13 23:01 UTC)