3

I was hired about 30 days ago by the COO who's recruiter is a "friend" of his. I also interviewed with the VP and Director of IT who I directory report to. After waiting an unusual month and a half they finally gave me a start date.

It has to be very obvious that I barely being put to any use. I have been given micro tasks by the VP and not only immediately came back with scripted solutions, I have even solved security issues that no-one can figure out. The problem seems to be here that the CTO pushes back on giving me production access, or installing any development tools. To make this company even more odd, the development team that works offshore for us, He is the CEO of. To be clear, during the interview the CTO did tell me this is not a position for development in their primary system. The VP and COO said they have a lot of other systems that have technical debt on top of a technical need for local support of how the main systems works from a technical perspective.

I literally sit here. Some of you would say i am sure to try to be pro-active and ask questions or talk to HR. First of all again its obvious to my manager I am not being used and to the co-workers around me. Second, there is no HR, at least not until last week did they finally fill that position.

I took this job because I could not stand the commute of 1 hour plus a day, of 10 hours of hard work a day. I now have a 5 minute commute of absolutely no work a day and its driving me insane as I would like to be productive.

The company making money and moving forward, Is it growing They are busy, and I am getting paid

Is it a small to midsize company in its growth post start up phase in the USA, my department there are about 7 people.

I am using my office time to keep up on technologies that are relevant to the position.The co-workers are just working and making regular conversation with me. I have asked them to please let me know if there are any tasks they have that I could take off of their hands.

My contract (full time) is full of vague IT related responsibilities and is very vague but all of what i would suspect for a System/Software Engineer

What should I do here?

P.S. I would really like to make it work here. Another job move would look horrible on my resume. The company and people are very nice here personally. I really should not make another move until at least 3 months and do not want to start any bees nest and find myself out of employment.

Philip Kendall
  • 110,342
  • 65
  • 264
  • 337
MichaelEvanchik
  • 203
  • 2
  • 11
  • Consider asking permission to install some Linux distribution on your work computer. You'll then have development tools (on Linux, they are free software), and you could develop something (and you could actively propose some of your development) – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 17:44
  • permission denied – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 17:44
  • Then discuss with the (technical) manager who has hired you (or your own technical manager). Propose him to do start working on some project (that you need to define, preferably somehow related to the microtasks you have been given) which would be helpful to the company. If that does not work, start looking for another job – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 17:46
  • 2
    Is the company making money and moving forward? Is it growing? Are they busy? Are you getting paid? – Sandra K Feb 27 '18 at 17:47
  • yes, yes, yes, and yes – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 17:48
  • Is it a large company or a startup? What country? Please edit your question to improve it, but avoid answering in comments. Give the approximate size of the company, of your department – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 17:49
  • At least, use your office time to learn stuff (related to your job or qualification, e.g. related to software development). And what are the co-workers doing? Can you propose to help them (e.g. to develop something which would improve their productivity)? – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 17:51
  • 1
    @MichaelEvanchik If that's your real name on your account, you should change it considering you've admitted to RDPing to your home computer and surfing the web all day. – Chris E Feb 27 '18 at 17:54
  • 1
    nope fictitious name – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 17:55
  • Does your work contract mention some task, function, skill (perhaps as general as "software development")? BTW, you might rephrase your question, by giving more context, by naming the various people (e.g. as Mr X, Ms Y, ...). I find your question confusing and slightly unclear. Please edit your question to improve it a lot – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 17:56
  • i have edited my question to all your comments – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 17:59
  • No, you copied some of my comments into the question. I don't see much answers or improvements in it. Consider rephrasing your question entirely. Explain what your co-workers are doing. Take sometime to describe: 1) the company. 2) who and how you was hired, and what for 3) what other people do 4) what is the company's main business (off-shoring?) – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 17:59
  • 2
    Just FWIW - HR has absolutely nothing to do with your day-to-day duties (unless you work in HR). What does HR do for me? – Bernhard Barker Feb 27 '18 at 18:02
  • Im trying to not to dispose to many details. Still working on the question – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 18:03
  • Even with the latest edits, I find your question unclear. What are you co-workers doing? – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 18:03
  • they are working – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 18:03
  • On what are working your co-workers ? Are they working on sewing machines to make clothes? Are they using saws and hammers to make wooden furniture (unlikely). Otherwise, propose to develop something to help them!! – Basile Starynkevitch Feb 27 '18 at 18:04
  • in my department of Information Technology, it is not my my job description to "come" fixes up with problems that i do not even know exist. Do you hire a lawyer or plumber with no work to do? – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 19:02

3 Answers3

11

I can tell you from experience (being in IT) that this is normal. Your team is giving you time to ramp up and learn. The first 2-3 months are usually to get your feet wet and understand the dynamics of the company. Ask other team members how long it took for them to be assigned the responsibilities of where they are at.

What you can do is the following:

1) Talk to your manager about low hanging fruits / projects that are simple and an easy "win" for your team. Concentrate on those

2) Learn the business. From beginning to end. Gather documents, read them and ask questions when you can how things are done there

3) Learn about the projects the team are currently working on. Try to see if there are areas you can do to help that you can solve.

4) Propose a plan to your management/lead on how you would like to take more challenges day by day and prove you are up to speed. Even if he shuts them down then go back on learning what you can do to be productive.

5) Tell your manager that you're so bored it's not good for you mentally. See if he can give you something he knows you can do.

Key point: Don't stop learning just because you have no assigned task. Teach yourself what your company is all about and find ways to be productive to your team and the business users.

The faster you can prove that you are an asset, the faster they'll dump work on you. Soon enough, you'll post another question on how to stop people dumping work on you.

Isaiah3015
  • 1,511
  • 8
  • 10
5

I'm in the exact same position. I have been working as a consultant for a company for 3 years now and I am paid very good money for it. However, I really don't have much to do and it's driving me insane. I talked to my bosses about it multiple times, everybody is well aware of my situation but still, I only have about 2 to 4 hours or actual work per week.

I often thought that it was some sort of punition to push me to quit or something (they do that in France)... but my contract has been renewed 4 times?? They could have let me go many times, but they didn't. I really don't get it. Often I thought about quitting, but the people here are very nice and kind to me and it's what keeping me going.

So, I keep myself busy. I read and experiment with the latest technologies and I try to be pro-active and everything. I did manage to learn and improve my skills over time and make sure that that time is not a total loss.

Chololoco
  • 229
  • 1
  • 6
  • the company i do not even how the ability to install a program on my local computer, let alone take control of a server or services. thats the sad part – MichaelEvanchik Mar 01 '18 at 15:35
4

You're seen as a potential threat by the CTO and therefore are being left out. However you're being paid which is pretty important and your job would be viewed as ideal by a lot of people and you were told at the start that you wouldn't be working on their primary system.

Basically you have a support role but nothing much has come up requiring support, so you don't have many choices and you haven't been deceived.

If the job is a bad fit then job hunt, you seem to still be on probationary period, this is one of the reasons there is one.

Personally it has only been a month, I'd do whatever I could find and fill the time educating myself on how the business works and looking for potential tweaks I could make in my field. I have had jobs where support was hardly ever needed, but when it was it was critical. Many jobs can be like that in many industries. Think airport firecrew, once every five years they may have an emergency, the rest of the time training, upskilling etc,.

Most likely they are still finalising what tasks to give you, it would be rare outside of govt to employ a person to do nothing in your position. So just keep mentioning you are short of work.

Kilisi
  • 222,118
  • 122
  • 486
  • 793
  • IT support is drowning in tickets, but no training , no access. Only given gopher tasks that the team cannot do, and they take my script to use for their credit, which is fine by me – MichaelEvanchik Feb 27 '18 at 19:07
  • If you don't get training, train yourself, it's your career/future. If you have plenty of time, study towards some decent certification. You can never have too many solid certs. – Kilisi Feb 27 '18 at 22:24
  • @MichaelEvanchik: Why not just take a look through that IT support database and see if you can make any improvements to the project to mitigate them. It might just be the self-starter attitude that the CTO needs to like you. – NotMe Mar 01 '18 at 19:46
  • no access or Business Rules knowledge – MichaelEvanchik Mar 01 '18 at 20:34